Glowplay

Glowplay, Toy rental platform with the aim of circulating toys for maximum use and ensuring equal access for all children.

Glowplay arises from 3 problems. Firstly, quality toys are expensive. Secondly, children get bored of toys easily in a short period of time. Thirdly, when kids get bored quickly, a lot of toys are discarded and become waste. We want to solve these problems by building a platform that allows sharing toys among parents. Our platform helps parents to lend their used toys to other parents, while they can rent others from the platform for their child. Parents not only get the new variety of toys for their children, but also receive the additional income from lending toys, leading to reducing waste from buying new toys into our world. In a world where education can change the lives of children, effective learning tools can help advance the life of children. We aim to encourage inclusive and equitable quality education, promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Glowplay encourages and increases equitable access to quality learning opportunities through open sourced, offline, or virtual models, especially for underserved learners in low connectivity environments

There are 3 main pain points that we found from our experience from working in the parenting industry. Firstly, child supplies and toys are very expensive. In order to raise children to develop to their full potential, parents have spent a high amount of money on child products. Therefore, not every parent can afford quality education for their child. Secondly, childhood is the state that loves to explore new things. They easily get bored with their own toys and ask their parents to buy them a new one. Lastly, when children grow out of their age, they need new toys that are suitable for their ages. As a result, toys are left in the storage room, or worse, thrown away into the trash can, although there are many families that need those toys or child supplies for their children. With these 3 key challenges, we initiate a solution to serve parents who face difficulty in purchasing educational toys for their beloved children due to their financial situations. According to the research, there are 3.35 million families in Thailand. Only 10% of the population can access quality education. With our solution, we can help the other 90% of the population receive quality child development. The total marketing for this industry is very big. There’s still room in the market for Glowplay to explore this opportunity.

Our target users are parents of early school students (1-8 years) living in Thailand. Our rationales are that these parents have high attention for their child's development. Parents of children these ages need to spend a high amount of money on child expenses for children. The challenges in ASEAN countries are uneven social development and disparities in educational development. It allows high-income earners to attend the best educational institutions and acquire high quality educational supplements, such as toys and child care products, while low-income and middle-income earners. STEM and 21st century skills are unreachable in some communities.

After we have interviewed parents, they are willing to accept the child care supplies from other parents in order to save on living expenses as child’s care is one of the major expenses in their monthly living payment. Over time, we also continue interviewing parents in order to develop platforms that apply to their needs and wants. 

In terms of value propositions, there are affordable prices, variety, and additional income. Parents can access child care products and toys at affordable prices. They can enjoy a variety of products to choose from our platform so they don’t have to buy every single new item for a child's learning supplement as they can borrow from other parents. Furthermore, they can earn additional income from their unused products.

In Thailand, access to great quality education is only available to parents with high-income. Quality of education not only includes literacy, numeracy, and social emotional learning, but also includes STEM, 21st century skills, and global citizenship. Currently, the Thai government is trying to advance the accessibility of standard education; however, preparing children for work readiness has not been emphasized yet. Therefore, Glowplay aims to increase equitable access to quality learning opportunities, especially for underserved learners, through access to educational learning toys at an affordable price, enhancing their capability to the fullest potential. 

Our business is established with regard to UNSDGs 4 (Quality of Education) and UNSDGs 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). We promote equal access to reduce education disparities between different groups of population in Thailand, creating chance and opportunity for every family to play and learn with educational toys. We also help eliminate the waste from buying new toys to reusing toys. Within one year, one toy will replace the other 12 toys that families buy for their children, leading to reduction of waste from our landfill.

Natchita Wanicharoenchai is the team lead for Glowplay. She has high expertise in business development, strategic analysis, and management consulting.

Our solutions can surely contribute a positive impact on a large scale, following the sharing economy concept. We integrate digital transformation, aligning with an innovative rental service business model, into the parenting industry by providing platforms for parents to rent toys.

Toys are, therefore, a significant tool to help children develop leaps and bounds. When these children grow up, many of the toys were discarded. It is highly expedient to reuse them or to share with other families at a lower price. It's an innovation to increase the opportunity for lower-income children to develop their capability and competency. We expect to create change in the toy industry. Thai people are used to the book rental services from the library; however, there are no toy rental services in Thailand. Currently, the market norm is purchasing second hand toys, not renting toys. We are initiating a new improved approach to the problems.

Nowadays, we provide a rental service through LINE Application. We allow parents to rent toys on our LINE platform. All these toys are owned by Glowplay. Parents choose toys and pay for one time rent. After booking, they can enjoy their choice of toys delivered to their home.  In the future, we aim to expand to renting among parents, emphasizing variety and sustainability. The parents will be able to upload their toys and receive an incentive when their toys are rented. We have transactions and continue to improve our service based on customer comments.

Currently, Glowplay is operating through LINE application, a chat application available in IOS and Android. LINE has developed a LINE shop feature that allows people to purchase the products from businesses that have LINE Official Accounts. We leverage this technology by offering toys for rent on the LINE MY SHOP feature. As LINE is the most used chat application in Thailand, parents can access our business easily. They don’t need to download a new mobile application on their phone. In the future, we aim to develop web applications in order to give parents the best user experience in renting toys.

From interviews with the core persona, it was revealed that not everyone dared to bring second-hand toys for their children to use. Not everyone wants to pass their toys to others. We have seen the results that come from not daring to change because no one has done before.
However, there are people who dare to ride with strangers although no one has ever done it before. They dare to wear second-hand clothes from unknown people. Therefore, the question arises: So why not dare to use second-hand toys from strangers? Even though it's the way to make change. A wide variety of fun at an affordable price and part of saving the world. 

The measurable indicators that we used to measure our progress are the number of users in our platforms, the number of rented toys, and the amount of money parents saved. 

The first biggest hurdle is trying to attract people to the platform by marketing promotion and we plan to acquire revenue through other methods, including to organize workshops for children or parents.

Secondly is about trust in cleanliness. From the COVID19 situation causing customers to worry about the cleanliness of our toys. Therefore, we plan to contact a professional cleaning company to build trust and safety with our customers.

Lastly, the lack of funding to hire personnels to develop the platform or website directly. We plan to earn revenue from e-commerce, seed grants and crowdfunding for hiring them.

The biggest hurdle is trying to attract people to the platform, including the cleanliness of the toys during COVID19. We have tested a prototype and communication method that demonstrates the value of using toys circulating through social media to make them more appreciative and dare to rent to their children. Besides, we plan to work with our toy cleaning companies to build more confidence in cleanliness for our customers to believe in us.

We started out as educational game designers and intend to make board games for sale, but it consumes a very high production cost. After that, we started pivoting to be toy e-commerce. We have interviewed a lot of parents, causing us to encounter problems associated with toys. Nowadays, educational toys are expensive. Parents have minimized their purchases, especially during the COVID19 situation. Moreover, we found that many of our children's toys have been discarded without being reused or passed on. We want to make those toys to be used to its value. Therefore, we established a rental model for every family to have even access to toys at an affordable price, aiming to accomplish the most value-added resource turnover. 

Our team consists of three founding members. Natchita specialized in product development and business strategy. Ruechaporn has many years of work experience in user experience research and marketing. Siraphop has experience in user interface and product design. We have interns to develop our platform and work on marketing.

Natchita graduated from Chulalongkorn Business School. She had experiences working in the consulting and start-up industry, leading to advancement of my expertise in business development and strategic management. Ruechaporn graduated from College of Innovation at Thammasat University and has years of experience in user experience research and marketing.She received the award winning ‘User Experience design in a mentally handicapped child healthcare application’ by Wisesummer, a design consulting firm from over 200 contestants nationwide. Siraphop graduated from King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, majoring in product design. He specializes  in user interface and product design. We have participated in various startup competitions. Our remarkable accomplishment is winning ‌the‌ ‌1st‌ ‌runner-up‌ ‌award‌ ‌in‌ ‌"Be‌ ‌the‌ ‌Change",‌ ‌a‌ ‌national‌ ‌social‌ ‌business‌ ‌competition‌ ‌‌from‌ ‌over 600‌ ‌participants. We received grants to operate our business till now.

Natchita has great analytical and problem solving skills. She performs research and analysis in order to explore new business ideas. With her expertise in this field, she has been implementing the great change and developing a strategic advancement for our services. Moreover, she simplifies services and concepts in order to make customers understand our business clearly. Also, she examines every single detail such as color themes and communication method, applies that concept to design the system and enhances Glowplay's User interface.

“Lanlalen” the largest manufacturer and importer of board game in Thailand. We bring board games from them to advertise the rental and collect the service fees.

“Game lab Thailand” Game design specialists for developing interpersonal skills in organizations.

Octava Social Innovation challenge provides an opportunity for those who are interested in bringing creative ideas that can solve global social problems to develop further. We strongly believe that we can be part of changing our world and transforming our society towards the better. 

We focus on networking with talented entrepreneurs and advisors. This is the strongest network in the world to accomplish our intentions which cannot be found anywhere else and we want to be a part of this amazing opportunity.

We do not want to make a positive impact only in Thailand, but also expand cooperation from the region to the world level. We not only aim to give children opportunities in our beloved country, Thailand, but we also aim to expand internationally. This is a great opportunity to make the dream and follow our passion of solving educational and environmental problems in the global community.

I would like to cooperate directly with a factory that produces toys, which must be durable toys and environmental friendly. We aim to partner with a team of toy designers who have direct experience, and a marketing team to clearly communicate a variety of services to user while encouraging awareness of the benefits of using revolving toys. Furthermore, we want to enrich our network and connections with investors, government and related private sectors.