Every day, entrepreneur Hans Eich, 29, builds something fun out of wooden blocks and posts a photo of it on his website. His ingenuity keeps fans of his one-year-old company, Ukoonto (which means "toy" in Zulu), coming back to his site to check out his latest masterpiece.
Except for trade shows and whatever free publicity he can get, Mr. Eich relies solely on Web 2.0 tools to spread the word about his one and only product: the toy building blocks that he crafts from Canadian maple in his workshop in St. Catharines, Ontario.
Mr. Eich launched his business online with a domain called "My toys need a name," and has expanded his use of web tools to include video sharing, blogging and social networking on sites such as Facebook and MySpace. He currently devotes a minimum of 50 hours weekly to his toy business, including about 10 hours on his blog. Now that Ukoonto has reached the break-even point, Mr. Eich has largely abandoned his career as a sound engineer.
"I grew up online and have been involved with social media for a long time," says Mr. Eich, who spent part of his childhood in Africa, often playing with simple, wooden toys. "When I began, I had practically zero money and no tools to do a big business plan, but I knew I wanted to do this toy company. So I created a framework online and asked for people's ideas and feedback. It was all about interacting with people and trying to set up meaningful relationships. The business evolved out of that."
Mr. Eich says he didn't realize at first how much work would be involved in keeping Web 2.0 moving with new content all the time. Initially, he ran a podcast and put videos about the company on YouTube, but he now focuses on his blog and Facebook fan page — plus Twitter, which he uses mainly for personal things.
It's harder to gain members to a fan page than it is to get them onto a Facebook group, says Mr. Eich, because fans have to find the page themselves; they can't be invited to join. Still, he believes it's a must for his business. "Trust and community are very important to me," he says. "Since people trust their friends and their opinions more than traditional media like TV ads, I'm involved in their spaces."
One of his early mistakes, he says, was jumping aggressively into the conversations of other bloggers whom he found through Google Alerts on green toys. When he began pushing his blocks without taking the time to become part of the community, he got shut out. "You have to listen first before they start listening to you," says Mr. Eich. "Traditional media is about telling, but Web 2.0 is all about conversations. It's very much about letting go of control and engaging with people."
Mr. Eich, who wholesales the blocks to toy stores from Ontario to B.C., as well as selling them through his website, says word of mouth, both online and in person, is key to his marketing — especially among the numerous online "mommy groups." It's important to be open and honest, he says, because if you fake information or try to make things look better than they are, you'll be uncovered pretty quickly. He prefers to educate people about the materials he uses and how he makes his product, rather than using a hard-sell approach.
Aside from the hours invested, Mr. Eich's out-of-pocket expenses have been minimal over the first year. Blogging, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are free, so his only financial investment has been for some website design.
"Everyone in the blogosphere is trying to figure out how they can monetize social networking," says Mr. Eich. "But Web 2.0 is not a quick fix or a golden nugget. I actually thought it was in the beginning, but it's a long-term process. The return is in the future. Every kid growing up right now is involved in Web 2.0, so [businesspeople] who aren't involved within five years will be non-existent."
