My Teddy secures back-to-back growth from booming product launch and savvy social media strategy

A husband and wife’s teddy bear business in Caloundra has turned its fortunes around after pivoting their marketing to social media and a booming new product launch.

A husband and wife team tired of their lives as telco workers turned to teddy bears to regain time with their children.

My Teddy was co-founded by Chris and Toni Nightingale in 2004 in Brisbane after the pair became dissatisfied with their former careers in telecommunications and wanted more flexibility to raise their children.

The idea for their personalised teddy bear’s was sparked by Mr Nightingale’s brother who worked in clothing embroidery and through noticing a lack of customisable options in shops.

They started the e-commerce business from home and sold their bears at local Brisbane markets and school events and were eventually able to turn over a profit in their third year before the global financial crisis temporarily hampered their sales in early 2008.

The couple relocated to the Sunshine Coast in 2011 where they quickly outgrew both their home workspace and small shop front in Currimundi and purchased a manufacturing and distribution warehouse in Caloundra West.

My Teddy co-founder Chris Nightingale moved up to the Sunshine Coast 10-11 years ago from Brisbane with his wife Toni and their children. Picture: Patrick Woods.

After experiencing another downturn in revenue, the couple introduced a new range of customisable plush toys and ramped up their presence on Facebook and other social media profiles in 2018.

Mr Nightingale said those changes saw them more than double their yearly earnings and have maintained a consistent growth rate ever since.

“We were quite new in terms of being an online-only business when we first started and we decided to keep it that way to keep a bit more flexibility in our lives and not worry about the costs of having overheads,” Mr Nightingale said.

“We’ve always been early adopters in digital technology such as Paypal and Afterpay to drive our business and being aware of how new tech can help our business and manage it better.”

My Teddy staff member Tenille Biggs at the company’s Caloundra manufacturing warehouse. Picture: Patrick Woods.

My Teddy has experienced a steady revenue growth rate between 10 and 20 per cent annually over the past few years.

The company sells approximately 15,000 – 17,000 plush toys a year to more than 10,000 customers nationally.

They have a growing number of customers in New Zealand and have begun selling to the US and Canada.

The couple geared their marketing strategy towards social media in 2017 and now boast a Facebook following of more than 117,000 followers with nearly 120,000 page likes and 11.7k followers on Instagram.

Their biggest seller to-date has been the ‘plushie’ which propelled the company’s sales boom in 2018 along with their jellycat rabbit toy.

Mr Nightingale said their focus is on increasing their brand awareness nationally and hiring more staff this year before looking at ways to expand their overseas customer base.

“It’s important to get onto these social media platforms and stay ahead,” Mr Nightingale said.

“When we first got onto Instagram it didn’t have our target demographic but now it does. We think it’ll be the same with Tik Tok and we now try to plan five years ahead on social media.”

Originally published as My Teddy secures back-to-back growth from booming product launch and savvy social media strategy