Yoto Player's 1st Birthday
A year ago today, we packaged up the first of our 2nd generation Yoto Players and sent them off to their new homes. What followed was a humungous year with plenty of ups and downs (mostly ups, thanks to you!) and we've been overwhelmed by the community that has grown around us.
Forgive us if we're a little nostalgic, but sometimes you need to look back to see how far you've come. We've taken lots of baby steps to make Yoto what it is today, and we're excited about what it will be tomorrow.
February
Having sold out of our 1st generation Yoto Player, we had plenty of helpful feedback from our earliest customers. It was clear that we were onto something special, but also that there was plenty of work to do.
With the help of our talented friends at Pentagram, we designed the 2nd generation Yoto Player, and in February we sent out our very first order. Hooray!
Settling into 2020, we were optimistic about what the year had in store for us...
March
Uh oh - looks like we might need to adjust our expectations!
When COVID-19 hit the UK, our Yoto HQ became many mini-HQs as our team spread out and began working from home. Not ideal for a company still sending orders out of a small office in central London, really.
Like many of you, we also began to contend with the perils of a work/life balance and homeschooling. It was trial by fire for Yoto - could our own Yoto Players keep our kids engrossed in audiobooks long enough for us to have this meeting? (Yes, and then some!)
April
Many of you know we like to listen. Because when our customers speak up, there's always a lot to learn! If you're new to Yoto, you might not have realised just how many of your favourite features were created just months ago - many of them starting life as requests from our community.
In April, we made it possible to play your Yoto Cards from your phone. That's right! Before that, the Yoto App got your Player online and... well, that was it. This was the first step towards making the Yoto App something you'd actually enjoy using.
We also made it possible to change chapters by turning the right hand button on your Yoto Player. Hard to imagine Yoto Player without that feature, isn't it? Baby steps...
June
In June, we officially said "Hello" to our friends across the pond. We launched in the USA. From the UK. In a global pandemic.
To be honest, we're still not quite sure how we pulled that one off. But today we have a wonderful community in the USA and we're thrilled to be setting up a team over there to continue building on what we've started.
We also added some shiny new features to Yoto Player - you could now set max volumes (you're welcome, ears), switch between 12- and 24-hour clocks, and preserve your Player's battery life with the Battery Saver feature.
September
This was the big one. The feature that everyone was writing to us about; the feature that our tech team had been working on from the very beginning. We introduced the 'pause/play' feature which let you pause a track by removing a Yoto Card, and then start it back from the moment you left off when you re-inserted it.
Prior to that, the card would start back from the beginning of the track, but we knew that would never be good enough. We were all thrilled to make that request a reality!
We also launched our first French language cards, the first step towards Yoto hosting a broader selection of languages from around the world.
December
Christmas felt a little different for everyone this year!
It was Yoto's first real Christmas and we were happy to be busy with lots of orders, but a little less happy to be contending with massive postal service backlogs and Brexit-related shipping lockdowns. Our team worked Christmas Day and the surrounding days to respond to all of our new customers enquiries - it was busy, but hugely rewarding!
We also introduced additional controls for Yoto Player's right hand button - you could now disable Yoto Daily and/or Yoto Radio - and we added the new Sleep Sounds section. We also launched our Yoto Headphones!
2021 and Yoto Player's Birthday Competition
Since the start of 2021, we've been planning what the rest of this year will look like. We can't say too much right now, but we've got some incredible things in store.
One thing we can tell you about is Yoto Player's birthday competition!
We'll be giving away twenty £100 / €110 / $140 gift vouchers which you can redeem at yotoplay.com for a Player, Yoto Cards, Packs and/or Accessories. You can find details of how to enter via the below links:
Enter from the UK / Rest of the World
T&Cs can be found here.
