Mothercare shutting down

[Mumof21989]

I can't say I'm surprised really. They have the most beautiful selection of clothes for children under six. I would love to buy them but I can't really justify £13 for a pack of baby vests when Asda sell them for £7.50 for example.I remember going in there with my second baby and looked at everything and came out with two sleepsuits for £10 and that was it. I couldn't justify the £14 for a sleepsuit or £16 for dungarees for a newborn. The bedding sets were beautiful but they wanted around £60-£100 for cot bedding. The blankets were expensive. The sheets were expensive. The cotton wool was even expensive. The Moses baskets were way more than asda etc.

Basically they needed to reduce their prices to survive. Which I guess they couldn't do. But it's sad now as the trip to Mothercare with both pregnancys to choose a pram bring back warm memories. It's a shop I loved going in in those early months but often came out empty handed. It's one of the only baby shops with all the prams, cots and everything else you can imagine set up to see. Whilst Asda etc sell baby stuff alot is online. It seems sad that future generations won't get the baby shop experience. I even had my scans at Mothercare!

The problem is, Mothercare's car seat fitting advice is outdated. The people I spoke to had never heard of extended rear facing, and they sell the Team Tex car seats that have come out of testing so badly. If they had kept up with the change in car seats and their training, they would probably still have that as a selling point. I ended up doing my own research, buying a car seat from the brand itself and using YouTube and the car seat's Facebook messenger for advice on fitting. It seems like they wanted to be known as the baby and child specialist, have prices that reflected that, but not adequately train staff to be specialist compared to other stores (like In Car Safety Centre). So people either search for cheaper products from supermarkets/online, or go to specialists who actually know what they're talking about.

I agree that a specialist will give you better service and usually won't sell any poor quality seats at all, whereas nursery stores like Smyths/Mothercare sell a mixture of poor quality and good quality, which is a shame. There was a Watchdog investigation a few years ago too where they found that the staff were not trained in how to fit the more generic seats, and the comments from the staff were that reps from the big brands would come in and demo their seats for them, but they never had any reps for the generic seat brands, which was why they were less familiar with how to fit. That's shocking and it was good that Watchdog exposed them. I have no idea if this has changed or not though.

I'd be surprised if Mothercare staff today were unaware of the possibility of ERF as they have several ERF seats (to 18kg) in their range and Joie in particular are very vocal about it. They might be unaware of the difference it makes, but I still think they are a better bet for buying most (branded) car seats than online/supermarkets/catalogue stores, and they tend to be more accessible to most people, so I would still recommend it as an approach even though I agree a car seat specialist is the gold standard if you want to be totally sure that you're getting something of the best quality for your budget.

Independent nursery stores are often still a good bet, because the owners tend to be passionate and interested in their products and are probably more likely to engage with the brand reps and be interested to learn more about the products, which tends to help you retain information. Whereas some of the staff at high street stores will be likely there because it's retail, rather than because they have a specific interest in baby and child products.