Digital platform Toki eyes more collectibles

Executives of Toki, an online marketplace for collectibles, plan to expand product range to K-Pop, fashion and luxury items.

Currently, it has five categories of collectibles, namely Funko Pop figures, LEGO, sneakers, sports cards and trading cards.

“In the US, they have 75 categories. The road map is to develop more categories than to keep adding sellers even when it doesn’t make sense already,” Toki chief executive officer Frederic Levy said.

Since Toki opened in November last year as a web-based platform, the company’s chief strategy officer Jules Jurado said the platform has attracted 200 sellers of collectibles and around 60,000 members.

“Our data gives us confidence that we are going to go for a pretty sizable market with an elastic price point. On top of that, 50 percent of the population are younger than 30; they like something new,” Levy explained.

He said at least 37 percent of Filipinos collect items, encouraging Toki’s team to satisfy other subgroups with different income levels and interests.

“We are considering opening K-Pop merchandise very soon because a lot of people sell only a few pieces or go to South Korea to buy them,” Toki chief product officer Zoe Ocampo explained.

Levy added Toki is also considering selling vintage clothes and other fashion items.

“The Philippine collectibles market ranges from $5 to $6 billion but when we checked the demographics, we found everybody collects. These are the old, millennial and Gen Z generations,” he said.

Bigger community

Levy said Toki is exploring setting up events, a physical store, and an app as it continues to work with prominent toy artists and fellow collectors, such as Quiccs and Bigboy Cheng, who only sell legitimate products.

“At the end of the day, the most important thing to build in any business is trust from your customers,” Ocampo stressed.

Levy said Toki was built on the desire of consumers for authentic items and resellers for a single platform that offers end-to-end solutions.

“In Facebook, they don’t know who they are buying from and you handle everything by yourself including the logistics and payments. When you receive the item, you have the right to pray that it’s authentic,” he said.