Mothercare: live webchat with CEO Simon Calver, TODAY, Friday 22 March, 11am

[RachelMumsnet]

Simon Calver, Mothercare CEO is joining us for a webchat on Friday 22nd March between 11am and midday. After reading a recent rather, erm, robust MN thread about Mothercare, Simon really wants to hear more of your thoughts and feedback. This is your opportunity to contribute your ideas to help shape the future of Mothercare.

Simon says, 'I'm really looking forward to hearing from many of you in the Mumsnet community and to listen to your thoughts and opinions on a range of subjects. We are working hard to address many of the issues you've raised in the past so I hope you'll join me on Friday when I can update you on what we've done so far and some of our ideas for the future.'

Before joining Mothercare Simon was CEO at LoveFilm and has also worked with Unilever and PepsiCo. He is also a father of two very young children.

Simon looks forward to hearing your thoughts about Mothercare between 11 and 12 on Friday. if you're unable to join us on the day, please post your question in advance on this thread.

First of all thank you for your comments and questions. I?m delighted to be here at Mumsnet to answer them, and I hope to fit in as many answers as possible over the next hour. Let?s get started?
Simon

@gazzalw

Hi Simon

We are a bit beyond Mothercare with our two (although DD is only 7 so could theoretically be dressed from there). Whilst DW would shop for baby-related items in Mothercare, by the time DD came along she found the shop expensive and non-inspiring. I would say that apart from using the Mother and Baby facilities (which really need to be revamped to get rid of the pervading dirty nappy smell!) she has probably only ventured in to a branch a couple of times in seven years. The baby/children's clothes seem expensive (and you never get good Sales reductions) and a bit naff/tacky. It seemed a good move putting ELCs within the larger out-of-town branches but even the ELC seems to have gone downhill in past decade or so.

I am sure that there is still a niche market for Mothercare but I think you need to go for a more personalised service, particularly pitched to first-time parents. And you are really missing a trick by not making the clothing range appeal to parents of 5 - 9 year olds who don't necessarily want their DCs dressed as mini-adults.

The whole 'vibe' of the Mothercare brand needs to move away from a rather old-fashioned clinical concept to something that is nurturing, warm and welcoming and goes that bit further (as with the John Lewis' children's deparment) to give parents what they want from pregnancy stage through to the tween stage. Perhaps holding NCT/anti-natal care classes at branches and offering a wider range of pregnancy and parenthood-related services.

Otherwise, good luck. You have quite a task ahead of you!

Having a DD and DS myself, I tend to look at MOthercare through two sets of eyes: one as a dad; secondly as a CEO. I recognise n the past our pricing has been too expensive and this is something I have been trying to address quickly over the last few months. In store today, you will see much better opening price points for a lot of our clothing, for example £2.50 t-shirts and £7 for a pack of 3 sleep suits. I recognise we still have a long way to go but I?m hoping that you?ll all see improvements.
Ensuring we have a full range of clothes from newborn to 8+ is a priority but, given our profile of customers, we are starting on the baby and toddlers clothes first, and we will get to the older children?s clothes later.

I definitely think your stores need a designated 'first-time parent' consultant with whom parents-to-be can book an appt and get some real care and attention. That type of personalised service (and possibly ability to have follow-up appts at key stages of child's development) would really boost customer loyalty in the long-term, don't you think

Good luck with the discussion.

I'm sure anything I could say has been said, but just to reiterate: your staff is rude and unhelpful, your stores are too crowded and your prices are too high.

I am impressed with your chutzpah to come and speak to this website, though. We have never been shy about saying what we think about Mothercare!

@Meglet

We're just coming to the end of the Mothercare age, but the following often put me off the shop and could do with some improvement.

Cleaner toilets. On the several occasions we had to use them they were smelly, out of soap and grubby. Please employ regular cleaners to keep them spotless.

Cut back on the blue is for boys / pink is for girls nonsense. We don't need every toy / item of clothing in a pink or blue version. (Although I think I did see some smashing red / yellow / green welly options when I popped in last time). Lots of us parents were kids in the 70's and 80's when there wasn't such a divide between boy things and girls things, we can cope with unisex clothes and toys you know.

I do have one good thing to say, the Urban Detour 3 wheeler pushchair is ace, mine is over 6yrs old and still going strong. While I won't be having any more children whoever I hand it on to will have many more hundreds of miles out of it. Great design and very robust.

There have been a lot of questions on changing and cleaning facilities in Mothercare, such as meglet?s above. I regard this as a really important part of the service we offer mums, and we have a programme to roll out improvements as quickly as possible. Bear with us, as we hopefully get to your local store soon. It is definitely on my agenda.

@coppertop

I used to use our local branch of Mothercare a lot. The separate feeding room with comfortable chairs was excellent, and the toilet facilities were suitable for pregnant women, toddlers, and older children.

Then the store was renovated and those facilities disappeared completely. They now only have a toilet for people with disabilities, and astonishingly this is kept wedged open at all times. Presumably it is so that no one else uses it but also means that anyone with a disability who goes in there to use it must then go back out to the main area and find a member of staff to remove the wedge. Less than ideal if your disability means that you need to go very quickly.

Who on earth thought that it was a good idea to remove the facilities that your potential customers would be most likely to need?

I am sorry to hear about the store with the disabled toilet wedged open. Can you please give me the details and I would be happy to look into. I agreed this is not a great situation.

We are looking at all stores as I mentioned before so will hopefully get to your store soon.

@lopopo

Hi Simon

I'm a new parent with a 7 month year old. Mothercare was a very strong brand for me but I found your shops to be quite poorly stocked - there never seemed to be the item I needed on the shelf when I wanted it. Your staff however are always friendly and helpful. It's a bit frustrating really - I want to shop with you more but other places are maybe doing it better. John Lewis's click and collect system would be something to look at and I think your clothes are nice but I'm not sure about you positioning. Where do you fit with brands like Next, Gap and JoJo Maman Baby? Why would I buy my kids or maternity wear from you?

Thanks

Congratulations on your 7-month old. Nieve my daughter is three months old at the moment, so maybe I should be asking you for some tips! We have in the past not had great availability of stock in-store. I?ve had this feedback consistently from mums over the UK. We are making big changes and investing heavily in more stock, so that people can have a better choice. I?m seeing a gradual improvement but it will take us a couple of seasons for us to get to the level I want to get to.
We already offer ?Click and Collect? in-store. In fact over the last few months, we?ve rolled out next-day delivery to over 60 stores and we?ll get to 100% of stores in the next couple of months. Our next challenge will be to let you all know about it.

@EauRouge

Hi Simon, thanks for coming to talk to us and listen to our ideas.

A lot of the things I wanted to say have been said- please, please make extended rear-facing seats more available and let parents know about the safety aspect.

Also the pink/blue stuff; I really think Mothercare could lead the way in moving away from all that nonsense. We've all had enough and the tacky pink/blue stuff can be bought in a supermarket for half the price of Mothercare. How about some really good quality clothing that is more gender neutral so can be passed down from sibling to sibling? Like the denim dungarees you sell, they look ace (must pick some up for 4yo DD1)- stuff like that, practical and hard-wearing rather than mini-adult stuff.

And yes yes yes to decent slings! Baby Bjorns and the like are crap. How about having a sling event where mothers can try out a few different ones (ergos, wraps, ring slings etc) before they buy? More people would use them if they knew that comfortable ones were available, not like those back-destroying Baby Bjorns.

Could you be more breastfeeding friendly? Maybe give out flyers for local breastfeeding groups etc? I did see a breastfeeding stand in a branch of Mothercare once run by a local group, more of that sort of thing would be brilliant.

I have to say the customer service in my local branch is excellent and I would shop there more if I could find more that I liked.

Thanks for your question. Re. the pink and blue stuff: we try and introduce as many colours as we can. In fact we've got some fantastic bright colours in our ranges in-store at the moment, just in with our new Spring range.However, pink and blue do tend to be our most popular colours that people buy; in fact, my house has taken a definite pink hue since our DD was born.
I'm fully supportive of making clothes unisex, flexible and in different colours so we can provide choice for every mum.

@jbakedbean

Morning Simon, I'm a mother of two boys, 4 and 2, with another baby on the way. As I am the people consultant at a business and IT consultancy which has recently completed some large retail technology change programmes I'm surprised mother are isn't embracing and using technology as a business enabler. Your website, click and collect, evouchers, advertising on other platforms eg ebay etc are all partnerships and opportunities which should be considered.

A lack of consistency in the staff, attitudes vary from exceedingly poor to reasonable interest, high prices without a value add service and a clearly a technology is a cost base and not an enabler approach could all be reasons for people no longer buying into the brand.

What is next for Mothercare in the baby/ toddler retail war?

Here is another one of my ideas: I have plenty more but I quite like this one: putting in a cafe and play area into stores. Why? Opportunities to introduce your brands of baby food and drinks, to parents. We all know how much time mums like to spend chatting to other mums and if you had a small play area (stocked with Mothercare or elc toys, mums would definitely buy toys if they knew before hand that there children liked them), or ran baby music clubs, story time, baby massage clubs, antenatal classes, breast feeding workshops, etc not only would it bring in a lot more traffic plus time spent would increase the likelihood of parents buying more with you. Increase brand loyalty etc. banks have done it, ( just a thought). It would show Mothercare had interest and invested in their products and customers and were not just a retail outlet.

I wish you all the best and if you would like to discuss more please feel free to contact me.

I fully agree with you about putting cafes in stores. We tested this in our new Edmonton store and it has been a great success - Costa has been a great partner (by the way, I love their coffee too)! We are working with them and other partners to see how quickly we can roll out cafes in our larger stores. Unfortunately we can?t fit them into all our stores, but do stay tuned for announcements of café openings.
Also in our new stores we have spaces we call ?Mum?s space? where we hold classes, discussions and clubs. They have been a great success. Again, where we have space, we are working to repeat this in other stores.

I love the line by Jamie Oliver's wife...gosh how rude that I can't remember her name! I also think the staff are often rude or seem disinterested. Those are my main thoughts!

@lagoonhaze

You need to promote extended rearfacing car seats in ALL your stores. Unless parents see it as normal the whole dangerous practice of turning your baby around at 9 months won't change.

Its great you are stocking besafe and maxi cosi mobi but you need to extend this.

We're working with I-Size and all our suppliers on the new legislation. We're continuing our relationship with Which? consumer group on car-seat safety campaign, and it's an absolutely priority to promote specialist award-winning car seats. Unfortunately not all car seats fit all cars.

@RaisingGirls

You are brave, nest of vipers round here, didn't you know?

I have a few comments:

Please, please, please get your staff properly trained to fit maternity/nursing bras. The number of women who come to me (nct bra fitter) with a poorly fitted bra by mothercare, risking their health as well as their comfort, is shocking and disappointing. There should be someone available in the store to fit bras all the time, and they should know what they are doing. Ill fitting nursing bras can cause mastitis, it's not ok to just have a best guess at what fits (and then not have that size in stock anyway)

I am really disappointed with the pink/blue thing with clothes and toys. It's been said before by other posters, I know.

Please also train your staff on Extended Rear Face car seats, and then please also stock some in stores! A friend was told this week by a member of staff in one of your stores that "mothercare do not stock ERF seats because it is illegal to keep your baby rear facing after 1 year". Luckily my friend knows differently, but this kind of wrong information seems typical of the poor training of mothercare staff, sadly.

DD1 is 4 and she knows the mothercare brand, even though she can't read - this is a good thing as far as brand recognition goes for your company, I hope it stays in business. By listening to your potential customers through forums such as this, you are definitely heading the right way.

Don't worry - I have taken my antidote

Over the last 12 months, we have been doing a lot of training on maternity-bra fitting. We see this as a hugely important stage for the pregnant mum and a service that we should offer in all stores. We now have a trained bra-fitter in every store, every day of the week - over 2000 in total. Please let me know where we're not living up to your expectations, so we can see if there are any gaps, and re-train to your needs.

"Mum's Space"?

Oh that's a shame.

Re the colours for clothing....pink and blue are "the most popular" because that's what is sold! I think if you look on some of our many threads here on MN, you will see that parents of girls and boys want bright, pleasant colours....not a colour coded uniform based on a child's sex.

My ds is 6 now, so we are pretty much out of Mothercare - but when I've been in to look for presents for friends it just been grim tbh. Stores jammed with things so they are hard to get round, or find anything you need. Nasty clothes with even the baby stuff firmly in girl/boy segregation. Yuck maternity wear. And a feeling of grubiness.

You need to find your usp - and that has to be reestablishing yourselves as the go to store for baby and toddler stuff. Well trained staff who know their stock and babies. Clean, well equipped feeding and changing rooms. Good basic maternity wear. Fabulous bra fitting. Lovely bright, unisex, baby clothes.

@chenrob

Hi Simon

I ws jsut wondering, how mothercare plan to tackle customer queries quicker in the future? I have tried calling before, emailing and then finally resorted to social media, yet my 'issue' was not resolved.

It would be good to get a reply without having to sit on the phone for hours.

Thanks

Over the last few months, we have been working to ensure we have sufficient staff to answer your queries, and I am seeing a dramatic improvement in our response measures. Customer service is really important for us and we need to continue to get better and better at it. We have changed our delivery carriers and seen a dramatic reduction in issues and, with improving stock levels, we are getting better at giving you what you need. I recognise we're not there yet, but I feel we are making progress.

@motherofallmuddles

Hi Simon Thank you for coming to Mumsnet. I've been to your Edmonton Store and was really impressed by the changes, especially the Costa Coffee- good move. My concern is that I understand you are closing down the high street stores in favour of the out of town retail parks. I get that this works when choosing a car seat however aren't you just another retailler deserting the british high street ?

I am so glad you liked Edmonton. This is just the start and we have learnt many lessons from this we will be rolling out to all of our stores in the future. We see a future both in the high street and out of town, although I think the range we offer in both of these will be slightly different. All of the stores we have been closing on the high street are because they are not profitable and it is really important for the future of the business we make the UK profitable again. Most of these stores are actually ELC stores not Mothercares and where possible we are putting the ELC products into the nearest Mothercare store.

I grew up in a high street store, my father?s grocery shop, and so I have a real passion and interest for continuing to see these thrive.

I notice a similar question from Amberlav and agree we need our staff to be as good quality out of town as in the high street. We have great staff and will continue to up the training too.

I found the baby-care room awful (Dundee). If a mother (or indeed a dad) does want to sit and either bottle or breast feed their baby, they have to do so in the same room where babies nappies are being changed. This is the same as being fed in a toilet in my opinion. There was no privacy for a woman who may feel uncomfortable feeding in public.

Also - there was no where near enough room for 4 buggies in there (there were two changing stations and two chairs to sit on), so couldn't be used by 4 parents at the same time. The chairs were not comfortable at all - particually if you are breastfeeding - they were high and rigid, not low and comfortable enough for most mothers who are breastfeeding.

You need to have seperate feeding and changing rooms - would you eat your lunch in a toilet?

@bringonthesummer

How are you going to improve customer service in your stores ? I have experienced very rude staff in mothercare stores on several occasions including once in front of my Dd . Mothercare are in very competitive market and in mho good customer service can be make or break these days . I used to buy my daughter clothes in mothercare but she is past mothercare now and I do not like the boys clothes (Ds is 2 ) As others have said , look at John lewis , h&m and marks and spencer. Also not sure why but everything on mothercare website is always sold out ?!?

Love the name, cant wait for summer to come myself!
6 months ago we introduced a customer satisfaction survey called 'My Customer'. Every store now has measures every day on how satisfied their customers are. This has made a huge difference by holding a mirror up to our store staff and store managers. We are seeing significant improvements but recognise we need to get every customer experience 'highly satisfied'. We know it's good for us too because satisfied customers spend more!
We'll continue to monitor customer satisfaction and set the bar higher and higher.

@AmberLav

To follow-up on the deserting the High Street point, our local High Street branch is staffed by mums who have worked there for years, and are massively helpful, whereas our nearest "Large carpark" brand new version is entirely staffed by 20-year old girls who saunter around as it they have all the time in the world, and are pleasant but useless. If you are going to close the high street version, please move the great staff to the new big ones!

One good thing I've noticed recently is that most tills now seem to have (just) enough space for two buggies to pass each other, which was such a fundamental point to miss when most shoppers were there with buggies!

Hopefully the plans for the future include gift vouchers that can be used online, improvement to your computer systems so that ordering in store does not take hours, and sorting out your version of Collect in-store, as I had weeks of text messages telling me my item still needed to be collected, when it had been collected already.

I actually quite like the clothes, but I've only bought boys stuff, so can't comment on the girls clothes...

RE. gift vouchers

It's been a frustration for me that we haven't been able to do this. There have been technical issues. We are working through this now and hope to have it live in the coming months. I'm looking forward to sending online gift vouchers to my family too, as so many of them are having children at the moment.

@FrillyMilly

I live quite close to a large mothercare but rarely venture in. The problem I have is there seems to be no real brand identity. The clothes for example - the baby k range is awful trashy mini me clothes and the jools Oliver is more like Jojo maman bebe, the rest of the clothes range from classic style to character to similar to what is available in the supermarket. Pick a concept please.

The toys seriously needs a rebrand. Before I had children (4 and 1) the ELC was different to other toy shops. More educational toys, less plastic and great craft/messy play. As soon as mothercare took over all that went out the window and last time I went in it's blue for boys and pink for girls. Why does my daughter need a pink car garage? I would prefer it to be bright, colourful unisex toys especially since I have a daughter and a son. If this is something you have already done/doing you need to make it very clear as I am unaware of it.

I agree in the past we have been confusing for mums to shop in - in trying to offer everything to everybody, it has become confusing. We have some plans in development at the moment, to streamline our pricing and our clothes offering. You will see this begin to come in-store over the summer. However, we need to recognise we all have different tastes and at Mothercare we need to cater for all mums.

Hello

Just wanted to say that I echo a lot of what has already been raised on this thread and hope that you are able to take on board some of the comments.

However, I think it's really important that you hear when you are doing something right. So I would just like to congratulate your staff at the Eastbourne/Hampden Park store. I was in there yesterday and they couldn't have been more helpful or polite.

I am due to have DC4 in the next 3 weeks and so have been in and out of the store regularly over the last 9 months and have made all the larger purchases from the store purely because of the service I have recieved in there. My Mum is about to adopt a newborn baby which will bring her total to 9 children and she is also massively impressed with the service she has recieved and has continued to shop there for her baby.

Whilst the stores facilities could be better (seating, toilets etc) the staff are superb, always willing to find the best deal for me, point me in the direction of any offers, have organised home deliveries when things I want (car seat and isofix) haven't been in stock and they can always offer expert advice when asked.

Please, please do contact the store and let them know what a fabulous job they are doing. If there is any kind of in house company reward scheme then they deserve to win it. Highly, highly reccomended

Thank you for the response and I appreciate you need to cater to many parents with different tastes but if I go to M&S, next, H&M etc I know what to expect even if it is not all to my taste.

@AnneEyhtMeyer

I have two Mothercare stores near me - a high street one and an out of town one. Both have their issues.

The high street store has a lot of things upstairs, but no lift. When DD was still in her pushchair this meant that I just didn't bother, as the only advice was to leave her downstairs.

The out of town one has loads of items piled on the floor, making it difficult to get round and it looks scruffy. It reminds me of Woolworths before it closed.

The ELC toys are depressingly pink v blue. I went to get the Build IT Construction Starter Set, found it, took it to the till. The assistant engaged me in conversation about how good it was, and I told her I was sure DD would love it. As soon as she realised I was buying for a girl she was insistent that I needed the pink version. I told her it wasn't compulsory.

But forget all of the above, the thing I really want to say is this: I find the Baby K clothing range and the Myleene Klass branding very off-putting. Over-priced clothes and questionable styling for children. The tie-in with Myleene actually puts me off buying anything at all in Mothercare, it really seems to pull the shop downmarket.

One of the things I was aware of when I joined is that we had not invested in stores for a number of years. We have seen when we invest, for example in our Edmonton store, that mums love it. I am looking to invest in as many as I can, however I really need to get the turnaround in the UK completed first.