As the nation waited in anticipation for the royal baby to be named, marketing and product teams from the UK’s leading retailers all charged full steam ahead.

As the nation waited in anticipation for the royal baby to be named, marketing and product teams from the UK’s leading retailers all charged full steam ahead, competing to be the first to market with a range of commemorative products to help shoppers celebrate.

We were, of course, delighted that the name George was one of the favourites from the offset. Thanks to our incredibly fast design team and supply chain, we were able to turn around a bespoke range to meet customer demand within 24 hours, which was no mean feat.

We know that our customers love to celebrate a royal occasion; you only have to look at the surge in sales around the royal wedding in 2011, when we were inundated with requests to create merchandise to help our shoppers mark the occasion. For this reason, we were prepared well in advance.

Our designers had already set their creative magic to work and had designed a variety of different garments ready for the announcement of the heir to the throne.

With these in hand, our wider team of buyers, marketers and suppliers then took on the challenge of launching this range at the drop of a hat, and I’m proud to say we were the first retailer to launch a range of celebratory items.

We unveiled a collection of limited-edition commemorative George babygrows on our George Facebook page and, within an hour of the post appearing, we received more than 1,000 likes from our customers and followers. From then on we knew we had struck a chord with shoppers across the UK.

To date, we have experienced a 383% day-on-day uplift on the sale of our royal baby-themed products and our ‘mummy’s little prince’ T-shirt was the best-selling item on George.com.

As a result we have revealed further products to mark the occasion including men’s, women’s and children’s T-shirts.
We also transformed our website, which has more than 800,000 visitors a week - it’s a hugely popular destination for mums. Our trademark yellow banners turned baby blue.

On top of our George logo we placed a crown and we launched a commemorative royal baby shop.

We also created a bespoke advert, which appeared last Friday in the national press, with the strapline ‘From one George to another’, promising mums 20% off babywear over the weekend.

We’re delighted that Kate and Wills shop in their local Asda in Llangefni in Anglesey. We can’t wait to welcome them into the store - or any other - along with their new arrival.

We are looking forward to helping with George’s first PE kit and school uniform - after all, we already have his name on our labels.

  • Andrew Moore is managing director of George at Asda

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