Our Story
Learn more about the toucanBox journey and how we made a kids craft box that’s jam packed with educational fun that inspires quality time.
“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun.”
Mary Lou Cook
Think about your best memories as a child. What were you doing?
Building a fort? Cooking with grandma?
30 years later, I still remember making a force meter out of rubber bands and paperclips with my dad one rainy Sunday.
In 2012 I founded toucanBox, a kids craft subscription box with a simple objective; deliver quality time and educational fun, that gives kids lasting memories like my own.
I assembled a team and we started sending out our craft boxes to kids up and down the country.
In 2017 I spotted Adelle on Dragon’s Den pitching her business BKD. She had just gained investment from Peter Jones to launch her baking and craft subscription, Mini Baker’s Club. Adelle shared my vision of “less screen time, more quality time” and was immensely passionate about product and design.
We joined forces in 2018.
Since then we’ve grown our business, received numerous awards, donated over 10,000 toucanBoxes to disadvantaged children, and made our way through 4,787,124 googly eyes (no, really, we checked)!
It was -and continues to be- hard work. But it’s hard work we love.
This is our story, now start yours.
Our mission
Our mission is simple, “Unleash creativity one box at a time”! But we also have a couple of other guiding principles...
Convenient
toucanBox is delivered through your letterbox every month. All the materials you need are inside. Because hassle free is fun!
Eco-conscious
We want the children who enjoy toucanBox to grow up in a beautiful world. So we print with vegetable inks on FSC approved paper, package crafts in recyclable boxes and craft bags, plus cut plastic components wherever possible.
Affordable
Quality time is priceless so we’ll always make sure it’s affordable. We keep our subscription low-cost and high quality. Easy to pause and easy to cancel. We also offer prepaid plans with super savings.
Compassionate
We believe every child has the right to play. Our charitable donations and Care For Kids initiative help us in our mission to craft a more compassionate world.Our products
Crafting is all about concentration, trialling and testing until you achieve your goal. Studies show that 4-year olds who are able to concentrate for longer periods of time and persist with a task are more likely to be successful later on in life.
We design our crafts to support cognitive and language development, fine motor skills and mental wellbeing. Our expert designers dedicate 3-6 months to develop each new craft and every one is tested by kids to ensure it challenges, educates and engages them.
When we first sit down to create a craft we start with just one question: what’s fun for kids? If the craft is fun for the child then they will concentrate, investigate, experiment and problem solve. The learning happens naturally when a child is having fun.
WHAT IS STEAM?
Science
Our crafts encourage children to observe, experiment, and hypothesize in order to understand the world around them, just like all great scientists do!
Technology
Understanding technology is an essential skill for the future. Our boxes help kids to identify sequences, as well as following and creating instructions.
Engineering
Engineers are experts at creating, constructing, and testing. toucanBox crafts refine children’s fine motor and assembly skills to encourage their inner engineer!
Art
Decorating and designing crafts unleashes imagination and challenges kids to get creative in original and exciting ways.
Maths
Exploring shapes, numeracy and measuring through practical projects like crafting gives a fun, real-world application of mathematics.
Dot, TB1, Kit, Mati and Al are the STEAM Team. They guide kids through creative challenges in the toucanBox magazine and craft instructions.
Our community
We love our amazing community of little crafters. Seeing them with their tongues stuck out in concentration, beaming toothy grins of triumph, or squealing with excitement when their personalised toucanBox pops through the letterbox, is the best thing about our job.
We think our kids craft box is amazing, but of course we’d say that. Luckily, you don’t just need to take our word for it...
"My son who is 2 and a half just received his first box this week and he loved it!! There was a dinosaur craft and a butterfly craft as well as tons of other goodies in the box! This was so much fun. We can’t wait for the next box next month!! I would highly recommend. It’s great to do with your kid(s)."
Haley Menechella
"My daughter always gets excited when a Toucanbox lands on the doormat. The kits have great variety of content and have sparked an interest in art. The additional little booklet introduced recently is a useful extra to take out and about."
Claire Slim
"My grandson has been having the toucan boxes since he was about 2, he’s just turned 5 and he absolutely loves it when I ring to say another box has arrived. Sometimes he takes them home to do with mummy and daddy and sometimes he likes to do them at my house when he stays and has such fun making the items. His teachers love seeing what he’s made and sometimes what comes in the box fits in with a topic at school so it’s great."
Tracey Marie Lynch
"I have only good things to say about this company. Get kids off Ipads etc and get them to enjoy their imagination and childhood my little 7 year old daughter loves it."
Stephen Callagy
"My 6 year old girl and 4 yr boy have just done a year of these lovely boxes and so enjoyed the whole experience. The excitement of them popping on to the doormat fortnightly with their names on was almost enough but the super fun things we have made and learnt were of course even better!! The puppet theatre, the van gough replicas, the spinning fireworks and the tie dye butterflies were absolute faves but they all took up an enjoyable hour or so on a Saturday morning. Thank you Toucan Box!! Have highly recommended to many."
Lucy Newman
"Highly recommended. Quality of the materials are superb. Learning while doing art and play is fun!!"
Sherry Bongalon
"Great little boxes with well planned activities and most of the things you will need provided including glue, crayons and paints when relevant which can be used again for other crafts, most of the time all you will need is scissors or perhaps some water. There is also a magazine to work through which has activities such as mazes or colouring in, games to play, sometimes recipes to follow or ideas following the general theme of the box. They are educational but very fun and my son loves to see his box has arrived with his name on. The customer care team are fantastic, I contacted them via Facebook message and received a lovely personal reply."
Jenny
"Wonderful company. My niece and nephew love their Toucan boxes and I love seeing the things they make. Such a nice gift idea rather than buying plastic rubbish that lasts 5 minutes. Great customer service from this company too!"
Rachael
"Great product, my son loves making the things inside the boxes. They were also very helpful when I moved house and had to have the address changed and also when my son's reward didn't arrive"
Freya Homer
"Honestly this was AMAZING! The kids really enjoyed the Easter based crafts. The workers there are very nice too! I accidentally pressed a button to use the points to get a yo-yo, and the kids were rather annoyed with me- oops! But I emailed them and they were amazing and just reinstated our points! Definitely would recommend!!"
Hollie
"Just got our first box on Friday. My daughter and I had a blast making the butterflies and the little bag she had received. We loved it. We can’t wait to get more. She was so excited when it had came. She couldn’t wait to open it. We love toucan box."
Sarah Hernandez
Oh, and let’s not forget these...
Awards
- Made for Mums Gold Award
- Family Awards Silver
- Family Awards Bronze
- Independent Best Buy 2021
- Arts Council
- Arts Award
- Academics' Choice Award Winner
Our team
Our team is small but mighty!
We work between our Central London office and our fun factory in Hounslow. Each member of the toucanBox Team cares passionately about our mission statement and upholds our key values…
Our values
CREATIVE
- We embrace change and encourage originality.
- We challenge assumptions and propose better options.
LOVE TO LEARN
- We try new things and develop new skills.
- We share knowledge and help each other to grow.
WE GET IT DONE
- We are reliable and effective.
- Colleagues can trust one another to get the job done to a high standard.
GENUINE
- We are honest but respectful.
- We say what we truly think will be helpful to the individual and business.
REALISTICALLY POSITIVE
- We are ambitious but reasonable when setting goals and challenges.
- We celebrate what we achieve.
PASSIONATE
- We are invested in our mission statement and appreciate the impact our work can have.
Think you fit this description? Be part of our story...
Any questions? Get in touch with our lovely customer care team at [email protected]