Seeking feedback on idea of starting a pushchair warehouse

[Kitkat01]

Hi everyone. I'm mum to 2 gorgeous kiddos, aged 5 and 10 months, and just gone back to work after maternity leave. I'm seriously disillusioned with my job, and have been thinking of new ideas about a career. I'm seriously thinking about starting a pushchair warehouse, and would be so so grateful for other parents' opinions on this idea before I get any further in...

When we bought our first pushchair I was completely overwhelmed by all the options and didnt know what to get. I was stressed and anxious trying to make the right decision, but none of the shops local to us had much of a selection, and the staff in many of the shops were really unhelpful. Pushchairs I was interested in weren't stocked anywhere even vaguely nearby.

So this got me thinking.... Surely there must be a gap in the market for somewhere that has a very wide range of pushchairs, strollers, prams, buggies and car seats for people to try out and to have 1 to 1 appointments with friendly, knowledgeable, genuinely helpful staff to look at loads of options, try them out, try them in the car, etc. So this is what I'm thinking of starting. Maybe with an on site crèche thrown in to keep the kids occupied while parents have their appointment.

But to make it work, on the basis that lots of people will end up buying second hand, I'm wondering if people would pay to access an appointment at the warehouse as a service - you would get to try out loads of different pushchairs with advice from someone really knowledgeable to help you decide, and then if you want to go and buy second hand you can be confident you're making the right decision. I know I would willingly have paid something to have been able to access this! If you bought from the warehouse you'd get your appointment fee taken off the cost so it would really only be charged to people who used the service but bought elsewhere, since we all know lots of people do end up buying second hand.

At the moment this is really just the very beginnings of an idea, but I would be really interested in whether other people think this has got legs.... So I've set up a really quick survey (it's only 10 questions long) to gather people's views and feedback before I get any further.

If anyone could spare less than 5 minutes to complete it I would be really genuinely grateful. It can be found here:
www.surveymonkey.com/r/MCNCTDG

Thank you so much! Any comments, views, and suggestions, I would be very interested to hear them!

[BertieBotts]

I think this is a great idea - my issue would be about whether it's profitable! I reckon scrap the café and creche idea, at least to start with - that's a bit gimmicky and will cost you more. It would be fine to have something like a coffee pod machine and free tea/coffee available to browsing customers, plus a small play table with something like duplo or bead runners and colouring, which wouldn't cost you very much but might be a novelty. I would and did travel to a warehouse type place to look at buggies as there was one near me when I was having DS and it was really helpful. And what I really liked was that we were able to buy an ex display model for a discounted price.

I love the idea of being able to look at second hand pushchairs in the same space as brand new ones. I wonder if a part exchange service might be useful - especially e.g. trading a single in for a double. You would need to be careful with second hand car seats - probably easier to say a blanket no on accepting them. If staff are trained in car seat fitting it might be worth offering a car seat fitting service even if parents have bought the car seat elsewhere.

[MorelloKisses]

Issue is how much an appointment would be- to cover a wage, costs and stock £50-80 for an hour?

Can’t see many paying it