Kiddicare sale: Expert opinion – including former boss – on how Endless can turn around the business

Scott & Elaine Weavers-Wright, former Kiddicare chief executive and brand director

“Kiddicare became a multi-award winning business for its ability to innovate and implement commercially focused technology quickly. However, first and foremost Kiddicare was a brilliant retailer, putting customers first, and making decisions quickly to help our customers through their parenting journey.

This was part of the magic that seventeen businesses tried to buy in 2011, with five companies in the final round offering £70m or more.
 
The mantras of ‘simple scales’, ‘do it today’ and ‘customer at heart’ was ingrained in our culture. We created an open and public community for our customers to express good and bad experience. This meant every team member was not only technical, and understood the impact of their decisions, but took personal accountability for their actions. The organisational structure was simple with an open door policy, and everyone from the CEO to shop floor colleagues were focused on making stuff happen.
 
We were a specialist, operated by an in-house team with passion who focused on building relationships with suppliers, technology partners, and customers – who took pride in having a holistic view of the business.
 
This approach meant that functions such as commercial, led by Elaine Weavers-Wright and her small team, could handle £40m turnover and 5,000 SKUs by using in-house technical systems – instead of an army of people working from spreadsheets, often operating in silos. This same team also built a highly successful, profitable, and award winning own brand offering.
 
The business needs to look internally for expertise and accountability. Own the customer experience end to end, own your technical platform, and work with partners – not just suppliers. Recruit brilliant talent, provide them an environment to thrive, and disrupt existing models everywhere you can.
 
Some think this approach is hard, but to us, it is just basic business sense. Good luck.”  

• Elaine Weavers-Wright is the daughter of Kiddicare founders Neville and Marilyn Wright

Matt Piner, research director, Conlumino

“With Endless’ acquisition of Kiddicare following the recent rebirth of Mamas & Papas and a mooted takeover bid for Mothercare, it looks like investors can still see potential in the babycare and maternity markets.

The challenge for specialists, though, is how to remain relevant in a world in which it is so easy for consumers to educate themselves and shop around. For Kiddicare it looks like this means cutting costs, returning to being an online-only operator and probably introducing more of a focus on price. Alone this move will not be enough. The key to success lies in differentiating through high quality, own brand product and developing brand strength alongside this. This strategy offers the chance to re-engage shoppers and persuade them not to turn to Amazon, eBay, Tesco, Argos and the like.

Without physical stores, this goal becomes more difficult. But unless Kiddicare becomes en vogue with internet savvy new mums researching where to buy their equipment, even as an online only business it will struggle to attract sufficient business to succeed.

Martin Newman, chief executive and founder of multichannel consultancy Practicology

“One of the opportunities for the new owner is to review the customer database. They need to look at how they can be more relevant to Kiddicare’s customers. For example, the first point of call for customers is when they’re looking for baby products, so they need to look at how they manage that lifecycle from baby, toddler to a young child.

If they’re just focusing on online, rivals with a store portfolio such as Mothercare are going to be at an advantage as they’re able to offer click and collect, which offers more convenience. They need to think how they can remain competitive in terms of convenience. They might do it in terms of offering collection from local shops through services such as CollectPlus, but it’s not as convenient as they can’t exchange the item there and then. That’s where the relationship with the customer is so important. If there’s no physical touchpoints, then why buy from you? Is it price? If they don’t have stores then it’s more important to think through customer engagement in other ways such as social media.”