Toynovo: Inclusive Play Circular Economy

Maria has always been passionate about social development, dedicating 25 years to the social sector, focusing on microfinance and education foundations. From there, searching for solutions for social problems, she successfully promoted public laws for children´s development. 

Being aware that social and cultural changes need to be based on market principles for their sustainability, and with the belief that human development depends on positive relationships, she cofounded www.toynovo.com (11-2019) with her brother Daniel.

Toynovo transforms the toy and play ecosystem to maximize its inputs and outputs, promoting positive interactions and family bonding through a circular economy model. 

Based on her capacity to collectively construct solutions for big social problems, Maria combines her startup with www.colombiacuidacolombia.com, a Covid response movement she started with her husband (3-2020). The movement addresses solutions to big social problems, connecting and articulating 400 actors from civil society, as well as public & private sectors.

1.  Play opportunities are inequitable and high resource consuming in a buy-new logic.  Children from high income families lose interest in toys in less than a month, resulting in significant economical and environmental waste. Children from low income families, have no or very few toys and lack significative playful experiences. 

2. Rent, Buy & Sell Marketplace that serves families to get the right toys for the development of children, through a Circular Economy Model. Families will not only save in toys, but also make them profitable, and get involved in a toy sharing community. Every toy comes with a play inspiration tool.

3. Inequality starts in early childhood, mainly due to the quality of interactions between a child and his principal caregiver. Various studies demonstrate good health and high income are associated to these positive interactions. Toynovo promotes playful experiences in vulnerable communities to promote equality, leaving no child behind.

In Colombia there are 2.5M vulnerable children from 0-5 years, and 200M globally. Children in vulnerable communities go through stressful and violent situations, that affect their well-being the rest of their lives. In a non-COVID scenario, only 50% of these children receive proper public services. Today, most of them are at home, facing increasing violence from stressed families. It is urgent to address family spaces promoting positive interactions in a cost-effective way: Promoting Play.

The capacity to construct positive relationships starts in early childhood; and significant play is a fundamental part of it. When a child can count on an adult he trusts, one that authentically connects with him, his probability to thrive in live increases over 7 times (James Heckman, Nobel Prize 2000). The Harvard https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/  demonstrates well being relies mainly on the construction of positive relationships. 

Play opportunities are inequitable and high resource consuming. Children from high-income families lose interest in toys in less than a month, resulting in significant economical and environmental waste; while Children from low-income families, have no or very few toys and lack significative playful experiences. 

How can we place incentives in the right place in order to equate significant play opportunities for all?

Toynovo transforms the toy & play ecosystem to maximize its inputs & outputs.

Toynovo offers 5 circular economy alternatives for toys.

1) Rent from demand, receiving 24 toys a year, for the price of buying 2

2) Rent from offer. Families generate income by renting, either stored and unused toys, or buying toys to rent

3) Buy used in Toynovo´s Marketplace

4) Sell used in Toynovo´s Marketplace

5) Donate toys to vulnerable communities, through Toynovo. These are accompanied by a toy library system, and tools to promote play among the families. 

The business is B2C (families), and B2B (schools). Families can be subscribers, but also consigners, attaining economic empowerment and addressing financial education for children. A consigner family says: "Victoria´s toys are renting monthly; we keep a notebook with the numbers of her first business; while we advance in math, Victoria is also aware of caring for toys and values resources".

In a COVID scenario, Toynovo has grown through partnerships with schools that promote a family fidelity plan. The first month is free and 50% of the families effectively subscribe.

Furthermore, Toynovo has partnerships with baby brands and is currently negotiating a financial education program through play, with a bank. 

Toynovo is working with middle and high-income families through a marketplace and subscription model; and with low income families through a toy library system and tools to promote significant play experiences.

To understand their needs, permanent surveys are carried out among subscribers and non-subscribers, concluding there is a high satisfaction with the service. They value: 1) pedagogical selection of toys and inspirational tools 2) eco-friendly and practical service 3) savings 4) rigorous cleaning process. 

The consigner system empowers families to generate their own income and promotes financial education among children.

For low-income families, Toynovo focuses on communities served by the network of foundations members of www.colombiacuidacolombia.com. Maria has personally lead workshops in order to understand their needs and how to address them with Toynovo´s Toy Library System. For ecosystem solutions, Maria is engaging other partners and approaching a potential public policy improvement. As a matter of fact, on a non-COVID scenario, most of the vulnerable children in Colombia are served in informal community homes, with no toys or playful moments. This reality has been documented by several studies and Maria has been working with these community mothers in order to improve interactions and define cost-effective solutions for them.

Toynovo elevates Play opportunities for all, especially those who are left behind. Through a Circular Economy Model, that gives options for low, middle and high income families, Toynovo promotes play opportunities, generating positive interactions between children and their caregivers. Positive interactions directly impact our well-being. https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/serve-and-return/  

Toynovo also addresses awareness, elevating social and environmental consioussnes, by promoting a movement that shares toys and play experiences, driving action of families to value play opportunities for all. 

There are several studies that demonstrate that through Play, spending time together, families positively change attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.  https://www.parentingni.org/blog/time-together-importance/#:~:text=Families%20who%20share%20everyday%20activities,to%20situations%20as%20a%20family.  

While Maria was working on an Early Childhood Development Foundation, advocating for quality services for 5 million vulnerable children in Colombia, she became aware of the importance of developing a low-cost, high-impact service model for vulnerable communities that would include those left behind. 

After learning about Harvard´s https://www.adultdevelopmentst...  it became evident that what most impacts child and human development is the construction of positive relationships. Looking for a model that was cost-effective, she found that building a Circular Economy PLAY Program, that had it´s own scaling dynamic, was the answer to build a MOVEMENT OF POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS. 

Connecting the dots, Maria was clear that a solution to serve all, specially those left behind due to high operational costs, needed to be: lean, cost-efficient, play-based, supported on circular economy and with the correct incentives for the stakeholders, so it would be exponentially scaled. She then decided to move from the foundational sector, to the social enterprise sector, and develop this innovation. To start her work, she connected to a foundation working with informal community mothers. 

One afternoon, she spoke to her brother, Daniel, with a year old son, who was working on "Toys´ Netflix". Next month, Toynovo´s business plan was ready.

Maria has always asked herself: Why are there so many inequalities? How come leaders haven´t been able to conceive a better world for all? What makes a poor person poor, and apparently "trapped" in that condition? 

Trying to find the answers, she has been passionate about social development since she can remember. She dedicated 25 years to the microfinance and educational social sector. After all this years, she now believes that sustainable solutions to social problems can only be exponentially scaled through market principles, aligning the correct incentives for stakeholders in the ecosystem. 

Her first memory of this passion is (age 4) at the entrance of her new school. There was an old man selling candies. She asked her mother, why did that happen; why wasn´t this man taken care by his family? why did he had to earn so little money for working so many hours? This same questions have been present with homeless, children, low-wage workers, etc.

As Partnerships Director of an Early Childhood Foundation, Maria found answers: Inequality starts in the early years; it depends on the quality of interactions; services are expensive for low and middle income countries; a cost-effective, PLAY-BASED PROGRAM IS THE ANSWER.

Maria has accomplished a 25 years career being responsible for general results and commercial outcomes of social endeavors. From this position, she has built solutions for social problems, together with public and private actors. This has been possible because of a high capacity to build win-win solutions, negotiate with several actors and furthermore, construct positive relationships, based on being empathic with others.

Looking for answers and advancing in understanding the complexities of an underdeveloped country, Maria built a career in the foundational sector. Recently she decided that the sustainable and exponentially scalable path to solve social problems is more expedite through social entrepreneurship. She became a social entrepreneur by partnering with her brother, that comes from the financial world. Later on, her husband joined them; he built a big company, and now is dedicated to be angel investor and social entrepreneur mentor.

Maria had a very active role in the approval of the Early Childhood Development (ECD) Law in Colombia. In this endeavor, she had to overcome several political obstacles; hard to identify and to tackle. She also negotiated the scale of the program of an ECD Foundation, with global players as LEGO Foundation and Grand Challenges - Saving Brains Program. After a successful career in the foundational sector, she has accumulated not only the background, but the experience and has built relationships with colleagues to deliver a lean, low-cost, play-based solution to equal play opportunities for all, in order to construct positive relationships starting in early childhood. 

With an innovative problem solving system, the apparent failure of today, is the opportunity of tomorrow. 

Toynovo´s first problems were: 

1) Business Model: "Toys-Netflix"; buying new toys for inventory= cash flow problems. After applying our problem solving method (below), we iterated to "Toys-Airbnb ", connecting subscribers with consigners of toys.  

2) Slow subscriptions. After analyzing "why" with non-subscribers, our conclusion was: We needed to educate families on why renting is a good idea, compared to buying-new. We got influencers to talk about Toynovo without pay; just by getting toys for their kids. Now Toynovo is cool; and we also have schools promoting Toynovo among their families; first month free, 50% subscription rate. Currently 300 families waiting list, entering next two months.

Toynovo´s favorite way to solve problems combines puzzle solving, chess strategy, and XY axis analysis. To build the puzzle, first you identify the "pieces/players", their role, and the best way to co-construct a solution. Chess strategy is about measuring what moves comes after; always thinking about short-mid and long terms; asking how the puzzle moves. In the XY axis, you revise your given restrictions and identify how to overcome obstacles to get the best solution possible, for all.

There was this AHA moment (Jun 2019), when Maria realized she was close to her 50th birthday (mar 2021) and she wanted to leave a footprint. She decided not to be afraid of the future any more, but instead, focus on re-imagining the future, and being an active builder of that better world she had dreamed all her life. Fortunately, she had overcome financial challenges and had the possibility to invest in a social endeavor, and also counted on the support of her brother, and her husband.  

Her leadership ability is definitely highlighted in the creation of Colombia Cares for Colombia - CCC (www.colombiacuidacolombia.com). This movement, created on March 19, 2020, through the invitation of Maria to her colleagues, now unites 400 organizations and private companies. With her leadership, CCC has accomplished: 

•Food safety for 1.800.000 people

• 45.000 bio security kits

•3 Telehealth initiatives

•Educational content platform in partnership with Ministry of Education

•Economic Reactivation initiative involving national ecosystem

•Live Concert that raised $3.5 M USD: 3 more concerts to come, and 21K followers in social media.

With Toynovo, Maria and Daniel, want to change the world, building positive relationships, and constructing a better future, through PLAY.

Toynovo has re-thinked and re-imagined the toy and play ecosystem, together with families and partners. To do so, Toynovo has been iterating constantly, and in close communication with stakeholders, designing a new and intelligent way to consume toys. After investigating globally about other toy renting or sharing models, Toynovo combines the best practices and business models and also adds innovative components.

Having to climb the curve of being the first circular economy for toys in the region, Toynovo has embraced the challenge of "educating" subscribers and consigner families. This has been possible thanks to influencers and partnerships with schools and foundations. 

Among Toynovo´s innovations are:

* Iterating from a B2C "Netflix model" to a *Airbnb model", transforming a  high asset - inventory model, and cash flow demanding; to a low asset /inventory, low cash flow model. 

* Toy selection for child development. This service, now manual, is currently under tech development.

* Play inspiration for every toy, with an education first model.

* Combining services for high and middle families through subscription, and for low income families through a Toy Library.

* Toynovo is building an algorithm about toy selection and impact of play experiences in children´s development. This algorithm will be useful to the toy industry and to children development programs.

Toynovo´s culture has innovation at the center. In weekly meetings and monthly planning, we revise how to improve and make things better through better processes and innovative iterations.

Toynovo´s theory of change assumes that improving interactions between children and caregivers, through PLAY, we improve children´s development,  leading to happier, healthier lives, thereby improving the well-being of the communities served.

- Families currently served: 300 in middle and high income communities. 100 in low income communities. 300 in waiting list for the next two months. 700 families in October.

- Families served in one year: 3.000 Colombia; 13.000 in USA; 5.000 Mexico; 2.000 Chile; 1.000 Costa Rica. 24.000 in one year. 

- In five years: 1 million families in the Americas

Our impact goals are:

* One million families have access to Play opportunities, and improve their quality moments through play.

* Children served show progress in their skills (motor, language, cognitive, creative and socio-emotional) through play-based activities

* Movement that promotes family engagement & bonding, as well as consciousness around the importance of social and environmental impact of a Circular Economy Model of PLAY

The barriers we have faced are:

1) Financial: we are currently in the pre-seed round. Our capital needs are only USD100K, and we have completed 70% in one month. Since we have innovated to connect offer and demand, funding is mainly destined for tech development, marketing, and the team needed to grow. Our breakeven is 700 subscribers, and we should reach them in oct 2020. Future funding will be destined to scale impact and open new countries. 

2) Technical: we are currently developing our own technological tools. a) Marketplace for used toys and children articles (books, equipment, etc). It will be launched in August 2020. b) Pedagogical tool to assure the best selection of toys (currently done by a person) c) Consigner tool to show business models for each family that consigns their toys for rent.

3) Market: Being the first Circular Economy model for toys in the region, we are "educating" our subscribers and consigners. Although we have a high capacity to generate partnerships to grow our market, our investments in marketing have been very limited. If we increase marketing investment, and marketing team abilities, we can definitely accelerate our growth. 

Although we expect that financial needs are lowered and mainly addressed through connecting offer and demand, it´s most probable both financial, technical and market barriers need to be overcome in the years to follow in order to scale our impact. 

As explained before: 

1) Financial: a) future investment rounds to grow impact b) connecting offer and demand, lowering  cash flow needs  c) reaching breakeven in 2020  

2) Technical: developing tools

3) Market: partnerships, improving team skills and investing in adds

We are partnering with:

1) Schools, inviting families to a first month free service

2) Foundations, piloting the Toy Library system and promoting play

3) Local Government to improve services in informal community homes that serve children in vulnerable communities

We transform the product TOY, to the service: Learning and bonding through PLAY, through a circular economy model.

We provide the service through a tech enabled process you can access through our web pg: www.toynovo.com 

In Toynovo’s value proposal, you can be a SUBSCRIBER that simply rents toys from Toynovo, and you can also be a CONSIGNER and rent your toys through Toynovo, receiving different benefits. 

According to our customer based studies, subscribers love Toynovo because of: 

1. SELECTION: the right toys for the child’s development phase. 

2. PRACTICAL: toys replaced directly at home. Being eco-friendly is finally easier. 

3. MORE TOYS FOR LESS: For the same retail price of 2 toys, a child will enjoy 24 toys a year. 

4. SAFEST WAY TO OBTAIN TOYS: Naturally, our toys go through a disinfection process because they’re used.

Consigners go for it, because: 

1. MAKE YOUR TOYS PROFITABLE: Families already own toys they don´t use. They can put them on a circular economy system, with an estimate 40% ROI. 

2. SIDE HUSTLE: With zero investment you can get more toys, without buying.

3. HASSLE-FREE: Toynovo picks up the inventory and does everything for you. 

The community finds in Toynovo a solution for a constant waste in financial and environmental resources, while they increase awareness of the importance of PLAY.

Our path to financial sustainability is through:

* Subscriptions (Breakeven at 700 subscribers. Already at 500)

* A percentage of sales through our used Marketplace (starts 08/20)

* Raising investment capital for growth and tech development (currently in pre-seed round 100K for 20% stocks)

* Donations and grants to develop our program in vulnerable communities

In summary, we combine funding, guaranteeing our operations with internal resources and searching to scale social impact with external resources.

1) Equity of 30K from cofounders in 08/19

2) Equity of 30K from partner (Maria´s husband) in 12/19

3) Equity of 70K USD received in June 2020 from new partners. 30K still to be funded. (Total 100K)

4) Revenue of  40.000 USD from Nov/19  to June/20

We are seeking for the following funds:

1) Pre-seed round: 30K USD(July to Aug 2020) - for tech development, marketing and team to grow in Colombia.

2) Social impact Toy Library and Play Program for vulnerable communities: 50K USD to evaluate and prepare to scale the program.

3) Seed round: 500K USD (Jan to June 2021) - to grow in Central America, Chile, Mexico and USA.

100K USD

I believe that a global play-based movement, that promotes positive relationships, can be possible and accelerated with the Elevate Prize. Having the backup of the prize facilitates the scale-up of Toynovo´s solution globally, giving access to better opportunities to vulnerable children.

1) Financially, the prize will fund social impact in vulnerable communities, as well as the tools and team needed to scale the solution. 

2) The technical challenges can be overcome with a partnership with MIT Solve and it´s network.

3) The market challenges can be overcome with the partnerships with other actors, such as the World Bank, that we can access through the Elevate Prize.

1) Funding and revenue model: for marketing and scaling the model.

2) Board member advisors: although we currently have Colombian investors, we believe that in order to scale globally, we need the participation of global oriented advisors.

3) Monitoring and evaluation of the model is fundamental to a learning process that allows us to improve the solution constantly.

4) Marketing, media and exposure are fundamental to scale the solution globally.

1) MIT Solve: to develop tools to scale our solution

2) World Bank: to scale our solution in vulnerable communities in under developed countries

3) LEGO Foundation: to scale our play-based solution with other social entrepreneurs that work in their network of partners