private members' club for families

[pippiLS]

So do you think £10 per week for access to a stylish child-friendly club (with tasteful soft play areas etc) is a big ask?

DH thinks it's too much and no none would pay it whereas I think £520 for annual membership of a place where people with babies/toddlers go and meet other mums/dads/nannies, have a decent coffee (maybe even a tasty, healthy lunch), relax in comfort and attend classes with their little ones is an OK price to pay.

Am I being unreasonable to be considering opening such a place as a business venture?

And you say you like the vibe of Babington House, which someone linked to. Yeah, it's very nice. I grew up near there and have been there a couple of times with friends (have never been a member). It's a massive enterprise, fashionable (although not as much as it used to be), loads of staff, amazing chefs, service is excellent etc. All set in a mansion in Wilts/Somerset. Starting something like that from scratch would be very difficult. You'd need a hell of a lot of financial backing.

Maybe you could use a mobile creche to cover childcare at certain times or events?

Or even provide some sort of drop-in creche service where parents could leave their children at short notice if they needed to go to a child-free meeting or appointment (or to get their hair done etc.) Covered by a membership fee to cover the cost of empty spaces when the service isn't fully utilised.

I pay £600 for an annual parking space near me...

"can accommodate kids on an informal basis."

There can't be anything informal about paid-for childcare, so I hope you mean "ad hoc"! You'd need to use your gym creche to see how they deal with numbers (both of staff and of children).

danny I love your terminology, you are absolutely spot on about my ' Contradictory business ethic' and 'Shifting client base'. This is all very new to me and I am mostly thinking on my feet. I crystallised a few things today though. I really want to do this, to create something special and worthwhile…as a kind of legacy .

Legacy?

Yoni

I think it's good that you're enthusiastic. This thread is a great resource for you, even though I'm sure it feels like being bombarded. I think a lot of people have made very good points. In order to be successful you need to identify as many problems as possible and work out how to deal with them in advance.

I think for now the best thing would be to start small. Having vision is great, but you will need to build up to it. Perhaps focus on a really good and interesting idea for a baby class or holiday club, find a local space (even a dreaded church hall!) and test your marketing/business development/brand development tools on that. Focus on making that a success first. It will also mean you can focus on these things without worrying too much about overheads/staff etc.

Brand is massive for businesses. It's part of a business's overall financial value. If you can establish a brand that people love, your customer base will follow you on to bigger things.

Small but beautiful first, I think!

BTW I do not have children yet so cannot advise on that, but have a commercial law background and understand buying/selling so have a fair idea of what, in theory, makes a successful business (although have never run one myself).

Regis Gold Membership costs around £400 p.a. Why do you think freelancers & such like would spend £5k on a drop in centre? I'm a self employed accountant and I wouldn't consider wasting money on something like that, as it wouldn't add value to what I do and would just be an unnecessary overhead.

Your dream of providing creche facilities in each venture requires full staffing ratios, ofsted registration, insurance etc. You have to pay these overheads regardless of whether the creche is full or not. This would not be profitable, because you have to cover the lowest common denominator for staff ratios (1 adult, 2 babies if I remember correctly). Professionals have childcare facilities in place already or they can't work. They tend to only need ad hoc childcare when the child is ill, when your facility would be out of bounds as well.

Please find a nice charity or social enterprise to work for or something similar if you wish to leave a legacy. Doing a stint in finance as a school governor has not given you sufficient commercial or financial experience to put your dreams into reality. If you insist on going ahead I suggest that you put yourself through a "start your own business course" first. You also need to take advice from an accountant on developing a proper business plan.

Have you got any idea of the hours involved in self employment? Weekends, bank holidays, school holidays are all taken up with work, at least in the early years. You will have payroll, vat and a host of ithet admin to deal with on top of marketing, IT etc. If you have been a SAHM for a while, how old are your children, as they will not see much of you if you go ahead with this idea. You said that your DH thinks your plans are infeasible. You will need 100% support from your family before going into this, so if you won't listen to us, at least listen to him.

Another accountant - who has been self employed for 16 years BTW

TalkinPeace TalkinSense!

Purple Dragon, which has been mentioned, is very expensive but is a lot more than a soft play centre. There's a pool, well equipped music room, art studio, decent restaurant plus the softplay etc... Basically if you stumped up for a membership you'd never have to pay for kids lessons for anything as they do them all. Also there's a daily kids club after school so it is part family club/part childcare.

I was very tempted but DH threatened to cancel all my cards pointed out that you'd need to use it a lot to get any sort of value.

I know most people are advising you to look at expensive commercial money spinning operations OP, and they are right if you want to make this your living. But I keep hearing that you want it to be worthwhile, involve people of all demographics and make a difference, and I wonder if that matters more? My friend lives near the amazing Discover Centre in Stratford, east London, it could be worth a visit. If what you want to do is altruistic it could be a model - you had better get very versed in writing funding bids though.

Keep the ideas coming and it is good to think flexibly, but the private members drop in work centre seems a complete no-no. I would be wary about taking business advice from friends. Friends have a habit of telling us what we want to hear.

Would you set up dedicated office space with desks,conference facilities, PC terminals and other assorted IT equipment? That would be extraordinarily expensive and do you think there are enough people in Bury St Edmunds would pay about five times the price of a membership to the most exclusive London gentlemen's club? For reference,The Savile Club's most expensive membership is £975 pa.) Also, setting up and staffing a full time crèche on the off-chance that someone drops in with children also sounds like a huge expense.

It really sounds like a solution looking for a problem or more worryingly, it seems like you have found a building you love and are trying to make a business to fit your own . As others have pointed out, for people with money there are things like Regus (or if they have a spare 5k, your own offices) and for the rest of us who work outside an office environment there are always things like libraries and coffee shops where you can linger with a laptop if the solitude of the kitchen table gets too must

What about something like this, OP?

It's essentially a baby friendly cafe with a function room that runs lots of classes and events and brings out soft play stuff/toys at certain times. It is open to the public and classes are paid for on a drop in or per course basis, although it is still fairly 'naice' but I guess you could offer membership options.

I do think, though, that you ought to take advantage of the footfall of a town centre location and open the cafe area to the public, at least part of the time, to draw people in if nothing else.

It is more like your first idea, though - I'm not so sure about a work space with kids, especially such an expensive one. If I want to work, I pay for childcare.

YANBU

I'd pay. Would that fee be per child or per Mum?

Our toddler crawled through vomit at our local soft play last week...

That looks nice mummybare.

OP, have you tried looking on MN local and Netmums Local for your area for more ideas?

mummy bare that does look lovely. Based on all that has been said here I wonder how they are making it pay though.

Doctrine, yes, I have but there's not much to be gleaned.

I recently visited a venue which was a child friendly cafe downstairs (very cupcske bunting but tastefully done) and upstairs it had a largish room for classes with bean bags, chairs etc and also a kitchen area and some small treatment rooms. The owner runs the cafe and other practioners rent the upstairs spaces. The big room is used for things like antenatal classes and yoga and the treatment rooms for reflexology. Crucially the upstairs also has its own separate entrance so can be accessed when the cafe is not open. It was very busy.

It’s brilliant to see you are so creative and have so much energy and enthusiasm, despite being knocked a bit but those doing the knocking are right.

Before you look any further into these ideas, please, please get the figures down on paper.

I know you seem to have moved on from the idea of the private members club for mums and babies but going back to that you said a turnover of £52k membership, £20k on food and £13k on classes - £85k. The VAT registration point is £81k. So you either instantly have to add 20% to your prices or lose the VAT from your margins. Being VAT registered means you will be able to reclaim VAT from your VAT registered suppliers so some of it will be cancelled out. The £3k per month rent – inc VAT or plus? How much will your business rates be per annum? Have you thought about insurance? You will need insurance to include public liability. Utilities at £5k – are you sure about this? Where have you got the figure from? Wages? How much will you pay? Do you know the length of tenancy you have to take out? What if you rent the building/room and no one/not enough people join? You still have to pay the monthly rental, rates and utilities. How will you manage this?

I run a business. My rent is less than £20k per annum. My rates are £6k. Utilities are £4k. Insurance £3k. I’m not going to give you the figure I pay out on wages and other bills but before I can even think about profit, I have to turnover £4k a week. That’s £208k a year just to break even.

You say you don’t have the money to invest. Then don’t even think about setting up your own business. My business shouldn’t need director/shareholder input but occasionally it does. You get a quiet month but the bills still need paying. All of a sudden, you have to find £10k and you know you’re not going to get that back the very next month. How will you pay for the equipment you'll need to start up?

Running a business is tough. Seriously tough and in all honesty, I wouldn’t do it again.

The new idea about a drop in centre for private members is even less likely to work. I sometimes need to meet clients outside the office for a variety of reasons. I’m either going to hire a conference room for a day or I’m going to suggest a bloody nice restaurant.

If you truly want to do something like this, research it well. Look at what else is around, look at your target market, look at other business models and make sure your figures stack up. Make sure you have a contingency plan for the quiet times or if it doesn’t work.

Sorry if any of this sounds harsh, I really don't mean to come across that way.

This time next year, Rodders

I think the one I linked to operates on a similar basis, Mabel. It has been open about 3 years and seems to be doing well.

I think the area is key. Godalming is a medium sized very affluent town, easily accessible to surrounding towns and villages and choc full of yummy mummies.

chilli, thanks for the sound advice, I'm sorry to hear you wouldn't do it again, the whole run your own business thing.