A regular on BBC One’s Dragons’ Den, Touker Suleyman is one of the UK’s best-known retail entrepreneurs. Having delivered a motivational speech to the audience at the Progressive Preschool Awards 2022, PPS sits down with him to find out more about the babycare companies he has a stake in – including the award-winning Matchstick Monkey – and what inspires him to invest in a brand.
Touker Suleyman has an eye for a winning product. Of his 2016 decision to invest in Matchstick Monkey – now the UK’s top teething toy and the winner of multiple awards – before the product had even launched, he recalls: “I wasn’t really looking at the baby sector until Matchstick’s founder Katie Windridge came to see me to talk about her bag company [Forbes & Lewis]. She had a little monkey teether with her. That was it. I think it was only about 10 minutes before I’d decided to invest.”
Cute and sturdy with easy-grab handles, Matchstick Monkey is a baby-safe silicone teether that can also be used to deliver pain relief to the hard-to-reach back gums via its bobbled head. Kate had designed the product after her two daughters both suffered terrible pain while teething, and she’d found it impossible to rub teething gel onto their gums without getting her fingers bitten.
Touker was struck by the uniqueness and functionality of Matchstick Monkey’s design, and by Kate’s business acumen. He immediately set to work, switching production of the product to a factory he knew well. “They’re Procter & Gamble’s biggest manufacturer of toothbrushes; there’s over a billion dollars of investment in plant equipment there,” he says.
From the get-go, Matchstick Monkey proved a hit with parents, and today the product sells in 60 countries worldwide. Under Touker’s guidance, the business has expanded into bath toys, feeding and babycare products, plush toys and more.
