Yodomo

Idea

Introduction

Yodomo unlocks your creativity with high quality courses, kits of materials, and live experiences from artists and makers.

Backed by over 200 investors, we’ve built a marketplace for crafting and making, creating new revenue streams for artists and makers, and meeting the growing demand for learning creative skills online and live learning experiences.

Our customers can learn weaving, spoon carving, bookbinding, sourdough baking, drawing, sewing, botany and more, through:

- Professional video & photography step-by-step online courses

- Kits of materials

- Live workshop experiences

After a successful raise of £142k in 2018, Yodomo has moved quickly to grow its team, inventory, instructors and community.

Yodomo is now focusing on transactional growth, expanding its live experiences offer, and growing its route to market for kits and courses.

Intended impact

Yodomo aims to disrupt the often under-estimated market of crafts; a market already worth £3.4bn in the UK, by bringing crafts and making to the forefront of the $4.2 trillion global wellness industry.

The increasing pressure of the modern world has led to a crisis in work/life balance, negatively impacting our wellbeing. This imbalance costs UK businesses £70bn annually, leading to a booming corporate wellness market expected to globally grow 7% YoY to 2025.

Yodomo's live experiences bring creative making into the workplace. Research from the WHO, BBC, and UCL shows that creative activities help with wellbeing, mood and productivity.

Future product development plans are to create a B2B digital subscription service and we'll be working on early stage prototypes in the near future.

In addition, with the retail sector looking for “multi sensory, immersive, spaces that tell stories and satisfy our human need for adventure and experiences” (John Vary, John Lewis & Partners Futurologist), Yodomo positions itself as a lead supplier for the retail sector bringing together online and offline experiences.

Yodomo is partnering with Queen Mary’s University London on a research project to evaluate the impact of our live experiences, delivered by QConsult and supported by J.P. Morgan.

Substantial accomplishments to date

In just over a year we’ve created a marketplace inventory, established the Yodomo brand and developed a growing creative community.

We’ve developed a marketplace with over 100 online courses and kits. We’ve focused on growing our dedicated making community by on-boarding talented instructors and creating an ambassador programme.

We’ve established content partnerships with major publishing houses to create online courses, and we've launched sustainable kits for sale with sustainable brand parters such as Hiut Denim and Offset Warehouse. Our kits were selected to feature in the Evening Standard and The Guardian Christmas Gift Guides 2019.

We’ve responded to the demand for live experiences, using this opportunity as marketing activation for our online product, laying the groundwork for the launch of our scalable B2B digital subscription offer and opening up a new revenue stream.

We're working with leading names in art, craft, design, fashion and sustainability, including London Craft Week, Clerkenwell Design Week, Royal Society of Sculptors, Hemingway Design, New Designers and Cass Art.

Our corporate clients include Ticketmaster, Innocent, and Fora, our education partners include London College of Fashion and University of the Arts London, and event partners include Oxo Tower and Kickstarter.

In 2019, Yodomo participated in the Deutsche Bank + Nwes Made for Good accelerator ‘We in Social Tech’ and was nominated for Seedrs ‘Seedling of the Year’ award.

Monetisation strategy

Yodomo sits at the intersection of the £565 million UK e-learning market, the £3.5 billion UK crafts market and the $4.2 trillion global wellness market.

The global crafts industry generates around $100 billion revenue annually and there are around 850 million crafters across the world.

We're now set to scale the business by shifting from inventory growth to focus on transactional and customer growth.

We are focussing on driving revenue in 2 key areas in the next 12 months:

- Online 'course and kit' sales through our own platform and third party platforms focussing on Amazon Marketplace, and exploring Etsy and Folksy.

- Live experiences, working with corporate and retail clients.

Marketing activation is through the Yodomo ambassador programme, social media marketing, live workshops and influential partnerships.

Use of proceeds

As a marketplace startup, we’ve focused on inventory growth. We're now moving to focus on customer and revenue growth.

We're raising funds at this stage to grow and evidence our business revenue, whilst we investigate the next major stage of institutional investment, where we will be focussing on product development.

- Expand our live experiences client base with corporate and retail, bringing in a sales team support to develop commercial leads.

- Invest in getting Yodomo kits for sale on Amazon Marketplace and other third party platforms, using skilled practitioners to maximise visibility and optimise sales.

- Onboard more instructors from our waiting list and continue to launch new online courses each month.

- Early stage prototype a B2B digital subscription service working from insight from QConsult research.

- Utilise software solutions to meet consumer and business needs; such as bookings functionality, automation of processes and data science to help with personalisation and recommendation.