Toys2Rent
What does your company do?
Cotlands is a non-profit organisation that pioneers early childhood development by increasing access to play-based early learning opportunities for vulnerable children in South Africa. We achieve this through community-based toy libraries, playgroups and capacity-building programmes.Our latest social enterprise, Toys2Rent, is an innovative toy rental subscription service that offers curated educational toy boxes to families, helping children develop critical 21st-century skills through play. Proceeds from this service directly fund Cotlands' playgroup and toy library programmes, ensuring that under-resourced children also benefit.
What is your biggest success?
Building the Toys2Rent website took 4 months, and the business was launched and operational within 6 months. We currently have stock to serve 85 customers. We have had 6529 visitors to the website. Our followers on Instagram is 305 and on Facebook it is 312. Since launching we improved the user experience, expanded our offering to include age groups birth to 7 years, and created product videos. Our greatest achievement is that we have 5 customers and we know that all the technical and operational systems are functional.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
Unlocking the target market has not been easy. Converting individuals visiting our website into customers is not happening. We now have 5 customers. We have had 1 subscription from email marketing and 1 from Instagram. The other 3 customers are individuals associated with Cotlands.
In an attempt to unlock the target market we will be introducing Play Dates with groups of parents from June onwards, and will be expanding our email communication with visitors to the website, as tactics to increase our customer base.
