Barking Mad

Pramland’s John Barker takes a look back at trade during April and the Coronation Bank Holiday weekend together with a look at strollers and how they perform within his store.

Hello everyone and welcome to May! Can you believe that we have three bank holiday weekends this month? It seems crazy to me, why not just tweak one of them to incorporate the Coronation event? Speaking of the Coronation, I noticed lots of chatter between stores regarding who will and who won’t be opening. I opted to close the Saturday of the coronation but still open on the Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday as we normally would. I must admit, it was a difficult decision to make but I think I made the right one. Yes we closed on our busiest trading day but the Sunday and Monday more than made up for it so happy days I guess.

The last few weeks have been manically busy in the store which has been a pleasant surprise and it wasn’t expected. I had assumed that April would continue the trend of 2023 with a slight downturn over 2022, but this was most definitely not the case. We ended April on a record month which was no doubt helped by underachieving on previous months and a rather special new product launch.

Yes! The rather fabulous new john@pramland.co.uk

Maxi-Cosi Pro Family has finally been unveiled and the secret is finally out. . . .and what a response we’ve seen. To be fair it was very apparent to me that it would be a huge success, but I have still been blown away by the immediate demand. Maxi-Cosi have really hit the mark with the pro family. Not only does it feature the lay flat position we’ve all been demanding but they kept their usual ventilation, side impact protection and easy in harness at the party too - but then they’ve gone and blown the party up with Slide-Tech. Such a simple idea, yet an idea that really is revolutionary. I said it last month and I’ll say it again – CONGRATULATIONS MAXI-COSI!

This month I have mainly been pondering over what I like to call the “stroller quandary”. What’s that I hear you ask, well let me enlighten you. It’s the phenomenon that we have all experienced and that is guaranteed to wind you up every week. On an average Saturday or Sunday we are flat out busy all morning and early afternoon, then at about 3pm all we seem to contend with is parents shopping for strollers. Stroller shoppers are a unique breed. They take hours and test every stroller in your store looking for something that either doesn’t exist or if it does it’s four times the price they are prepared to pay. Yes, the “Stroller Quandary” is the age-old question of – is it worth selling strollers or is it easier to simply make it someone else’s problem?

I would say we have a good offering of strollers (about 22 different ones to pick from – all with various colour options) with a wide variety of prices from £89 to £400+. I would hand on heart say we have something for everyone. When I consider that a parent can eat up one of my teams time for an hour on a Saturday afternoon I often wonder if it’s worth having them. That same member of staff could have been speaking to someone looking to spend £1000+ on a travel system or furniture set. 8 or 9 times out of 10 the parent (see how I refuse to use the word customer? A customer is some one that spends money!) simply takes up our time and leaves claiming they will “think about it” and they invariably never return. I don’t think this is down to lack of range or price options. I personally believe that I could take everything out of my 4,500 sq ft store and only have strollers - every stroller from every brand – and we’d still not sell any.

Our strollers are displayed together at the front of the store. This display is two tiered and is approximately 6 metres in length. When I consider how much money that same area could earn me if it was occupied by travel systems it really makes me resent strollers even more. Lets say we live in a dream world where we can earn 30% on everything we sell. On a £1000 travel system we would have a cash margin of £300. To make this £300 off the back of strollers (averaging at £150 each) we would need to sell almost 7 strollers. Do I sell a ratio of this currently? 7 strollers to every travel system. . .. Absolutely not. Ok, so if I stop selling strollers and it doesn’t equate to increased travel system sales will that be the end of Pramland? It’s unlikely given that I’d have to not sell 7 to miss out on £300!

So, what’s the solution? Who knows. As a nursery store that’s been around for a long time we’ve stepped away from items that no longer make financial sense to sell but strollers are a big sector. Someone somewhere must be selling these to parents. Don’t get me wrong, we have some good sellers but even these represent such a small part of what we do. I hate the idea of not being able to accommodate parents looking for strollers but as I’ve said above it simply makes poor financial sense to sell them. There must be a happy medium – a good mixture of a small, curated range which meets the requirements of the majority. A range big enough to still entice parents in but not big enough that they end up unable to decide.

I’d love to hear your feedback. I know this can’t be a phenomenon exclusive to me! It’s something we used to see many years ago with car seats. We tried to be everything to everyone, and it meant we ended up dedicating too much room and money in stock for little returns. We trimmed the range down and now it’s a small yet concise range which should meet the requirements of the many –and off the back of this we do very well with a number of seats, and I certainly don’t see the same levels of time wasting.