retail
NATURAL BABY SHOWER
Natural progress
Victoria Hampson
This month we question Natural Baby Shower’s Founder, Victoria Hampson, to find out how they coped during lockdown and business moving forward. Firstly, how are you and the team? We are all really good! It’s been a strange and challenging time, but the team have adapted and been great through it all. We also welcomed two new babies to the NBS family during lockdown which gave us all something to celebrate.
Did you manage to continue trading during lockdown while not being able to open your doors?
Yes we did. We obviously closed our store in line with the Government guidelines, but our website was still trading and we continued to get all our orders out. We implemented increased health and safety measures to make sure we created a safe working environment and carried out split shifts to keep social distancing for our warehouse staff, whilst the rest of the team worked from home.
What would you say was your largest challenge during this time?
The last three months have been a testing time for sure. We had some delays with stock, shipping was taking longer, and we all had to adapt to a new way of working. However, with the extra processes we put in place, forward ordering stock, extended warehouse hours and tailored marketing, we were able to keep up with customer demand. I have to say sales generally have been very strong. There have also been some products that have been selling very well that have taken us by surprise, such as Babiators which saw a massive growth this year which we weren’t expecting due to the restrictions on travel and holidays.
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The initial challenge was making sure that we were operating in the safest way to protect our staff and to ensure that they were all comfortable and happy with the processes we put in place. Then it was adapting to our “new normal” and running a business in such challenging circumstances. But we have learnt a lot and all in all I am really proud of how the business adapted and managed to operate successfully for our customers.
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Did you experience an increase in sales via your website during the last three months?
How did you utilise social media during the total UK lockdown period?
We wanted to be a source of help and support during lockdown as we know it was a tough time for everyone. So we used our social media platform to keep in contact with all of our customers and keep it a positive and motivating space. We created “Little Tasks for Little People” with free printable arts and crafts activities for children, we posted product demonstrations on our IGTV to fill that gap of the in-store demo process, and used inspiring content of our products to help parents at home with their children.
We also wanted to use our platform to give back and support those in need, so throughout the lockdown period we teamed up with three amazing charities that were all facing their own unprecedented challenges due to COVID; Women’s Aid, Stripey Stork and Shooting Star Children’s Hospice. We ran a number of charity campaigns to raise awareness and donate money. We are so proud to have donated over £7,500 to charity during the lockdown, and we will continue supporting these charities.
Did you successfully re-open your doors to customers?
Yes we did! We opened our doors to our Bagshot store again on 22nd June for appointment only which has worked brilliantly. It was great to see our customers returning and see them all face to face after so long.
How clear have you found government guidelines and advice so far given to enable you to safely open your doors? Fine – we have found them clear throughout really, I found that as long as you check the actual guidelines, rather than the media interpretation then they were pretty clear and easy to follow.
How did you communicate and promote your re-opening to your customers?
We announced the opening of our store on social media and followed this up with an email to all of our customers. We then also promoted it on our website too and customer
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07/08/2020 10:11