Welcome to Laugh and Learn.
We started this business 18 years ago after meeting on the school playground. We were both teachers (one primary and one secondary) and had 6 children under 8 years of age. Both being passionate about what our children were playing with, we were frustrated with the lack of quality, purposeful, fun toys and games that were available to us at the time. So we sourced some fabulous toys, games and books from suppliers and went into people’s homes demonstrating the toys to them. It was a fabulous experience, but soon enough, lugging the crates of toys took its toll on both our bodies!
We heard about a tiny retail space on Avoca St in Randwick coming up for lease and with the support of our families, our first retail space was born! That first shop is now a little café. Slowly but surely we found some amazing suppliers with fabulous products that we just had to sell. This meant we outgrew that space within 2 years!
As luck would have it, the shop next door to us became available. It was three storeys of space! This meant we could really branch out and become the destination for all things kids! Preschool Letterland classes, guitar lessons, piano lessons, singing lessons, tutoring, music & movement classes for babies through to pre-schoolers…before long it was all happening. This was the space we’d dreamed of!
After 14 years we opened up our second store in Clovelly which allowed us to host children’s birthday parties and offer before/after school tutoring.
Just this August we tried our hand at a ‘pop-up’ store in a shopping centre at Zetland. It was lots of fun and we thoroughly enjoyed meeting new and old customers in this funky shopping centre. Hopefully we’ll get back there again!
Anyway, we are still having fun. We still love each other and our families (couldn’t have done any of it without them!) and we most definitely love our staff. Without their passion and like-mindedness, we couldn’t be doing what we are today. Thank you!
I’m not saying it’s all been beer and skittles (well maybe a little beer…) – retail is a tough gig. We rely on our local communities to support what we’re doing by buying our products. We know that we provide superior service, quality products, free gift wrapping and knowledgable advice to our in-store customers. That still counts for a lot in most people’s eyes! Thank you to our wonderful customers. We need to continue to support local businesses by buying from local, independent, family businesses – whether that be toys, meat, clothes, fruit. That includes the smaller/independent online stores as well – they are your friends, your neighbours, your local families businesses.
So here is the start of our online offering. It’s a smidge of what we have in-store (so if you can pay us a visit in-store, I would highly recommend it). We will add more products to it over time. But for now, we hope you enjoy the browse and if you see something you like – feel free to place an order! We would really appreciate your business!
Tanya & Anne-Maree