A fun—and trustworthy—marketplace for collectibles
Three collectors have come together and created a platform for buying collectibles in the Philippines.
Frederic Levy, Jules Jurado and Zoe Ocampo first met when they were working for GCash. Jurado and Ocampo were part of Levy’s team, who was chief commercial officer of Gcash.
In 2022, the three left the fintech company. Ocampo took a sabbatical while Levy and Jurado worked overseas. But before the year ended, they came together again.
“We said, sayang naman the collaboration that we built in GCash. We had such a strong camaraderie that we wanted to explore if there’s something we could do together,” recalled Ocampo.
They share a passion for collecting—they’re all “hardcore collectors.” Ocampo collects sneakers, perfume bottles and, because of Jurado’s influence, Lego as well. Jurado loves Lego and also collects mechanical keyboards and toys. Levy, meanwhile, collects vinyl records, Funko Pop, Lego and sneakers.
“We thought, is this more than just a passion? Can we turn this into a business? We wanted to build something within the worlds of collectibles. We already had a deep exposure in technology so we wanted to see how we can bridge the two worlds together,” Ocampo said.
And that’s how Toki was born. Why Toki?
“Naming it was one of the hardest things,” Ocampo said. “The word tokimeku popped up. It came from a Marie Kondo book and, loosely translated, they say it means ‘to spark joy.’ Tokimeku is long, though—what if we use toki? We looked up its meaning—toki actually means a moment or time of opportunity in Japanese. We thought it was extremely appropriate because what we’re building is something that really involves capturing an opportunity and spending time on something you’re passionate about.”
Community
Ocampo added, “When you hear ‘collectibles,’ people often say, ‘Oh, it’s a niche segment.’ In reality, if you look at how many people are into collecting and the value they’re collecting, from our market study, we were able to discover that the collectible industry is about $65 billion across Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan.” The community of collectors in the Philippines alone is huge. There are groups dedicated to every obsession.
“It’s super big. The more we embed ourselves in the community, the more we realize that there’s really so much opportunity,” said Ocampo.
As collectors, they noticed that the process of buying collectibles in the country can be “very fragmented.”
“You go through Facebook Marketplace or Instagram, you talk to different sellers, negotiate prices and when you agree, the next question is, do you pay them first and then they ship the item? Do they ship the item first and then you pay? Who will book the Grab or Lalamove? You or the seller? Then you go to Gcash to pay the seller, go back to the chat to send the receipt … Then if something goes wrong, good luck reaching out to the seller,” said Ocampo.
That’s what they wanted to change with Toki.
“End to end, we take care of everything—from your discovery of new items to purchase until the point of delivery.”
The three spent 2023 working on the project—with Levy as chief executive officer, Jurado as chief strategy and data officer, and Ocampo as chief product officer—and launched it in November. Right now, there are 130 sellers on Toki offering around 70,000 collectibles that fall under six categories: Lego, sneakers, Funko, sports cards, trading cards and toys. More categories will be added later on.
Every single seller has been vetted and verified.
“We knew that when we created our own marketplace, it can’t be a platform where anyone and everyone can sell everything. We have a very detailed process of onboarding sellers. We made sure to prioritize the top 20, 30 sellers within each community, the sellers the collectors already know. Then we rated them using our scoring mechanism and they scored fairly high. They are the first ones that we brought into our platform. Every seller that we have across our six categories is the top of the top, the best of the best here in the Philippines.”
The vetting doesn’t stop there. Because Toki guarantees the authenticity of the items available on its platform, every item sold goes through a verification process.
“Each item that passes through our platform is verified by the Toki team before it’s shipped out to the buyer. If it’s not up to standards, we return the item to the seller. Trust is the most important metric for us here at Toki. It’s our North Star,” said Ocampo.
Free delivery
Shipping takes three to five days within NCR, 5 to 7 days across Luzon, and 7 to 12 days to Visayas and Mindnao—“still very consistent with other platforms’ ability to ship items.” Right now, Toki is offering free delivery to Metro Manila.
There are three ways to buy collectibles on Toki. The first is to buy it outright, the second is to make an offer (of up to 75-percent off the posted price) and see if the seller will accept it, and the third is via auction on livestream.
“This is the platform where you can have the most fun buying collectibles. The world of collectibles is really built on a social feeling. It’s the reason people like going to conventions—you’re surrounded by like-minded people, you speak the same language, you understand the things you like, you get to share the excitement. The current e-commerce flow is very monotonous—you buy the item, you click, you check out. The fun factor is missed out. We want to bring that personal touch when you shop. We want to make the experience fun,” said Ocampo.
Toki takes the experience offline, too—with in-person events. This is how the group launched Toki Invasion, Toki’s collaboration with The Curious Invader creator Dondi Fernandez.
“We invited about 50 artists across the country and Southeast Asia to create their own interpretation and we showcased them at an event where they also went up for sale,” said Ocampo. They also did an event for their Distort Monsters collaboration.
Recently, Toki gathered sellers and buyers at Ronac Magallanes (Ronac’s BigBoy Cheng, a hardcore collector himself, is an investor in Toki) for a fair called “Beyond the Block.”
“We wanted to try this school fair format. Hopefully we get to do more of this moving forward,” said Ocampo.
There was music, there was food, there were prizes to be won. Bricking Bart was there selling all sorts of Lego mini figures. The Odd Yeti had boxes and boxes of Sonny Angels. Sneakers Chief PH and Trilogy had rows of limited-edition sneakers on display. Funko Pops—even signed ones!—were available at the CO. booth. Booths carried lots of Lego sets.
The Toki fair was a taste of what Toki offers—a stress-free way to add favorites to your collection.
Visit tokiasia.com.
