Sage pop-up store winner #3 – Katie Hanton-Parr, Baboodle

Small Enterprise sat down with Katie Hanton-Parr, co-founder of Baboodle, the UK’s first child tools subscription platform, and one of many three winners of the Small Enterprise x Sage pop-up store competitors.

Baboodle was one among three successful companies chosen by our professional panel to occupy a pop-up store house in London’s busy Oxford Road earlier this month.

Baboodle rents short-lived and costly child tools to oldsters. Gadgets are delivered straight to the client with a minimal one-month rental interval. Baboodle’s catalogue primarily caters for kids aged 0-2 – an age when infants outgrow gadgets at a very alarming price. Each child wants a pram, a highchair, a provider, a crib and a cot – and the checklist goes on. These requirements are outgrown and changed a number of instances throughout these early years. Certainly, every week, the UK spends £7 million on shortly outgrown brand-new child and nursery tools.

Katie Hanton-Parr sees the advantages of Baboodle as being primarily sustainable and likewise saving mother and father cash. It faucets into the round economic system in addition to the growing development for fogeys to purchase second-hand relating to nursery and child tools.

Katie Hanton-Parr arrange Baboodle in October 2022 after having hr first child the 12 months earlier than. She bought the thought for Baboodle when making an attempt to equipment out her child in an environmentally acutely aware manner and on a shoestring. That meant hours spent trawling marketplaces, accumulating child gear, cleansing them and, on a number of events, having to fix it when its second-hand situation was worse than described. Ultimately, they ended up having to resell half of what they purchased. “I assumed, okay, there should be a greater manner to do that,” she says.

What’s Baboodle?

Baboodle is a child tools rental platform for all of the short-term or longer-terms gadgets that you simply don’t know should you’re going to make use of for very lengthy. It’s only a manner of saving mother and father cash, problem and time whereas being a bit extra sustainable choice in comparison with shopping for as effectively.

The place did the thought for Baboodle come from?

The thought got here from having a child and dwelling by that first 12 months of that fixed churn of merchandise and waste and all the effort that comes with that. It’s very a lot a lived expertise led me to the thought.

How lengthy has the corporate been going?

We launched in October 2022, so we’ve been going for about eight months now. It’s all very recent. The shopper is so prepared for this. It feels very well timed and has been getting a number of optimistic suggestions, which makes you be ok with what you do.

Why did you wish to enter the SmallBusiness x Sage pop-up store competitors?

I simply thought, that’s the proper alternative for us to have a bodily presence. We’d been occupied with pop-ups anyway. Plus Oxford Road is the hub of mass consumerism!

What’s your expertise been of the pop-up store and have you ever loved your self?

It’s been actually good. You get on the market and also you chat to prospects and get an concept of what the client needs. That’s been good. It’s additionally been good being right here with different companies. I’ve met a great deal of attention-grabbing individuals.

What recommendation would you’ve for anyone considering of coming into subsequent 12 months’s Sage pop-up competitors? Ought to they go for it?

100 per cent. All of the assist round it has been sensible as effectively – all of the workshops, it’s a little bit of a gamechanger. You gained’t even realise for a bit how essential it’s been … it’s a trickle-down impact, so, completely. Go for it.

Extra on the Sage pop-up store competitors

Sage pop-up store winner #1 – Deborah Maclaren, LoveReading – Deborah Maclaren, managing director of LoveReading, sits down with SmallBusiness to speak about what successful one of many three coveted spots within the Sage pop-up store competitors means to her

Sage pop-up store winner #2 – Katie Cross, Cake or Demise – Katie Cross, director of vegan bakery Cake or Demise, sits down with Small Enterprise to inform us about her expertise of successful the Sage pop-up competitors