Company Profile - OOOOO

Sam Jones

The way consumers find, appraise and purchase product is changing rapidly, as highlighted by the arrival of the innovative new ‘entertainment commerce’ platform OOOOO. With Toys.tv one of OOOOO’s Top 3 channels, and the ThreeSixty Group – owner of FAO Schwarz - on board as a leading partner, this unique proposition seems certain to shake up how toys (and much more) are bought and sold. Toy World spoke to Sam Jones, OOOOO co-founder, Jan-Eric Kloth, president, Retail, International Wholesale & Corporate Strategy, ThreeSixty Group, and David Ripley, who has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in the retail toy channel, now category lead for Toys.tv, to find out what OOOOO offers, how it works and why toy companies should get involved.

The OOOOO premise is deceptively simple. Named for the universally recognised noise people make when they receive something ordered in the post and open it to find that it is every bit as brilliant as they hoped it would be, the mobile app-based entertainment commerce platform lets users watch content and buy the products featured quickly and easily by tapping on an icon that adds it to their basket. If QVC and TikTok had a baby, it would probably look something like OOOOO.

It is arguably unfair to use other apps to describe OOOOO, as it’s a far more multi-faceted affair than the elevator pitch above would have you believe. The Toy World Team has been exploring the app before this month’s hard launch (necessary research, you understand), and it’s certainly a slick, accessible and intuitive offering. As explained by co-founder Sam Jones, who has spent a long time living in Hong Kong and Singapore, the Chinese marketplace has been a major source of inspiration for his creation, which has been co-created with Eric Zhang. There, mobile phones are at the heart of consumerism, and the technology is significantly more advanced than that seen in the likes of the UK. Video technology in particular has come on leaps and bounds in the previous few years; TikTok, Douyin in China, revolves around short pre-recorded and live user-generated broadcasts, and is wildly popular among Chinese consumers. As a result, there are many companies out there looking to harness the demand for content and bring it into the retail space. Some in the Far East are already doing so, such as Pindoudou, the largest agriculture-focused technology platform in China, and Kuaishou, the region’s second biggest short-form video platform, but both are geographically and/or categorically constrained. And that’s where OOOOO, with its 40+ channels (some still under construction), covering everything from toys and books to stand-up comedy and online lectures, comes in.

“The OOOOO platform is first and foremost founded upon entertainment,” Sam tells us. “We’re showing viewers a toy being played with and demonstrated in very much the same way you would be when you visit a good experiential toy store, but embedded behind the content is the ability to buy that toy and have it sent straight to your house or office, without ever having to leave the app. Our team wants to be one of the first to take the entertainment commerce proposition into western markets, with toys positioned as one of the three biggest categories offered through OOOOO via Toys.tv.”

As mentioned at the very start of this piece, ThreeSixty Group is on board as a leading partner. For those newer readers who may not know the group’s backstory, ThreeSixty Group is a privately-owned CPG company. Its portfolio includes the iconic FAO Schwarz, Sharper Image and exclusive licences for Discovery among others, and its brands and products are sold in over 70,000 retail locations in the US and across the world. For president Jan-Eric Kloth, who notes that over 50% of Chinese retail sales are now completed online, the partnership with OOOOO’s Toys.tv gives ThreeSixty Group and FAO Schwarz the first tangible opportunity to capitalise upon a new and growing type of commerce.

Jan-Eric Kloth

“ThreeSixty Group has recently been creating content with its FAO Schwarz retail brand, utilising the New York store as a physical space for live broadcasts, product shows and shopping events, and using a variety of online and social media platforms to amplify our brand creations,” says Jan-Eric, when asked why a partnership with OOOOO appealed to him. “What OOOOO is doing is taking the concept of entertainment commerce to the next level by providing brands with a platform on which traffic already exists. I am convinced that entertainment commerce is a revolutionising channel for the retail sector. There’s no one else within Europe offering something like OOOOO, and the opportunity to make use of the platform, and to tap into that audience, without having to worry about the technology side of things, was too good to pass up. We are planning to have a FAO Schwarz show on OOOOO within the app which will present the best toys and brands that the industry has to offer, just like we do in our physical flagship stores. I’ve already spoken to a number of our strategic brand partners, and there is a great deal of interest.

From OOOOO’s perspective, the flagship FAO Schwarz New York store is a ready-made marketing platform suited to a vast range of toy brands, and as the desire to create content (as well as the know-how to actually do so) is already there, ThreeSixty is the perfect partner with which to take the concept forward. Jan-Eric adds: “When Sam approached me, he said: ‘You are doing in your physical stores and on your website exactly what I want to do with OOOOO – bring the best brands into the world of entertainment commerce.’ It was a great match. However, that’s me speaking with my retail hat on. With my toy hat on, I want to find out which brands within the portfolio, whether that’s Discovery, FAO or Sharper Image, do best in an entertainment commerce environment. OOOOO can provide incredibly valuable consumer data, stemming from Sam’s background at companies like Wish. When you combine all these factors, you can see why working with OOOOOO is an obvious choice for ThreeSixty Group.”

Toy companies and brands looking to get in on the action themselves certainly have plenty of options to consider when it comes to content creation. Whereas traditional retail TV such as QVC would require product to be taken to a studio for filming and broadcast, OOOOO removes the shackles and turns almost anywhere into a set from which to create, flipping supply chain discussions on their heads. Want to film toys as they are coming off the production line within your factory? Not a problem. Fancy asking for real-time feedback from a pre-selected audience on whether your product lives up to expectations? Can do. One of the features of the app is ‘Hot or Not?’, which lets R&D teams collate comments and reactions to a toy (or shoe or bag) as it is being designed, drastically cutting down on the usual time it takes to get a product from concept to shelf.

Toys.tv, like all OOOOO channels, offers four different types of content. Epic events (Sam uses Ed Sheeran flying a drone through Hyde Park as an example) will be complemented by in-store activations filmed using toy experts that will show off products in a way consumers have never seen before. This is where partnerships with the likes of FAO Schwarz will come into their own, with the retailer’s New York location playing host to incredible content creation that will elevate the brand to something altogether new and exciting. Then there’s the OOOOO Lab, billed as a James Bond/Q-esque set where toys will be put through their paces in quality tests intended to highlight to viewers the value for money and play potential a toy offers. Finally, toys will be passed to creators in the community to touch and play with and share their views on, in a style similar to YouTube unboxing videos, which we all know can attract huge views.

“One of the biggest benefits of using OOOOO for a manufacturer is speed,” Sam adds. “You could launch a toy, and within one or two days it could be featured on our platform, be filmed in Central Park in New York, and be in the hands of professional influencers and content creators on an app that not only helps it be seen by many, but purchased by many too. We’ve just hired a professional videographer that used to work in Boswells’ toy department in Oxford; he’s also a Dungeon Master and knows everything there is to know about Star Wars. I chose him because if he can’t bring a toy to life, no one can. Our content execution has to be creative, but there are toys that might be better off placed in-store. For these, we can do OOOOO pop-up events that consumers can attend in person, as well as split screen content featuring two or three or four creators, all of whom have the product with them and can give it a new dimension. There will always be products that need to be touched and played with, but I believe 90% of toys are demonstrable on OOOOO in a way that consumers will love.”

Due to the size of the toy category, and its target demographic, OOOOO will be launching a standalone Toys.tv app later this year, on which 100% of the content will be related to toys and games. Demarcating OOOOO and the Toys.tv app recognises that while parents will tend to lean towards the former, given that a number of its channels focus on products and contents geared towards an older audience, Toys.tv will primarily attract kids. It also means a deeper, more focused experience for the audience, with even more safeguards in place than the parent platform has, ensuring kids are seeing only appropriate content. And when you consider that seven or eight of the top 15 US YouTube influencers are kids below the age of 10, Toys is clearly the most natural choice of OOOOO’s top three categories to take in this direction.

We were keen to dig a little deeper into the content creation side of OOOOO; how can toy companies be reassured that the content being produced is a) high quality b) kid-friendly and c) being seen by the right people? Sam is quick to point out that, as outlined earlier, OOOOO isn’t a 100% user-generated platform, unlike some others. Creators are pre-selected based upon their existing portfolio of work; content must be insightful, watchable and ‘clean’ first and foremost. On Toys.tv, for example, OOOOO has already selected a former Hamleys demonstrator, Stefan, to be part of its creator team. Brands are also welcome to create content themselves, which FAO and Marvin’s Magic are already doing, if they feel that their experts and creators are better placed to do so. After all, credible voices will only serve to enhance the platform’s reputation for content and trustworthiness.

“We all have to get used to the fact that there is going to be a lot more user-generated content emerging from all marketplaces,” comments Jan-Eric. “This is going to be a learning curve for many companies that till now have engaged in more traditional marketing, understandably, but one of the many brilliant things about OOOOO is that it allows you to transition into the space, learn with it, experiment with it. This was another of the big motivations for me when it came to the partnership.”

For toy suppliers and manufacturers, OOOOO offers a more cost-effective way to bring products to market and sell them compared to platforms such as Instagram or Facebook, which charge for advertising and push consumers out to external sites. OOOOO users are rewarded for bringing their friends to the platform – more users mean more sales – and savings on advertising are passed back in the form of gifts or discounts. It also allows anyone with a mobile phone to become a content creator, and with consumers demanding increasingly more raw, believable, viral ‘advertising’ in the form of video and product demos, this lets companies tick a lot of boxes for what may well be a significant saving.

David Ripley, whom many readers will know from his long career in the toy retail channel, most recently at Groupon, has been appointed category lead for Toys.tv – and he’s keen to reiterate Sam’s point regarding cost effectiveness. In his former role, David used Facebook Wizard, a commercial advertising tool that cost Groupon $1 for every $1 spent by a customer. The model meant that while customers could be monetised in the future, cost parity at the point of advertising made using the social media platform expensive yet inefficient. OOOOO, it seems, is a decidedly different affair.

David Ripley

“I’ve worked in pretty much every retail channel, from grocery, high street, out of town and eCommerce marketplaces, to, more recently, pureplay eCommerce with Groupon,” says David. “The latter gave me a very good idea of where retail is going; eCommerce is a growing segment as we all know, but behind that there is a forgotten stat – these sales are mobile-biased. At Groupon, I saw purchases made on phones and tablets increase from 45% five years ago to 75% late last year. OOOOO is truly a mobile-first and mobile-only platform. If you look at our website, it’s purely a corporate overview. You must have the app downloaded to actually see how it works; open a show and watch it, and immediately you’ll realise just how much OOOOO offers. The audience can ask questions about a product in real time, and the creator can see that question and answer it immediately. You can add the toy to your basket and head straight to checkout. You can watch a tutorial on how it works to ensure you and your kids are going to get maximum enjoyment from that toy. And you’ve also got an advocate there on your screen, demonstrating the product. I know a lot of bricks & mortar retailers are looking for that holy grail that will allow them to branch out from physical selling in a way that still lets them provide the one-to-one experience and service they’re known for. OOOOO offers the very best in next-level dynamic marketing, and I feel very strongly that it is going to revolutionise the retail space.”

At the time of speaking to David, he’d been with the OOOOO team for four weeks, and during that time, he tells us, the technology powering the platform has already come on leaps and bounds. He’s clearly very excited to be a part of the OOOOO journey. There’s a pipeline of features now in development to make it even more interactive and engaging than it already is (with new features being added on a weekly basis), and ambitious global growth plans are also in place. Readers wanting to find out more should contact David on david@ooooo.com, or download the app from the App Store or Google Play.