It was while on maternity leave with her second child that Virginie Charles-Dear realised the difficulty of keeping two young children entertained. “I was looking for ideas to keep the kids away from the screen, and doing something educational, [that was] easy for me as a parent to do with them,” she says.
It was this that inspired her to launch toucanBox, an arts and crafts subscription business for children aged from three to eight, with business partner Sara Barokas. Their first shipment was 100 boxes to family and friends, which Charles-Dear says they’d packed themselves.
Four years later, and the company sends more than 100,000 boxes around the UK every month, has secured £3.2m in funding (investors included the founders of Innocent Drinks), signed an exclusive partnership with children’s TV star Mr Maker, and has plans to launch across Europe. Available in three sizes – petite, grande and super – the boxes include everything children will need to make a bird feeder, pirate treasure chest or one of the other 250 available themes.
“I’m most proud of the growth that we’ve seen,” Charles-Dear says when asked about her biggest accomplishment. “Every year we’ve tripled in size. [And] the success of the product itself has been a surprise. We’ve really managed to come up with a product that people love and are passionate about.
“There’s obviously lots of challenges, [particularly] finding where our customers are and talking to them in the way that’s the most relevant. One of the big areas of growth for us has been via Facebook and other social media. So many of the parents we talk to today are recommending us to their friends or family.”
The company has a committed and growing online community of 50,000 on Facebook and more than 5,000 on Instagram at the time of publishing. Marketing manager Shalina Barok says the audience tools on Facebook in particular have proven invaluable in testing the messaging they’re using and targeting various demographics – mums and dads versus grandparents or aunts and uncles.
“There’s quite a lot of niche targeting available so it’s very easy to pinpoint and target with precision,” she says. “One of our biggest successes is running lots of tests and learning fast, to enable us to grow faster.
“[We’ve been able to] tailor our messages to specific customers, rather than targeting people with a generic message overall. If I was targeting a grandparent, for example, I wouldn’t use the same wording as I would with a stay-at-home mother. It’s just about understanding how to communicate with that customer to get them to engage.”
It’s because of this engagement that toucanBox has been able to nurture a dedicated audience that has grown with the business as it develops. Much of that dedication has come down to the type of content that they share – Barok has also been experimenting with stop-motion video of the different boxes being assembled to build anticipation and intrigue, and Charles-Dear remembers an experiment run by the product team last Christmas, when they posted an idea for a snowman box to see what their followers thought of it.
“[Our audience] commented so much on it that we actually went ahead and produced it,” Charles-Dear adds. “It’s a nice way of getting your community involved, you get feedback from a product perspective [and] they feel like they’re being heard and can see the product coming to life as well.”
Depesh Mandalia, chief marketing officer, says the business has had a definite strategy when it comes to social media, and it has paid off. “I think a lot of companies get lost in just trying to put stuff on Facebook without thinking about what’s going to resonate, and how to create engagement. Our community on Facebook want to see what’s up next, what we’re up to… that’s what works for us.”
It’s a formula that has also facilitated the company’s plans to expand to new countries.
The business has recently expanded into France (where Charles-Dear is originally from) and Ireland. There are also plans to widen their reach to Germany, and next month they’ll be extending operations into Italy. A US expansion is planned for next year. Exploring new markets is always problematic, but Mandalia explains that social media has made it possible for toucanBox to build momentum abroad in advance of the launch.
“[In the UK], we know who to target and how to target them. We have the ability to blueprint that in new countries – that’s exactly what we’ve done in Ireland and France [and] that’s given us confidence to continue with Facebook as our route to new market.”
For Charles-Dear, the business’s future plans revolve both around expanding to new countries and developing the product range further.
“We are developing products for new age ranges. A lot of parents say their child is a bit young but would really love something like that, so we think there’s definitely a market there. And we’ve been developing a box in partnership with the Cambridge Science Centre for kids aged eight and older. Potentially [we’ll have something for] adults as well – there’s a big demand for mindful activities away from the screen.
“We have lots of ideas and lots of really passionate people, so it’s about making it happen now.”
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Facebook sponsor of the Guardian Small Business Network Connected for Success hub.
