Gift Focus - May/Jun 2018 (Issue 107)

Why did you decide to start up tiddlers & nippers? Two reasons! Having designed a range of baby tracking journals that we truly believed in (and felt were better than anything on the market) we really wanted a platform to help get them out to other parents who might benefit. Secondly, as a dad of young children I’d been striving for a way to work flexibly that would allow more time with my family, and so tiddlers & nippers was born. What challenges did you overcome as a new company? Having spent nearly 15 years working in banking and finance (with zero retail/ consumer experience), everything was a challenge! But outside of all the normal start- up stuff, probably the biggest was (and still is) generating exposure for our brand/ products, without breaking the bank. Tell us a bit about your product offering. What makes you different? Our flagship product is an award-winning range of baby/ toddler daily tracking journals, developed to record feeding, sleeping, changing patterns and milestones. We’ve recently launched a family organiser (calendar and diary format) and a small baby/ child home and travel range. Our approach to growing the business has been guided by the idea that innovative, user-friendly baby/parenting products should couple seamlessly with stylish and functional design and if there’s a problem to be solved, so much the better. How has your range evolved? Are there plans to branch into other product areas? Our product evolution has very much been influenced by our experiences as parents and the products that we used and found to be super useful, not so useful, or had real potential (if only better designed). We’re currently working on a baby’s first-year memory book (to be launched later this year) and currently in the process of rolling out a small range of baby/kids clothing and bags/ accessories for parents, all of which will be available in our range of artist designed print patterns. How do you market your business? Do you attend any trade shows? A large amount of our marketing is online and predominantly via social media, we also advertise and have been featured in quite a few print titles (predominantly the gifting and baby/parent spaces). We also regularly work with parent bloggers. What’s your proudest achievement to date? That has to be the fact that after just over a year since we launched, the business is able to support itself. The baby journals also won a few awards (in the baby and parenting space) last year, which we were super pleased about. What are your hopes for the future? More of the same please! To continue the organic growth we’ve seen over the last 12 months, increase product exposure and turnover, as well as becoming more widely known in the parent/ baby and gifting sectors. Rob Cook, owner of tiddlers & nippers, talks to Gift Focus about the company’s innovative, user-friendly baby products – designed from personal experiences – all to make parent’s lives that bit easier T: +44 (0)7718 650 686 E: hello@tiddlersandnippers.com W: tiddlersandnippers.com on the right track 122 giftfocus