BEST GUIDE TO START A BABY & KIDS SHOP

 

The Baby & Kids Store/Shop is a business outlet designed to focus on the supplies of babies, growing children, and sometimes expectant mothers. These supplies can range from casual /outing wear, baby wrappers, diapers, petroleum jelly, baby bibs, bathing sets, feeding/sterilizing sets, etc.

The Baby & Kids Store business is a very lucrative and evergreen niche. It’s not limited to an event, season, or date. It retains its profitability at all times. According to the United Nations Estimates (2020 – 2070), approximately, 385,000 children are born daily; this implies that we have more than 14 million babies yearly starting from the year 2020. As such, the demand for baby products will remain high and promising.

Available Niches  

A niche is defined as a segment, subset, or smaller part of a larger related market. There are lots of niches available when it comes to the mother, baby & kids business. Every niche has lots of varieties and brands that come with it. You will need enough business funds to have miscellaneous brands of each product especially if your business is home-based. This is why defining your niche is very important.

Listed are some of the baby and kids niches available:

Diaper care - This includes diapers, diaper creams, diaper bags, baby wipes, and dirty diaper bags.

Baby Cosmetics: This includes:  baby soaps, cream, Shampoo, ointment, lotion, oil, powder, petroleum jelly, Thermometer, etc

Baby Feeding Essentials – Feeding sets, sterilizing units, burp cloths, bottle brush, vacuum flask, breast pump, Baby food, etc.

Nursery Supplies - mattress, baby cradle, baby crawling knee pad, bed sheets, etc.

Baby Gifts/Toys/Furniture/Care & Travel Accessories

Medicine

Baby Boutique –  Baby Dress, Casual/outing clothes, mother and daughter matching sets, sweater, etc

Baby Accessories – baby shoes, bags, kids’ glasses, wristwatches, children's socks, pantyhose, underwear, etc.

Maternity/Antenatal  Supplies

Mother, Baby & Kids Shop: Essential Steps

Get a Name

Get a cool and catchy name that your customers will love and remember easily for your baby and kid store business. Get a jotter and write as many names as you can think of, thereafter, you make your choice from the list of names.

Construct A Business Plan

A Business Plan is a document that explains in detail a company's objectives (in this case, your Baby & Kids Shop) and how it plans to achieve its goals. A good business plan guides you through every step of starting and managing your business. It helps you to determine your business's future financial requirements and attracts investors and lenders as well. The importance of a good business plan cannot be over-emphasized. But if you don’t intend to start big or you’re just test-running to see if it’s going to pay off, this step may not be necessary.

Register Your Business

Registering your business with the state or local government makes it a legitimate business, helps to eliminate suspicion, establishes customers' trust, and extends your scope of operation. With your registered business legal documents, you are able to open a business account easily with your choice bank; as well apply for small loans, grants, and contracts from the government. Investors and lenders will not hesitate to come in. You stand to enjoy some supplier discounts and wholesale reserve rates that are strictly for legitimate business.

Source for Business Fund

Business Funds in this context are the money you intend to invest in or start your business with. Your area of interest (Niche) has to come into consideration here. If you’ve multiple niches to cover as defined in your business plan, get the money handy because you’ll need varieties of all the items you intend to sell to make your shop spicy and alluring. This implies that the size of your store depends on how much you invest in it.

You can source funds from your individual servings, friends, relatives, commercial bank loans, government grants or subsidies, etc.

Location

When renting a shop/store for Children’s Fashion, it's advisable to get a store in an open and easily accessible place so that all and sundry can locate the store with ease. This will increase sales and fast growth of the store.

Renovate and Shelve The Store

At this stage, repainting, installing light fixtures, and mounting shelves in the store come into play. For Baby Shop, go for soft and gender-neutral colors e.g. orange, yellow, white, brown, and green, etc. A well-renovated store is usually attractive and welcoming. It increases efficiency as well, promotes your business, and instills confidence in your customers.

Look Out for Wholesale Distributors

Buying directly from wholesale distributors is of great benefit because you buy at a cheaper rate from them since they buy directly from the manufacturers. You tend to enjoy some distributor discounts,  reserve rates, and a lot more. Always look out for them whenever you go to the Wholesale marketplace to buy goods for your store.

Please note, whenever you buy goods expensive, you in turn sell at a costlier price. When your prices are higher than your competitors, it drives your customers away.

Stock The Store

When stocking the store as a newbie, go for genuine, quality, comfortable, permeable, skin and eco-friendly items. Prioritize your stock; consider the newborn essentials, seasonal items, festive period demands, etc. Recall that, your target audiences here are parents and kids, once in a while, add some items that will get the attention of mothers especially.

Organized The Goods

This is a very important step. Arrange all the items in categories to ease accessibility. You give every item in your store a high chance of being sold fast when you organize and display them very well. Avoid congestion and disorganization at all times because they have a tendency to reduce your sales.

Pricing The Goods

There are several pricing strategies, whichever pricing strategy or model you adopt, always ensure that your Selling Price covers your overhead expenses so that you will not run at a loss. Also, endeavor to provide excellent customer service because it promotes the effectiveness of any pricing strategy.

Regular Record Keeping

This has to do with keeping accurate track of the incoming and outgoing cash or cash flow of your business. This is a crucial part of any business that must attain its height and it is useful for both legal and financial management purposes as well. It helps you to see at a glance the performance of your business and projects for the future. You can download accounting software for small businesses on your computer or bookkeeping apps on your phone for consistent recording. I advise you to select from the high-rated ones.

Promote Your Business

As a newbie, this step is also very important and necessary because it will help you to gain recognition fast, traffic, and sales increase. You will need to create awareness through your family, and friends, Television & Radio announcements, and Social Media like Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. 

Let everyone around and beyond your business environment get to know what your stand for by printing and distributing Posters and flyers online and offline. You can use Canva to design your logo and promo materials. Also, once in a while, use your discretion to give discounts when & where it's necessary.

If you have any questions about setting up your Mother, Baby & Kids Shop or concerning any of the steps discussed above, leave your comment below. I will be very glad to offer you advice from my well of experience.