The brief
Whirli is a unique and new to the market toy subscription service. Consumers pay monthly for different sized ‘toy boxes’; they choose their toys and their children play with them at leisure. When toys are got bored of, grown out of or forgotten, they are sent back for a new set and so on, helping to reduce costs and waste. At the end of 2018 they started a trial service run with customers who had registered their interest with the service. At this same time Whirli were looking to run some research with parents of children aged 0-7 in order to generate some headline stats which could be used to showcase the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling toys. Whirli were also hoping to understanding a bit more about how their target audience buy, manage, play and dispose of toys. The brief included full questionnaire design and collaboration, a 2,000-consumer survey plus analysis.
Generating headline stats which can be used to showcase the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling toys


Questionnaire design and an online survey reaching 2,000 parents of 0-7 year olds
What we did
Sapio met with Whirli in the first instance for a brainstorming session. This helped Sapio to understand exactly what was required and informed the questionnaire design process. The research had been pre-thought out and consequently there was flexible and sufficient timings to allow for a well-researched questionnaire design phase. Sapio created the first draft, then worked with Whirli and their own PR agency to refine the questions. Once this was finalised, fieldwork commenced using an online survey to reach 2,000 parents of 0-7 year olds.


The outcome
The findings have been used in numerous ways – both to talk to news outlets with, for Whirli’s own marketing messaging and on their website, showing just how versatile a single research project can be.
The findings have been used in numerous ways
As a novel start-up in a poorly-researched space, we needed to validate the problems Whirli is solving. Sapio Research were fantastic partners from start to finish – creative in brainstorming angles, careful in designing the questions, and rigorous in analysing the results. The research brought a wealth of insights, backed by hard figures, for our business decision making and for us to talk about publicly in the press.