Our Vision

We started out with a vision of a future where shopping in-store is as easy and convenient as shopping online and it all being possible using your mobile device.

We also see a future, with the consumer using this new way to shop, where a retailer would not need any till points and be able to gain a more complete picture of their customers' behaviour, which will enable them to engage with the consumer in a new and non-intrusive way, to increase sales and loyalty.

The Founders

The idea for our app (toodle) was originally created in the mind of founder Andy House. Andy is not only an experienced entrepreneur but also a full stack software design guru, having in the past created solutions in the payments industry for large organisations.

To verify his idea Andy was put in touch with Alan Osborne. Alan is an experienced retailer having held a senior post at fashion giant New Look. Alan immediately saw the potential and became our Chairman and an investor in the business.

Our Journey So Far

Since the creation of the idea nearly three years ago we have been speaking with retailers both large and small to understand how they will be able to adopt and integrate toodle into their operations. We have been working with consumers to develop a great user experience and service that will keep them coming back to use it regularly. We have also raised some further bootstrap funding from friends and a second Angel investor to keep the momentum going and to take the business to the stage of launching a minimum viable product (MVP).

What is toodle?

Toodle is a new, unique app which enables users to create multiple visual lists on their smart phones by taking photos, scanning barcodes and QR codes and browsing the internet. Users are also able to purchase listed products from toodle retailers via toodle’s secure mobile payment service and share their lists with friends and family.

The benefits to the consumer are: all their shopping wants and needs are in one place; they can share with and follow all of their friends’ privately; they are in control and not bombarded with advertising; buying in-store is easy, secure and convenient.    

What is a toodle Retailer?
All shops, market stalls and party planners can create their own channel on toodle and list products or create links to pages on their website. A retailer can choose whether to also use toodle as a mobile payments service and they can choose how they wish to deliver purchased items.

As consumers use the app to list products they create a mine of predictive intent data. Then, as a toodle retailer, using the app a retailer can search this data and link their own products to those listed items as ‘recommended product’. Giving the consumer purchasing options in a non-intrusive manner.

The benefits to the retailer are: predicting consumer purchases; engaging with the consumer in a meaningful and non-intrusive way; access to mobile payment services; increased sales and loyalty.

Our Early Traction

To launch we looked to target an audience who tend to create lots of lists and want to share those lists with lots of people. So we partnered with the National Wedding Shows to launch our MVP to brides-to-be and to on-board over 500 wedding show exhibitors with a free toodle channel.

Since launching on 1^st September 2016 we are already seeing regular daily downloads of the app and consistent conversion ratios from advertising to downloads, to registration and regular users. Giving us a customer acquisition funnel and associated costs to be able to scale with further investment.

Next Steps

With users starting to add predictive intent retail data the next steps for us, and why we need further investment, is to start engaging with retailers to sell the value of the toodle app and to have retailers pay a monthly subscription to be on it and to use the platform. We will be starting with converting the existing 500 accounts from the National Wedding Show.

We will also be starting to scale the early traction that we have with the users to acquire more users, who will add more predictive intent data, which will in turn make our proposition to retailers even more compelling.

Plus, we have a development roadmap of improvements and new features which we need to embark on push the app far beyond anything anyone has seen before.