Banjo Robinson

Banjo Robinson is a London-based children's subscription business that posts physical letters and creative activity packs to children from the persona of Banjo Robinson, a fictional globetrotting cat. Each month Banjo "writes" from a new country, and packs contain a travelogue, a country guide, creative activities, a reply page and reply envelope, a colouring page, stickers, a local recipe and a local map. Subscribers receive a large world map poster with the first letter so children can track the cat's travels with stickers. The service is positioned as a screen-free activity aimed at encouraging reluctant readers and writers, with letters written with the involvement of children's authors, and the company states the material covers 90% of the UK Key Stage 1 English syllabus. Children are invited to reply by leaving their letters under the sofa at bedtime, and the company says a paragraph answering a child's questions can be added to the next letter Banjo sends.

The product targets children roughly aged 4-9 (earlier descriptions cite 5-8) and their parents, and is also offered to schools through free EYFS and KS1 teacher resources such as reply paper, guides and certificates. The company sells subscriptions, gift subscriptions and shop items directly from its website, and runs an affiliate programme. According to a Techstars company profile, Banjo Robinson also develops a children's book and plush toy in which the character sends letters to the reader in real life, describes itself as the lowest-priced children's subscription in the US or UK, and cites plans for foreign-language co-editions in Europe and South America and English Language Learning products in Asia; the same profile says the company is represented by UTA in Los Angeles across books, television and licensing.

An EverybodyWiki entry lists Tree Climber Publishing Ltd. as the parent entity. Publicly reported financing consists of a pre-seed round announced in November 2019 led by Collab+Sesame, a partnership between Sesame Ventures and the Collaborative Fund.

Founding story

Banjo Robinson was founded in 2018 by Kate Boyle. Before founding the company, Boyle worked in Los Angeles running writers' rooms for screenwriter Etan Cohen and as a creative executive on film projects for Sony, DreamWorks, Disney and Paramount. The concept originated while she was writing letters to friends' children back in England, leading her to build a paper-post storytelling product around the character of a magical travelling cat. An EverybodyWiki entry also recounts that Boyle's father hid mail around the house for her to find as a child [0][5][6][8].

Business model

Direct-to-consumer subscription: parents pay a recurring fee (advertised from £2 per month) to have monthly personalised letters and activity packs mailed to their child, with gift subscriptions and an online shop as additional purchase paths and an affiliate programme for referrals [1][7].

Recurring subscription revenue from monthly letter and activity packs, advertised from £2 per month, plus gift subscriptions and product sales through an online shop [1][7].

Traction

The company's website reports 170,000 letters sent to children in over 43 countries, that 9 out of 10 children write back, a 96.5% recommendation rate and an "excellent" Trustpilot rating; a Techstars profile cites 120,000 letters to children in 41 countries. A April 2020 Mumsnet product test reported 89% of testers would recommend the product. Disclosed financing is a £1 million ($1.29 million) pre-seed round in November 2019 [0][1][5][6][7].

Latest developments

The website lists upcoming monthly letter destinations with post dates from Brazil (4 November 2025) and China (3 December 2025) through Canada, India, Finland and Australia (6 April 2026), and displays notices about website updates, pre-orders for gifts and an email waitlist for new subscriptions [1][2].