Storymark Labs

What story do you want to tell?

Storymark allows museums, parks, libraries, gardens, and similar public places to put interactive stories outdoors, with no trenching for power.

Story

For our kids, and yours

Ethan and Kori became friends at kindergarten drop-off. The idea came from a walk. Ethan was pushing his kids around a small-town Kansas park, past storywalk signs that had faded and worn out years ago.

We wanted that kind of walk to last. Better public spaces, for everyone. Community around a story people share. When our kids ask what we did with our lives, that's the story we want to tell.

Built by people who've done this before

Ethan Franks

Ethan Franks

Founder & CEO

Frontend engineer and tech project lead in ed-tech, including enterprise-scale work at Boot Barn and Udacity, with an earlier career in construction management. Leads Storymark's content platform, and on-site installs.

Kori DaCosta

Kori DaCosta

Co-founder & CTO

Senior software engineer with a career in IoT and embedded systems, including roles at Sony, Koch, and NetApp. Leads Storymark's hardware and firmware.

Purpose

Great outdoor spaces, going quiet

The courtyard, the trail, the garden reach far fewer people than the building next to them. Signs wear out, and they can only support a few languages at most. Powering a display means cost, logistics, and site disruption. So most places never put a story out there at all. More people go outside now than ever before, but they go less often. Showing up once is easy. Coming back is the hard part.

Storymark changes what's possible outside

Storymark allows you to put a story, exhibit, or guide on the courtyard, trail, or garden. No trenching for power, and no reprinting signs when the story changes.

  • A story outside

    Pages people can turn, and hear. In their own language.

  • No trench, no reprints

    Runs on sunlight. Change the story anytime, from anywhere.

  • A reason to come back

    When the story changes, the walk is new. A reason to come this week, and the week after.

Who's already outside, and why that matters

5 fewerOutings per year vs. 2019, even as more people get outside. The crowd is bigger. The habit is thinner. A story on the walk is a reason to come back.Outdoor Industry Association, 2026 Outdoor Participation Trends Report

1 in 4U.S. adults live with a disability. Storymark is built for all of them. Physical buttons, Braille labels, audio, and translations are on every kiosk, not as an add-on.CDC, Disability and Health Overview

1 in 5People age 5 and older who speak a language other than English at home, up from about 1 in 10 in 1980. A printed sign can only hold a few of those languages.U.S. Census Bureau, Language Use in the United States: 2019

Plan

One kiosk, or a whole trail of them

Gather

One kiosk holds it all

Put a whole story, exhibit, or guide on one kiosk. Visitors turn the pages themselves, or press play and listen instead.

Walk

A trail of kiosks, one story at a time

Spread the pages across stops along a path. Visitors walk from one kiosk to the next, reading or listening at each. Tell one story across the whole trail, or a different one at every stop.

Made for everyone, everywhere

  • Built to be used by everyone

    Physical buttons, tactile and Braille labels, audio, and translations are standard on every kiosk.

  • Sustainable

    Solar and battery powered. Set it wherever people already walk: no trench, no electrician, no hookup.

  • Simple by design

    Minimal on purpose. Four buttons, one story. Storymark adds to the walk instead of competing with it.

  • Outdoor-ready

    Built to live outside year-round: sun, rain, and freezing winters included.

  • Change anytime

    Publish or replace what's on the kiosk from the CMS, anywhere, anytime.

  • Read or listen

    Turn the pages, or press play and listen instead. In their own language.

A library to start, or tell your own story

Establish

Open children's books on day one

Kiosks can ship with a starter library of open-license children's storybooks, ready to read or listen to from day one. Nothing to write, nothing to record, nothing to wait on.

Customize

A story, a guide, an exhibit

Publish your own pages instead: a story, an exhibit guide, a trail map. Update them the moment something changes. No reprints, no visit to the site, no waiting on a vendor.

Built for places people already visit

  • Museum

    A courtyard, a sculpture garden, the walk from the parking lot to the front doors. The exhibit doesn't have to live just inside the gallery.

  • Park

    A story along the loop, or a trail guide for what's ahead. Pull from the starter library, or publish your own. The walk becomes the program, not just the way to it.

  • Library

    Whatever you'd put on a shelf inside, now on the lawn outside. The grounds become another room in the library.

  • Garden

    An arboretum or botanical garden. A guide along the path, even when there's no tour.

Common questions

Is this a proven product, or are we the test case?
We're early. Storymark is in pilot stage, and we're working with a small number of early partners to prove it out in real conditions before wider availability. If you become a pilot partner, you're helping shape the product, not buying something off a shelf.
How much does it cost?
Storymark is a one-time hardware purchase, plus a subscription for the content management system (CMS) billed per tenant1. There are two subscription tiers: a base tier for publishing your own content, and a premium tier that adds automated translation and audio generation. We're finalizing pricing now. Request the pilot guide and we'll walk you through it.
What can we show on the kiosks?
Pages you can turn, plus audio if you publish it. No video, and no animation. Storymark is minimal on purpose. The point is the story, not the screen. We add to the outdoors. We don't compete with it.
See all FAQs →

Request the pilot guide

Storymark is in pilot stage. We're working with a small number of early partners to prove it out in real conditions before wider availability. If you run a museum, park, library, garden, or similar public place, tell us about your space. One of our founders will email you the Pilot Partner Guide directly and personally follow up.

The guide includes a product overview and specifications, a proposed pilot timeline, what we'll learn together, suggested roles, and the decisions to make before installation.

Request the pilot guide