Cover Story CuddleCo
Clara Sleigh 3 piece nursery furniture set
CuddleCo demonstrates
continued growth Nursery Today’s Cover Star this month is CuddleCo. We had the pleasure to chat with their Manging Director, Marc Kelly to find out how this business will be operating throughout 2022 and how innovation and sustainability is at the heart of the company It’s the start of a New Year, how will you be driving the business forward over the course of the next 12 months? Launching new products and ranges over 2022 is key for us to continue to grow but being able to get these all on the shop floor is a challenge as in the most part, we sell big and bulky nursery furniture. Building rubber walls for your stores. Giving customers the ability to shop our full range in your store using virtual floor space (AR-Augmented Reality) means size no longer matters. We understand that space is at a premium instore regardless of how much floorspace you have. The AR tech allows you to deliver a new customer experience direct from your shop floor on
Illustrating AR technology with Torsten 12
nursery today
Giving retailers and customers the ability to shop our full range in a virtual space using Augmented Reality (AR) means no matter what size of space you have you’ll be able to sell any of the CuddleCo furniture ranges with this innovative tech. Try it for yourself by scanning the front cover.
your mobile phone or tablet. If they are pondering over style, colour, size, then just click the link and view it immediately in front of you. Alternatively, customers can try it at home. Try it for yourself by scanning the QR code on the front cover. I love it!
What NPD do you have coming in 2022? We have just recently launched our Luna 2 & 3 piece furniture sets which has stylish oak detailing. In addition, we have also recently launched our Clara Sleigh cot bed, which complements our best-selling Clara range. There is a lot more that we have in the pipeline for CuddleCo which includes new brands, new furniture, new accessories and more options of some of our core lines, all in all we will have approximately 130 new lines that will be delivered and showcased before Harrogate 2022!
You’ve mentioned innovation, how will this play a role in your strategy for 2022? As well as “operation AR/rubber walls” we’re simultaneously working on improving our sales order process as well as automating our warehouse and back-office management systems. Paracetamol and Ibuprofen are firmly on hand for this one! Dropship and timed deliveries are a huge part of our logistics process, the new automation will allow us to offer an even quicker and more flexible/timed logistics service for all our
products, hopefully resulting in happier customers! On the tech side, we have built a new XML data feed which houses all of our product information including images, descriptions, inventory and stock status to help save you hundreds of hours in manually listing individual products, Let’s be honest, it’s our jobs to make it as easy as possible to get our products from our warehouse direct to your shop floor or to your customers home as quickly as possible, allowing you to focus more on the customer and getting cash in the till.
You launched your augmented reality POS stands in 2021, do you see this being further enhanced and play a role in other aspects of how you communicate your message to the consumer? Absolutely, we will look to add a fresh look to the AR totems come the summer and if you want a totem before then, contact your Sales Rep. It’s been great to see the uptake of our AR technology, it has already been used thousands of times up and down the country and from our data it looks to vastly improve conversion rates.
So you seem like a busy bunch, what role do people have in this tech focused world at CuddleCo? Over 2021 our teams have expanded considerably including 4 new people in
