Growing company looks at home and abroad

Tucked away in a corner of West Yorkshire, lies one of the region’s biggest retail success stories.

David and Luisa Scacchetti, founders of nursery brand Mamas & Papas, have gone from importing their first Italian pram for their daughter Amanda in 1979 to a turnover of more than £135m and worldwide expansion.

The company designs and develops products for the nursery market, including prams, car seats, nursery furniture, toys and clothes. It has attracted a number of celebrity customers including Alicia Keys, Gwen Stefani and Sarah Jessica Parker.

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Its Huddersfield head office is a hive of creativity and an explosion of colour. Everything is done from here: from a designer picking up a pen through to quality control. With 500 staff in the head office alone, it’s a vast operation which continues to expand but it still retains its family values.

Mr and Mrs Scacchetti remain at the top of the business and their two daughters, Amanda, 32, and Olivia, 27, are both directors. Pictures of Mamas & Papas through the years adorn the walls to remind staff of where the business started.

This year Mamas & Papas will undergo a big global push. It had already set up operations in the United States, Canada and Japan but it now plans to open in eight new countries within the next year: Russia, South Africa, Singapore, South Korea, Lebanon, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Overseas operations currently account for 15-20 per cent of its turnover, a number which is expected to grow significantly.

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During 2012, a total of 45 new stores and concessions will open, starting with Beirut in April and Russia and South Africa in the summer. The expansion will be achieved through a mixture of franchise and distributor partnerships.

Deputy chief executive Tim Maule says: “Many of the markets we’re looking at have rapidly growing economies, very strong birth rates and want to be engaged with brands like Mamas & Papas.”

While much of the company expansion will be fuelled by overseas growth, the UK will see an additional store opening every 10 weeks from April onwards, the first of which will be in Thurrock, just outside London.

Mamas & Papas has 62 UK stores, including six in Yorkshire. It is also in talks to open a store in the new Trinity Leeds shopping centre, due to open next year.

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UK employee numbers are expected to grow by 10 per cent in the next 12 months, particularly at its head office. The firm currently employs 1,700 staff in total.

It is also continuing to invest £5m a year in research and development.

Mr Maule says: “What’s important for us here in Yorkshire is that this is the hub and we’re going to continue to invest, particularly in our product development teams here and in research and development because what makes us attractive to other countries around the world is great product.”

The company works across nine diverse product areas from maternity wear to gifts, prams and toys. One of its best selling products is the Baby Snug – an infant positioner, which supports the child as it plays or feeds.

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Mamas & Papas is also seeing a trend towards personalisation products. “We have a little imprint kit which parents can use to make an imprint of their baby’s foot or hand,” says Mr Maule. “We have sold tens of thousands of those in the last year because people want a special memory.”

The company has invested tens of thousands of pounds in its testing equipment.

The testing laboratory, which was set up in 2010, looks like a multi-gym for nursery products. In one corner a pram is repeatedly going up and down a set of stairs, in another, a baby bouncer is being put through its paces.

“This area simulates the life-cycle of a product,” says Mr Maule. He points to a pushchair, which is being repeatedly folded by a machine. “We will fold that stroller thousands of times to make sure it does what mum expects it to do every time it folds. That’s quite an onerous test.”

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He adds: “During the whole product life-span there’s constant testing to see if there’s anything we can do to improve it. We also test if we get customer feedback on a particular issue to see if its a one-off or something we need to investigate further. That’s the only way you build a reputation for quality.”

He adds: “We can test all our products to the American, European and Australian standards. That’s a big important thing as we go global.”

Mamas & Papas has also invested £1.5m in a new warehouse management system at its warehouse in Huddersfield, which Mr Maule says will form the backbone of the overseas expansion. But there is no getting away from the fact that Mamas & Papas is competing in a very tough retail environment. In the year ended April 3, 2011, group turnover increased by 7.3 per cent to £135.2m, but it reported a pre-tax loss of £1.6m, down from a £4.7m profit the previous year after it was hit by rising costs in the Far East and a subdued UK economic climate.

Mr Maule says: “During that period we chose to take on those costs ourselves by not passing prices on.

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“We had to take a short-term view on the cost of the management warehouse system. It has changed the processing time of our fashion products from four weeks to five days. That means there is a cost saving for us.

“As a family business you can say, we won’t get the benefit in that 18-month period but in the future we will see a big benefit. That’s what we did.”

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