Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to the brand new Kiddicare Merry Hill store for a special blogger event. I have been looking forward to the opening of the new store since I found out back in January that Morrisons had bought 10 Best Buy stores in order to expand the Kiddicare business.
Kiddicare is mainly an online retailer who consider their main rivals to be Amazon and Asda Direct, etc. Now they are taking on the big baby brand stores with 10 new flagship stores around the country, and I think that Mothercare, Babies ‘r’ Us, and Mamas & Papas definitely need to be on the guard because from what we saw at Merry Hill last Friday, Kiddicare are in the game to win. The store was absolutely fantastic, and a completely different shopping experience to anything else you would find at the other big names.
Upon arrival at the store, shoppers are greeted by a friendly Welcome area where they can get a map of the store (and it’s so huge you just might need it!), set up a baby gift list, or find someone who can help them out with a query. To your right as you enter, you can find the large till area (lots of tills = less queuing!) followed by the cafe, which is where we headed first for a catch up with our hostess Jennie and a welcome hot drink.
Our first impressions were very favourable – the store is airy, friendly & bright, with plenty to see without it all being too overwhelming and scary. If you ever visited it as Best Buy you will know it as a sterile, echoey place but Kiddicare have transformed it so completely it feels like a much cosier shop despite it being 40,000 sq ft!
Next up was a tour of the store; beginning at the welcome desk and working our way around the store, one department at a time. Every area is well-arranged and has a brilliant selection of products – they have a whopping 3000 products in store and everything on display is available to take away on the day. Kiddicare believe in giving you a large choice of products and then helping you decide what is best for your personal circumstances and requirements. Their V.I.B. (Very Important Baby) Personal Shopper service backs up this ethos; a free shopping service that can be tailored to your specific needs – the V.I.B. staff are trained in all areas of the store and will help you to reconcile your wish list with your budget!
The On The Move area has a special “Walk in the Park” track so that you can try out any of the pushchairs they have in store and give them a good wheel up and down. The range of prams and pushchairs is absolutely astounding, there really is something for every budget and every taste! As well as showing off the different colour options of loads of buggies, they also stock all of the year-round accessories you might need to go with it, saving you the hassle of suddenly realising that you need a parasol 6 months after you purchased your pushchair, just because the shop you bought it at only had the winter accessories on show when you got it!
The Nursery area is where you will find everything from cot sheets to wardrobes. The different furniture ranges are laid out in rooms so you can see how everything goes together, and pick your favourite.
Feed Me has more high chairs on offer than I even knew existed, along with all the tools you need from breast or bottle feeding through to weaning and self feeding. One lovely touch is yards of bib bunting that hangs from the ceiling, made by a local mum. There is even a table with a selection of high chairs and eating implements to allow your baby or toddler a chance to try out the different products available.
There is also a selection of Kiddi Clothes where they are offering a range of own brand basics and also some higher name brands who have some absolutely fabulous items on offer. It’s a good thing we don’t know the sex of my bump otherwise I probably could have spent a fortune on adorable outfits! I will definitely be dragging James back to buy Squidge a few treats after the baby is born!
The Let’s Play area has a good selection of toys, including some of the lesser known (but awesome!) brands such as Happy Hopperz ride on toys. Kiddicare have their own brand toys called Buzzing Brains – fun basics that are also good quality and well priced. As the whole range was half price a few toys fell into our basket for madam’s Christmas! Clean Me has everything you need for bathing and changing your little one, and again the range on offer is huge to allow for every taste and budget.
Safe & Sound is a spark of genius – instead of just displaying boxes and packets of safety equipment they have a fake kitchen with a range of different safety gear installed for you to test just how baby safe the stuff is, and all of the safety gates have a demo unit installed so you can try out the different brands and opening mechanisms. As nobody can ever open our safety gates I would have loved the chance, back when we bought it, to try out a dozen or so at once so we could find a latch that was toddler proof without being adult proof too!
Finally, you come to the Car Seats section. Again, unsurprisingly by now, I was impressed. There are large signs explaining the rules and regulations of car seats, along with a massive range of seats available. There are dedicated staff to help you out with your decision and help you fit it into your car. As this area is expected to get busy, they have a nifty queue system to allow you to continue browsing around the store – just pop in your details to a touch screen at the desk and they will text you when it’s your turn to be seen. If you’re too busy to come back at that time, just reply to let them know and they’ll pop you back at the end of the queue to come back later.
Once our tour was over it was time for a bit of fun so we headed to the event room to have a go at baby sensory. This was a bit hilarious as the only ‘baby’ present was Georgie who is 6 months too old now really, so they rest of the group had a teddy instead of a baby, while James and I were left to try to engage Georgie in the sensory experience. Georgie, on the other hand, was mostly more interested in stealing everyone’s teddies or running around with giant blow up pumpkins.
She definitely engaged with certain portions of the session so it wasn’t a total loss! The light show was a big favourite, and she loved exploring the different fruits and vegetables.. and then delivering them to all of the adults present! She was really taken with Sophie, one of the lovely Kiddicare ladies, and spent quite a bit of the second half of the session on her lap, which was really sweet. The only iffy moment was when the bubble machine was started up, as it turns out she is scared of them!
As so many of the midlands bloggers chat to each other online, Jennie organised for both groups of visiting bloggers to have a lovely long cross over for a leisurely lunch where we were able to try out the fantastic kiddicafe and have a natter while the kids delightedly played in the play area – which even had portholes so you could keep a reassuring eye on them while you were sat down, and they could check to see if they’d been abandoned or not.
The seats were comfy, the high chairs plentiful, and the food and drink on offer was great quality… something that isn’t at all surprising considering that the cafe signifies a new partnership with Starbucks. I’m sure you will agree, it’s very important to know that you can have a good coffee break or lunch while out shopping, especially when pregnant or breastfeeding! The pricing was reasonable and the portions generous.
The toilet facilities are excellent, with each cubicle easily big enough to accommodate a pushchair, a few kids and yourself, along with a child size loo next to the full sized one! In case a child gets stuck in a cubicle on their own there is a smiley face/sad face sticker underneath the lock – you just tell your child to slide the lock to the smiley face should they need help, which I thought was a lovely idea. There is also a dedicated changing area with plenty of mats etc, and the “nursing nest” is actually in the corner of the cafe with comfy breastfeeding chairs – rather than being delegated to the toilet area like so many places! The staff do encourage mums to breastfeed in the cafe (or whilst browsing the store if you want!) but realise that some mums want privacy too.
The fabulous thing about the new Kiddicare store were the small touches that added up to an amazing retail experience. Some of our favourites:
- Completely free gift wrapping station with everything you need to wrap up a gift – perfect if you’re stopping to buy a present on the way to visit a new baby!
- The dedicated car seat fitting bays in the car park, with plenty of space for the experts to show you how it’s done.
- Kids “cinema screens” dotted about wherever they might need to wait a while, like the car seat area. Each of these has a comfy place to sit and a big flat screen showing oldie but goodie black and white cartoons.
- “Pregnant Pauses” – comfy seats for you to collapse on when you need a break from shopping… or for your husband to wait on while you make up your mind exactly which pushchair you want!
Browse & Order Point screens that let you browse the massive 6,000 items on offer from their website, let you know which of them they have in stock in store, and even place your order for collection in store, or next day home delivery (free over £29.99)- Text alert system for in store collections – just order at one of the many screens dotted about the store, pay at the order point (or take your slip to a till to pay cash), and then you get a text when your order is ready to be collected, allowing you to pop for a coffee or browse the store instead of hanging about by the collection point. Magic!
- Fab (soundproofed!!) event room which is available for hire, for community events and classes. They already have a bunch of taster sessions starting up for things such as baby sensory and music bugs.
- Auto updating electronic shelf tags – these allow Kiddicare to keep all their prices consistent over the website and in each store, and eventually they plan to allow you to scan the tags with your smartphone in order to add items to your gift list. Very neat stuff!
- Free wifi in-store
- Ultra-helpful staff – they will even help you to check if your chosen pushchair fits in your boot before you buy!
- Getting involved with the local community – as well as the event room there is a community table in the cafe and an already jam-packed notice board in the hallway.
Well, that just about covers everything I think… I’ll be posting again very soon with details of the upcoming Kiddicarnival and their special opening offers!
Huge thanks to Jennie, Sophie & Matt for being so welcoming and friendly during our bloggers tour, and for inviting us along. As well as a free lunch, we did get a goodie bag to take home and a discount on the day (which we made good use of, with Christmas and a second child both on the way!), but this hasn’t affected our review of the store.
I’ve just revisited this review…it really is wonderful! x