AMBITION Awesome

Founded in 2020 by Kate Scott, Declan Fahy and Paul Cosgrave, HoloToyz is a new and innovative toy brand marrying the physical and digital worlds. They believe its technology will revolutionise the industry.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for the business?

Kate Scott (KS): HoloToyz was born out of passion and experience. Declan, Paul and I come from extensive digital marketing, advertising and sales backgrounds. is, coupled with our experience of parenthood, helped us to understand the true potential of a company like HoloToyz.

We constantly see and recognise the integral role technology is playing and will play in our children’s lives now and as they grow. While we know that parents are cognisant of managing screen time, we wanted to create an opportunity for children to play and learn in a fun way through exciting emerging technologies away from the open web and social media platforms.

Q: What is the concept behind HoloToyz?

KS: By nding the right balance between technological and physical play, we are introducing exciting new technologies to young children in a safe environment. Audiovisual aids are proven to be memorable, thought-provoking and stimulating. By scanning our products (temporary tattoos, stickers, books and wall decals) with our HoloToyz app, children can now bring their favourite 2D characters and creatures to life – seeing, interacting and learning with them through immersive, mesmerising 4D animations.

Our app was created by our in-house team of awardwinning animators and augmented reality (AR) experts, who are also shareholders in our business. It doesn’t have any of the negative elements usually associated with kids’ apps and is 100% child-friendly and kidSAFEcerti ed; it’s free to download with no registration, no advertising and no in-app purchases. Our products are reasonably priced and a ordable compared to most innovative tech-toys.

Q: What are you doing in this crowded market that is di erent?

KS: All of our HoloToyz products come to life through the magic of our Awesome Reality technology. is is the rst time children can apply temporary tattoos and see their favourite characters jump to life on their skin. Our Paw Patrol range, for example, includes 10 temporary tattoos and 10 stickers, that when scanned with our app, jump to life in audio-supported 4D animation.

Children can also tap to place the characters in the room with them and interact by swiping the device to see them move and bark as well as take photos and videos beside them to share with family and friends. We have created over 100 of our own animations as part of the HoloToyz launch range.

Our interactive books designed for three- to sixyear olds come to life in breathtaking 4D animation. Each picture book includes voiceovers, subtitles and sound e ects that teach children about the personalities and habits of sea creatures, household pets and dinosaurs. Children can swipe the screen to move the animals and hear various sound e ects. We received a lot of positive feedback from parents whose children have speech and language delays and learning di culties, as our books help to engage children in a new way.

While we recognise we’re not the rst to introduce AR technology to the toy market, the simplicity, speed and performance of our app as well as the quality of our animations set us apart. Our app also works across all products, which is unusual in the toy industry and means that parents only need to download our app once. Our content is also automatically refreshed without the need to update the app.

Q: How important has Spielwarenmesse been?

KS: Having presented our products live on the Spielwarenmesse Instagram account due to the toy fair being cancelled in 2021, we were contacted by Paramount (Nickelodeon) to produce the range of Paw Patrol AR products. Paw Patrol is the number one global pre-school brand and is owned by Spin Master, one of the largest toy companies in the world.

Winning a ToyAward at Spielwarenmesse this year gave us signi cant exposure at the world’s largest toy fair, putting us on the radar of some of the world’s largest toy distributors. e jury rated our Paw Patrol tattoos and stickers as “outstandingly innovative”. In addition, they cited the prudent introduction to new technologies, the easy-to-use app and the fair price. e international jury consisted of 13 experts from the elds of retail, industry, market research, sustainable plastics, education and toy safety. Our tattoos were selected from a total of 584 new products registered at the event.

Q: How do you plan to grow and develop the business?

KS: We are now in talks with distributors from around the globe, including the US, the UK and the EMEA and APAC regions. However, our approach is omnichannel, so our digital strategy is also very important to us. is year we will grow our presence on social media and focus on growing our online distribution through various e-commerce channels.

At Spielwarenmesse this year, we launched a new range of HoloToyz products, which included collectibles, 3D cube puzzles, jigsaw puzzles and activity sets. We are excited to bring these to market in the coming months. We aim to manufacture our products as close to our distribution areas as possible to reduce our carbon footprint.

We are currently in the process of hiring for sales and admin roles to help us to develop and execute sales strategies to help us expand our market share and increase revenue. is is an important step towards achieving our goal of global expansion.

Following a record high of 1.02 million visitors to Irish whiskey distilleries in 2019, the IrishWhiskey360° initiative was launched with a new website in January 2020 and its rst ad in Cara Magazine ahead of St Patrick’s Day that year – clearly not ideal timing from a marketing point of view.

However, the Irish Whiskey Association has stuck with the campaign aimed at supporting whiskey tourism, reporting in February that Irish whiskey distilleries attracted 677,000 visitors in 2022, up 425% on 2021; it is expecting a full recovery this year.

“Irish whiskey has undergone a phenomenal renaissance since 2010, with sales more than trebling to reach over 15 million cases, or over 180 million bottles, last year,” says William Lavelle, Director of the Irish Whiskey Association.

“It is competing unlike any other spirit category at premium level, playing into the ‘less but better’ drinking trend among consumers in the past two years. As sales grow, this drives massive interest in the category and in turn experiential tourism.” e rebound in visitors has also been driven by the increasing number of distilleries that are now open to the public; of the 40 whiskey distilleries on the island, 27 now welcome visitors. e IrishWhiskey360° initiative showcases individual distillery stories, their locations and the authentic and immersive experiences they o er.

“Last year, we used the campaign primarily to target incoming visitors using social media and digital advertising and achieved clickthrough rates well in excess of targets. ere were over 21,000 further click-throughs to individual distillery websites from June to August,” says Lavelle.

Passport to progress

“ e pandemic allowed us to test and pilot the Irish Whiskey Passport, which has proved very successful as a marketing tool in driving people to visit more than one distillery and stamp it they go. We got the idea from the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. People love that it is tactile and durable and many keep it as a memento of their holiday.”

Michael Clancy, CTO and Co-founder of Lough Ree Distillery in Lanesborough, Co Longford believes IrishWhiskey360° has been very e ective as a marketing approach. “While still relatively in its infancy, it’s bringing people to us and getting our name out there. We also nd that our visitors are chu ed when we hand them the Irish Whiskey Passport with us as the rst stamp – it creates a desire to visit distilleries in other parts of Ireland and a reason to come back here again,” he says.

“We have been distilling gin and vodka in our microdistillery since 2018 and started distilling Irish whiskey there in 2022, making us Ireland’s smallest Irish whiskey distillery with Geographical Indication veri cation. We’re now exporting to seven European markets and will double that this year.”

While waiting for its own whiskeys, Lough Ree has sourced some mature whiskey stock, which it is nishing in hand-picked and rare casks from European bodegas and wineries. It is building a larger, commercial scale whiskey distillery on the site.

The right blend e name IrishWhiskey360° came about from the idea of visitors gaining an understanding of this 360-degree process and also that it is an all-island initiative – so it works in both a micro and macro sense.” e initiative’s tagline ‘One shared spirit’ re ects the many interesting people behind the making of Irish whiskey as well as the characters of all of the di erent Irish whiskey brands, he adds.

Bob Gray, Founder and Director of creative agency Red & Grey, built on his experience of developing the Wild Atlantic Way concept when working on IrishWhiskey360°.

“ e huge lesson learned when designing the Wild Atlantic Way was how to balance so many di erent county councils wanting to promote their areas over each other while still trying to sell the one thing together,” he says.

“With IrishWhiskey360° we concentrated on what makes each distillery di erent yet connected to each other. For example, most have the triple-distilled process in common.

“Storytelling is a central part of the creative campaign and how we tell the story is important. We played on the narrative of people nearly always being with someone else while enjoying an Irish whiskey and the craic and stories that come from that.”

An example of this was a short lm Gray made with lmmaker Matthew ompson where they followed in James Joyce’s footsteps around the city of Dublin, dipping in and out of bars, chatting to people and sampling Irish whiskey.