Bambino Mio: How Grimsby businesswoman cleaned up sustainable nappy business after administration

Last year, she led the acquisition and turnaround of Bambino Mio, restoring the sustainable nappy brand to profitability within just eight months of purchasing it from administration.

This followed the 2019 acquisition of the distressed British wholesaler SRS Leisure (Swimrite Supplies). Under Beach’s leadership, the SRS team was integrated into Splash About, safeguarding jobs and enabling a strategic rebrand to focus on combined offerings.

Beach explains: “I’ve always admired Bambino Mio from afar. We’re both in the same industry and focused on babies, sustainability and performance-led, purposeful products.

“As we looked at how we should grow the Splash About business, we had just agreed, in September, to buy out our distributor in Australia and set up our own trading arm there.

"We concluded the deal in November and then an information memorandum came across my desk for Bambino Mio.”

Beach admits she had reservations at first: “When I initially saw the trading results, I thought ‘this might be too far gone – I’m not sure if we can turn it around’.

"But once we got into the due diligence, I spotted there were some quick opportunities to change the trajectory of the business.”

Bambino Mio was founded in 1997 by husband-and-wife team Guy and Jo Schanschieff in Northamptonshire.

Inspired by their travels and a desire to offer a more sustainable alternative to disposable nappies, they grew the business from a small home-based startup into a global brand selling reusable nappies in more than 50 countries.

A pivotal moment came in 2018, when BBC documentary The Green Planet brought widespread attention to plastic pollution in the world’s waterways.

Beach says: “That drove home to many people the damage that disposable nappies do to the environment.”

The pandemic further accelerated interest in sustainable alternatives.

“As everybody rushed to stockpile toilet paper, people also panicked about disposable nappies,” she adds.

“We saw this humongous demand from people who wouldn’t normally make the switch to reusables.”

In 2021, Bambino Mio secured a £13m investment from private equity firm BGF to accelerate its international growth and brand expansion.

The deal, which saw BGF take a 35 per cent stake, marked the largest investment in a UK reusable nappy company.

“They brought in a more corporate team and invested heavily in infrastructure and marketing, building on the back of peak Covid trading, with the belief that the sales would continue on the same trajectory,” says Beach.

“But post-Covid, with the cost-of-living crisis and everybody returning to work, the market contracted and the business didn’t pivot quickly enough to match what was happening in the sales line.”

Splash About acquired the business one month after it entered administration, with Beach applying a three-step approach to drive the turnaround while retaining the existing team.

“Stage one involved turning off the loss-making activities,” she says.

“We brainstormed with the team – as they’ve been on the ground throughout the journey – asking ‘what’s gone wrong, what are the quick wins, what should we do differently?’ We then prioritised what I thought would actually work from that feedback.”

In the second stage, Beach identified what was truly selling, conducting a deep dive into the company’s financials. We looked closely at where money was being spent and whether we could bring certain functions back in-house, drawing on the talent within the Splash About business,” she says.

“For any marketing campaigns we weren’t getting a return on investment for, we made the decision to turn them off until we understood what was happening in the market.”

Step three centred on external market analysis.

“We rang all the retailers who no longer stocked the products to understand why, and engaged with consumer groups and parents to pinpoint exactly what people want.

“Just last week, we launched the newly reinvented products, and within that short time, we’ve already seen a 30 per cent uplift in sales.”

Beach has ambitious plans: “I would love Bambino Mio to become a global leader in potty training,” she says. “The average age for potty training has risen from two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half, and 25-30 per cent of children start primary school not fully trained. This isn’t just a UK issue – it’s happening across the Western world. It’s a problem we can help solve.”

Beach highlights the key warning signs of financial distress she has learned to recognise throughout her career: “It starts happening quite slowly. Instead of growth there starts to be a decline in year-on-year sales.

“If a business is reliant on stock, cashflow will start to become an issue. You’ll see people micromanaging cash. When sales start to peter out it’s a sign of deeper issues.

“In a decline, you’ve got to make hard decisions quickly, such as exiting an underperforming product category. Spotting the signs is easy; the real skill comes from making the decision to do something about it.”

This article first appeared in our sister title, Yorkshire Business Insider.