Store gallery: New beginnings at Kiddicare

New parents have different requirements from the rest of the population. They need a whole host of paraphernalia in order to ensure that nothing is left to chance when it comes to the matter of looking after their offspring. This means endless things not found in most stores and a pretty acute understanding on the part of the retailer that customer behaviour tends to alter when children, or catering for them, is the focus of a shopping trip.

All of which means that a store of this kind is a destination – nobody ends up somewhere like this by chance. This may be why so many stores in this area of retailing tend to be found on retail parks. Part of the shopping equation when acquiring the wherewithal to make junior comfortable is that a car will probably be needed to get cots, chairs, buggies and suchlike home. And this is no doubt why Morrisons-owned Kiddicare opted to snap up 10 former Best Buy stores when they became available after the US electricals retailer raised the white flag over its UK venture at the end of last year.

Close to a year on and the first of these, in Nottingham, has now opened – Kiddicare’s first standalone store, with the exception of its 50,000 sq ft shop that forms part of its head office and distribution complex in Peterborough. The Nottingham shop is a 33,000 sq ft shed on a retail park around a mile or so from the city centre. It is surrounded by other large sheds but stands out thanks to a brightly coloured fascia, which has a tight colour palette coupled with large graphics and a massive diagonal word spelling out the retailer’s name in white against a sky-blue background.

Delivering service

Park directly in front of this store and you are likely to be in the market for a child’s car seat as all of the spaces have ‘Car seat fitting bay’ written across them. This is the first indication of what chief executive Scott Weavers-Wright says are the principal aspects of this store: “service” and “transparency”. For shoppers heading into the store, the service element is almost immediately apparent. Directly in front of the main doors is a freestanding counter with a blue house frame structure containing it. On the front door-facing side of the house frame, the counter has a flatscreen monitor, while on its other side are chairs and computer keyboards. This is the ‘Baby gift list and registry’ area – the same proposition as heading off to a department store to buy presents for those about to get married, and its position at the front of the store bears out Weavers-Wright’s service promise.

Stroll on

Look beyond this and the next thing that will probably catch the eye is a tall, square arch that is covered with printed greenery. The words ‘Walk in the park’ spread across the top of this and the arch frames the beginning of a two-lane racetrack.

This is the test-driving area for the many buggies and pushchairs that line its length and also fill a good number of the perimeter modules in this part of the shop. Head of creative Lara Snider says that the aim here, as in the rest of the store, is to provide high-level navigational signage, using a mix of graphic treatments and merchandise as signposts.

The latter tendency can be seen just to the left of the racetrack where two rows of pushchairs have been suspended from the ceiling in an arrangement that looks like an art installation as much as a piece of in-store visual merchandising.

The garage and Formula 1 theme is continued to the right of the entrance where an orange counter carries the message ‘The pit stop’. To this is added the subtext: ‘We advise, we fit, we are the car seat experts’, and in front of all of this are car seats with instructions to ‘Buckle up’.

At this point, the ambiance is increasingly akin to something out of Top Gear, but the store is about rather more than oily rags, 10,000-mile services and new models.

Added extras

A wide range of bolt-on elements forms part of the proposition, including a ‘VIB’ (very important baby) room, an ‘Events’ room and even another house frame – this time used as a location for parents to examine the various baby safety gates that are on offer.

Weavers-Wright comments: “Community is vital to us. This store opened first because it was the one that got the most votes when we asked people online which [of the former Best Buy sites] to open first.”

Snider and the in-house creative team worked to rebrand the retailer, around six months ago, and then worked with consultancy 20:20 to create the blueprint for the new store for “an intensive month in May”. Ideas were taken from a 10-day trip made by the management team in April to New York and Chicago and building started in June.

When shoppers have had enough of inspecting the wares or attending a ‘Baby massage’ session in the Event room, they are likely to head for the cafe. This is a large space and has an adjacent lock-your-children-in play area in order that parents can relax and still be able to see their young children while sipping a cappuccino.

The “transparency” bit referred to by Weavers-Wright is everywhere in the shop, thanks to digital shelf-edge pricing. “When we change the prices online, it happens at the same time in the shop,” he says.

This means that on and offline pricing disparities are unlikely to be an issue. It also underscores the very strong link that has been made between the virtual and bricks-and-mortar Kiddicare worlds.

This is an etailer that has hit the retail park running and which really does provide a full-service offer with a variety of different options, all of which are united by an understanding of the needs of a new parent.

“First time mums may not have a clue about what they need,” says Weavers-Wright. “It’s our job to help them.” Kiddicare is a relatively small part of the Morrisons empire, but it is one that has a real spark about it and its management is totally engaged with the store as a vehicle to help shoppers.

Price promise

The final point, however, is one of price. Weavers-Wright is keen to emphasise Kiddicare’s position as the best value in the market and glancing around the shop, customers will be left in little doubt that this is a key message. ‘Amazing deals’, ‘Basics but better’, ‘Everyday essentials at exceptional prices’ and ‘Lowest prices guaranteed’, all leave the shopper in no doubt that this is a destination where price matters. This is important for the competition, which in this case takes the shape of a branch of Mothercare, located on the same retail park. If you were the manager of that store, the opening of a shop with 3,000 value-led SKUs, all aimed at your core customer, would probably mean a lengthy report back to head office.

The next Kiddicare that will see the light of day opens in December in Dudley. New parents and young families will be well looked after; rivals will be looking over their shoulders.