ESCP Europe Alumni Magazine - n°149 - Juillet/Août 2013 - 26

FoCus

By Virginie CHARLES-DEAR (MGE 04)

The fabulous box
toucanBox is a subscription business: we deliver boxes of hands-on activities to
children aged 3 to 8 years old every month straight to their door. Customers sign
up on our website for a monthly, 6-month or 12-month subscription.
Explanations by Virginie CHARLES-DEAR, Founder & CEO, toucanBox.

The concept behind toucanBox
is simple: quality time, delivered
-we want to provide the opportunity for kids and parents
to spend quality time together.
Our boxes contain 4 hands-on
projects and a book, all centred
around a different theme each
month. All materials and inspiration are included. Our boxes
are developed by a team of
experts and are tailored to suit
each child’s development stage.
Activities cover various key skills
such as concentration, creativity,
numeracy, and hand-eye coordination to help children learn in a
fun way.
Necessity of a good distribution
My background is online, I used to work for Yahoo!
and subsequently a couple of online startups so
I guess launching an e-commerce business was
a natural choice for me. Selling a product online
usually requires less capital to start with. Unlike a
shop where you have to think about lease, location and footfall, being online means that you can
sell to the whole country from the start: no matter
where people live, if they’ve heard about you then
they can buy from you. The drawbacks are that if
you sell a product, it’s usually easier to convince
people to buy it once they’ve actually seen it.
Being online also means that you need to have a
good distribution partner who will reliably deliver
the goods on time and in perfect condition.
A subscription business
toucanBox is not the typical e-commerce business though, we’re truly a subscription business
at heart. The beauty of a subscription business is
the recurring revenue: unlike typical e-shops which

- ESCP Europe Magazine N° 149 - Juillet/Août 2013

sometimes struggle to get repeat purchases, for
us this is not a problem; once we’ve signed up
a new customer they will tend to stay with us for
months. Much like mobile phone operators, our
key metrics are customer acquisition cost, churn
and lifetime value. As long as we can keep our
acquisition cost lower than the average lifetime
value of a customer, then we make a profit.
Raising money
I started toucanBox with my own savings but after
the initial launch and early success, quickly decided to raise external capital to scale the business
faster. We received funding at the beginning of this
year from a group of 20 angel investors, including
the founders of Innocent Smoothies and Lovefilm.
Raising money is extremely time-consuming and
can be a real drain on resources, especially in the
early days when the team is small. However, outside of the obvious financial impact, having a group
of trusted advisors/investors has been immensely
useful: they’ve brought their experience to the table, and their connections. It has also contributed
to raising our profile as a start-up, making it easier
to recruit senior profiles.
Expansion of the business
Our focus so far has been to bring the best possible product to the market before we actually
spend any money on marketing. Until now we’ve
grown mostly by word-of-mouth and a couple of
online promotional campaigns. We’ve also built
strong relationships with the parents blogging
community. I’m extremely proud of the team and
what we’ve achieved, and although there have
been ups and downs and moments of doubts, I
would definitely do it again. Our plan is now to
scale the business in the UK and then export the
model internationally, to other European countries
first, then North America and Brazil.
●

Table des matières de la publication ESCP Europe Alumni Magazine - n°149 - Juillet/Août 2013

Couverture
Zapping
Sommaire
BUSINESS
Personnalités du mois Cyril ZIMMERMANN (94) : Un avenir prometteur
Focus
L'appel du numérique
E-learning
Innovation, innovation…
Data is gold
Speed and risk
La fin du e-commerce
Photo réussie !
Managing queues
A win-win situation
The fabulous box
A gateway to Brazil
Itinéraires
Changez vos ampoules !
Grands crus
Manger bon, frais et sain
Entretiens
Maroc
Nouvelles technologies
Cloud
NEWS
Vie du réseau
Etienne PREVOST (MSE 94), Directeur du Who's Who in France
Nominations
Alumni Forum 2013
Groupe Centre
Groupe ESCP Europe au Féminin
Groupe Normandie
Groupe Seniors Actifs
Premier week-end de ski
Agenda/Carnet
À lire
Carrière
Réseaux sociaux, nouvel outil de votre carrière
Managing people remotely
Voyages En voiture !
CAMPUS
École Launching a business in the digital area
Fondation Soutenir les nouvelles générations
Vie étudiante
Toutes voiles dehors !
Changeons nous-mêmes l'éducation !
Let's celebrate curiosity!

ESCP Europe Alumni Magazine - n°149 - Juillet/Août 2013