Celigo Powers Yoto’s Global Growth Journey

About

Yoto was founded in 2017 with the goal of enabling independent, screen-free listening experiences for children, transforming how they consume audio content. Since then, Yoto has developed innovative audio players and a vast content library featuring over 1,200 audiobooks in multiple languages.

Following a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019, the company has secured significant investments from Mark Zuckerberg and HSBC. Since launching its second-generation player in 2020, Yoto has doubled in size each year and expanded from the UK to establish a presence across the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and France.

The challenge

Yoto’s rapid expansion, particularly in online sales, created complex operational demands. The company needed to scale its production and logistics across an intricate ecosystem of sales channels, fulfillment partners, and payment systems. Key challenges included:

• Managing extreme seasonality: With around two-thirds of annual revenue concentrated in the last two months of the year, the company required robust handling of high transaction volumes across multiple sales channels
• Orchestrating complex data synchronization: Yoto needed to sync data between sales platforms and fulfillment partners, while managing multiple SKUs across direct channels, online marketplaces, and retail trade partners
• Coordinating global inventory management: The company required precise coordination of inventory across diverse 3PL providers
• Maintaining seamless data flow: Data needed to flow between sales platforms, fulfillment systems, and trade partners
• Implementing automation and standardized processes: To enable rapid market entry without expanding operational headcount, the team needed to automate manual processes

The solution

In late 2022, RSM, Yoto’s ERP implementation partner, recommended Celigo to unify Yoto’s expanding ecosystem of business applications. As part of its business transformation initiative, Yoto implemented Celigo as its iPaaS. “We needed a low-code way of managing integrations after they’d been developed,” explains Owain Williams, Systems Operations Manager. “We didn’t want to have to hire a development team just for that.”

The implementation followed a phased approach, systematically expanding to support new channels and capabilities. Key integration points included:

• Ecommerce channel integration: Seamlessly connecting Yoto’s cloud-based ERP with multiple sales channels, including Shopify, Amazon, Argos, John Lewis, and Best Buy
• 3PL integration: Synchronizing with global warehouse and delivery partners in real-time for optimized order routing and fulfillment
  Financial processing: Automating payout reconciliation across multiple providers, streamlining financial operations
• Cross-border commerce: Standardizing integration processes to support international expansion. Yoto architected their technology stack to be both scalable and easy to use. Rather than relying on point-to-point integrations or vendor-specific solutions, Yoto implemented a cohesive integration strategy through Celigo, yielding several operational advantages:
• Standardized integration processes: Consistent data flow across all sales channels and 3PLsenables interoperability and simplified onboarding of new trade partners while minimizing the risk of undocumented changes.
• Enhanced monitoring and error management: Real-time observability of integration health combined with automated error management, where AI automatically resolves over 80% of issues, allows business users to handle most problems independently.
• Peak performance management: Celigo uses concurrency to optimize API calls, leveraging rate-limiting and pagination, as well as asynchronous processing and monitoring tools, to ensure stable performance during high-traffic periods.
• Flexible mapping capabilities: Automated and dynamic data field mapping between systems makes integrations adaptable to support emerging requirements and opportunities.
• Process-centric integrations: In Celigo, integrations are grouped into automated flows, each representing a discrete set of activities that break down business processes into automated tasks. For example, syncing purchase orders between 3PLs and ERP systems, and adjusting inventory between the ERP and sales channels are distinct flows within an automated order management process.

The bottom line

Celigo’s implementation has enabled Yoto to scale efficiently while maintaining lean operations. Teams now manage integrations without extensive technical expertise or reliance on implementation specialists, accelerating market entry and streamlining error resolution.

“Every time we expand into a new country, we’re always learning lessons about improving our integration process with new 3PLs,” notes Owain. “Having everything through an iPaaS ensures we stick to that process. The ability to change our integrations to fit our business on our own, without having to spend a couple of weeks talking to a developer, was huge.”

Looking ahead, Yoto continues to leverage Celigo’s capabilities to support their growth trajectory, with plans for further expansion into new markets and channels. The platform’s flexibility and scalability remain crucial elements in Yoto’s strategy to revolutionize children’s audio entertainment globally