Yoto

YotoFest 2024: Big Ideas, for Little Ears As a company that is fully hybrid, it’s a special thing when we all come together. So imagine our delight last week when 135 Yotopians, including colleagues from US, France, Canada, Romania and the Netherlands 🌍, descended on Amersham, Bucks for our biggest ever YotoFest: our annual, all-company get together. In the past, YotoFest has been a one-day gathering of company sharing and team building, with the odd overnight glamping stay thrown in for good measure ⛺. But this year, with huge 2025 plans to discuss, we made our biggest ever investment and took everyone away for a 3 day, 2 night residential trip. Our aims for YotoFest 2024 were the following:  🙌Foster a sense of belonging and togetherness 🧠Gain a united understanding of where we are / where we want to go 🫶Spend intentional time together, making the most of international colleagues visiting 🤝Foster more effective working relationships 🎉And of course, celebrate, have fun and make new connections Everyone donned their Yoto branded beanie hats (we should sell these, no?!) and worked hard to maximise the time through various sessions. There were:  💡Hackathon presentations - the ideas were not only business-worthy, but hugely entertaining. Previous years’ Hackathon ideas did come to fruition (Adventure Jackets, anyone?) so watch this space as we work to bring the 2024 winning ideas to life. 📈Company presentations - fast & light round-robin updates from our Management team. 👥Team breakouts - focussed time with colleagues to review and plan. 🛣️ Presenting some incredible customer journey work we have done with Heirloom - ensuring we never lose sight of the customer being at the heart of everything we do.  🧑🍳Team building - a fun, creative, and of course competitive(!) MasterChef task with Exec Chef, Author and TV & Radio Presenter Theo A Michaels 🎉We ‘dressed to impress’ for an evening of celebrations. Sketched By Siena joined us for live sketching, we shared laughter and stories over dinner, and we celebrated our long servers with prize giving - 10 of the Yoto team celebrated their 5 year Yoto-versary in 2024 🧡 💃We partied into the night with a Silent Disco, and an LED Beer Pong table! 👋Finally, we blew away the cobwebs with a bracing countryside walk and cross-functional brainstorms, before wearily waving goodbye and making our way home. 🙏We acknowledged it was a big ask for people to spend time away from their homes, partners, children, pets, routine etc - and that it was maybe even a bit nerve wracking to those who joined recently or who haven’t met many of the team, but the smiles as everyone was leaving told us it was all worth it. Tonnes of value came as a result of relationships formed and strengthened, ideas exchanged and learnings shared 🥰. There is a certain magic 🪄 that is created when we get together, and there was so much to celebrate and be proud of - as well some exciting plans ahead to get energised about 🌟

Big news! Yoto Player (3rd Generation) has won a prestigious Gold International Design Excellence Award in the Children’s Products category from Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). We’re thrilled to be recognised alongside industry leaders who continuously push the boundaries of design excellence and creativity. Thank you as always to our visionary partners at Pentagram, who share our excitement of revolutionising the future of play through high-quality audio experiences. Curious why the judges consider Yoto a winner? Learn more about our win here; https://lnkd.in/eCjKcY22

Yoto in The Sunday Times today!

Beyond excited to be bringing the magic of HARRY POTTER (I had to shout) to Yoto! Years in the making, our team has worked tirelessly to create these incredibly special Yoto Cards for all to enjoy with English, French and Spanish versions of all 7 books simultaneously released. Thanks to the team at Pottermore Publishing and all at Yoto for bringing Harry Potter to the millions of kids that have access to Yoto around the world. Take a look... US: https://lnkd.in/egNgkdBz UK: https://lnkd.in/ePYr9YVr EU: https://lnkd.in/eHXA9Zcu Canada: https://lnkd.in/ev2Jw7VN Australia: https://lnkd.in/ekTs7_EH

We recently polled 1,000 parents with school-aged children about the summer holidays and what they told us clearly struck a chord, being reported in nine media titles including four national onlines (The Sun, Daily Mirror, Daily Express, and The Daily Star), in print at The Metro and Daily Mirror, Netmums, GoodToKnow - even our friends across the pond at New York Post got involved in sharing the challenges parents face during the long summer break. Here’s what we found: https://lnkd.in/eTsH-GjG 👨👩👦👦 ‘Helping Families’ is one of our core values at Yoto. That applies to our customers, but also very much applies to our team who have families. We recognise that the Summer holidays can be overwhelming for parents - in the UK that's six whole weeks of balancing full time parenting and often full time working! That’s 30 working days, when most parents only get 25 days’ annual leave for the year; you do the maths…! We never want our team to feel they have to make a choice of work or family, so we have a number of ways in which we try to help: 🤸♀️ Flexible mindset and true hybrid working. We focus on intentional togetherness and so don’t mandate weekly office presence for the sake of it. We also recognise that hours will need to flex to allow for summer camps finishing early or taking the kids out for a little trip to the park. 🌞 Summer hours. We allow our team to shift their hours and finish at lunchtime on a Friday throughout June, July and August, to free up time and start the weekend early. We also shift this to another day where someone doesn't work a Friday because they are part time 🌴 Work from Anywhere. We have a very popular Work from Anywhere policy, meaning families can get away for the summer and do a mix of working and annual leave - it’s also great for those with families who live abroad, to spend quality time with wider family but to also share the childcare 🚸 Paid leave on top of annual leave. We allow each parent to take one week of the statutory unpaid parental leave as fully paid time off, so as to alleviate some of the financial pressure. 🙏 Trust and Empathy. Ultimately, we trust our team and empathise with the pressures facing working parents. We know that our team will do their best and so we trust them to manage work and life balance in a way that best suits them.

We’re LIVE down under! 🚀 We've officially launched a dedicated online store for the Asia-Pacific region. This means faster and cheaper shipping for those in: 🇦🇺 Australia  🇭🇰 Hong Kong SAR  🇮🇩 Indonesia  🇯🇵 Japan  🇲🇾 Malaysia  🇳🇿 New Zealand  🇵🇭 Philippines  🇸🇬 Singapore  🇰🇷 South Korea  🇹🇭 Thailand  🇻🇳 Vietnam We're excited to expand Yoto's reach, making our products easier to get and more affordable for families in this region. It's all about helping kids spark their creativity, discover what they love, and learn more about themselves along the way. Stay in the loop by visiting us at au.yotoplay.com!

We have some big news to share: we’re incredibly proud to have been named in the top 20 of the Sunday Times Hundred 2024, celebrating Britain’s fastest-growing private companies 📈 Our co-founder and CEO Ben Drury has seen Yoto go from two dads with a scribbled-down concept sketch to an award-winning company with 100+ employees across three continents: “When Filip (Denker) and I launched Yoto on Kickstarter back in 2017, we knew we were on to something – but to see that idea evolve and grow to become a part of daily life for millions of children around the world has been truly humbling. Innovation and curiosity are in Yoto's DNA, and to be recognised in these prestigious rankings is testament to the hard work and dedication of our incredible teams. Our plans for sustainable growth and continual investment in the world's best children’s audio mean that we are looking forward to bringing the Yoto platform to even more families around the world – watch this space…” https://lnkd.in/e3zW2Qjq #sundaytimes100 #scaleup #UKbusiness #awards

Wow! I didn't expect this at all. Last year, Yoto placed #2 in the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 ranking. Which was pretty awesome and a great validation of all the effort our team has put in over the last few years. I did not expect that this would translate into the #3 out of 500 in the Deloitte Fast 500 EMEA ranking! Congrats to all the companies in the ranking - it's a nice things for all the teams involved. https://lnkd.in/eBKGtCEa

A prestigious D&AD Pencil award for our amazing 3rd generation Yoto Player! Thanks once again to Jon Marshall and the incredible Pentagram for our deep collaboration over many years to bring screen-free audio to millions of kids around the world. We are just getting started!

We’ve got some wonderful news to announce: Yoto’s 3rd Generation Yoto Player has been awarded the prestigious Graphite Pencil for Product Design by D&AD! This award recognizes stand-out work that rises above the rest, and we’re chuffed to be included among the very best in design! Tom Ballhatchet, VP of Creative, UX and Innovation at Yoto, said “Winning a D&AD Pencil is always a big deal and we are delighted for the Yoto Player 3rd Generation to be recognized this year. As ever, Jon Marshall and the rest of the brilliant Pentagram team completely got the brief and together I believe we made the best Yoto Player yet!” Read more about our win here: https://bit.ly/3VcMBaD