Mothercare shutting 107 stores

megzmam

MrsCrafty wrote: »

I think people have cottoned on to the fact that they are way overpriced.

agreed !! only time i shop in there is with money off vouchers or sale time. full price is astronomical price in there imo xx

shellsuit

chewmylegoff wrote: »

i don't have any kids (and if i did i would have handed them over to the nanny, with the instructions "bring it back when it's 21"), so i may be missing something obvious here, but....if i did have kids, and i already had a pram/pushchair, it wouldn't bother me that i couldn't push my pram/pushchair up the stairs to look at the other prams/pushchairs which i clearly didn't need due to the pram/pushchair i was pushing.

It wasn't just prams and pushchairs upstairs like I said in my post and some people with prams do shop for pushchairs when they want something a bit smaller.

They also shop for nappies, wipes, bottles, formula, bathing stuff, feeding stuff, maternity pads, nipple pads etc, which were all on the first floor.

Unless you only wanted clothes or were prepared to leave your baby on it's own, you were stuffed, which was my point.

pbouk

are they alot more expensive for childrens clothing than other stores? or are parents buying online now? i am not a parent so i wouldnt really know about mothercare, but i would have assumed they had a big proportion of the market.

shellsuit

pbouk wrote: »

are they alot more expensive for childrens clothing than other stores? or are parents buying online now? i am not a parent so i wouldnt really know about mothercare, but i would have assumed they had a big proportion of the market.

They're more expensive than Next, so I prefer Next as the clothes last and wash really well, meaning you can bang them all on eBay once they're finished with.

Nothing wrong with supermarket babies and kids clothes either, which is where I bought/buy a lot.

I found the sizings for Mothercare clothes small too.

We bought the babies pram, cot and mattress and some bedding from Mothercare as they had a baby plan which meant we could pay in installments.

We bought his pushchair from Mothercare too as it was the only place with a large variety we could test out.

For people expecting or having a little baby, Mothercare is good as you can get everything in the one place, but once all those items are bought, it's so much cheaper to shop elsewhere.

Graham_Devon

pbouk wrote: »

are they alot more expensive for childrens clothing than other stores? or are parents buying online now? i am not a parent so i wouldnt really know about mothercare, but i would have assumed they had a big proportion of the market.

The clothes are higher priced when you line them up next to tesco, asda etc. However, I must admit, although I bought many clothes in tesco, the clothes are nicer in Mothercare. I wouldn't say overpriced, as the clothes are different.

You could go and find even nicer clothes in mamas and papas, and call them expensive. It's all relative.

However, tesco, asda etc clothes do the job. All that's needed is some comfortable clothes that the knee's don't give way on within a week.

But it is nice to have some "nicer" clothes from mothercare for occasions.

As for other stuff, buggies, cots, car seats etc. Tesco often do not beat mothercare on price in my experience comparing like for like. Especially with the 10% off vouchers. Plus with Tesco currently, unless your store is absolutely mahoosive, you can't actually try buggies and car seats out first. Mothercare let me play around with my buggy, make sure it went in the boot etc etc etc before I bought it. I could maybe have got it £20 cheaper elsewhere, but then I would have to get it delivered etc. So I walked out with the buggy that day and can buy all the accesories at Mothercare if I want them. Plus a 3 year warranty which beat Tesco's and everywhere else hands down as their warranties are just the standard 1 year.

That is the reason I wouldn't like to see my local close down. They will regain my custom for that reason. Although my custom isn't massive, and I probably don't help them out as I buy the core bits elsewhere.

Tesco will be cheaper on essentials. Nappies, creams, feeding etc.

Graham_Devon

Oh and one other thing.

I do feel as if people only focus on the ticket price, especially with mobile phone gadgets now telling you the item is £5 cheaper on amazon.

What many people don't realise is that, with some shops, such as Halfords, John Lewis, Mothercare, the ticket price often includes extended warranties covered by the retailer themselves.

While the consumer is on the quest of finding the cheapest possible item, aftersales, warranties etc appear to be going out of the window. We'll end up with loads of bankrupt stock poundland type stores in the UK in 10 years time if the consumer continues on it's destructive path of always finding the absolute cheapest ticket price, disregarding everything else.

A great example is my 3 year warranty on the buggy for just £20 more than I could have bought it on Amazon (plus walk out with it straight away instead of having to arrange deliveries). The 5 year warranty on the TV from John Lewis for £35 more. All good in my book.

If my buggy breaks, i can go into Mothercare, exchange it like for like, and walk out with anew buggy.

Buy it online, I'd be without a buggy while I went through the hassle of sending it back, awaiting processing, awaiting delivery of new one etc.

ILW

I do have to agree that the cheapest price is not always the best deal. In many cases a retailer (particularly on line) will shave all costs to come in at the lowest purchase price, this is quite often at the expense of customer service ,which does cost money to provide.

SingleSue

pbouk wrote: »

are they alot more expensive for childrens clothing than other stores? or are parents buying online now? i am not a parent so i wouldnt really know about mothercare, but i would have assumed they had a big proportion of the market.

The only thing I ever bought in Mothercare over 3 children was a blanket...and then only because it was in the sale.

I took one look at the prices and went into shock.

Edit - Re rock bottom prices, we played one shop off against another and got the reductions that way and made sure we still had warranties (cash was king back then). As it was, our buggy/pram system was a last season model (as in 1992 model and we were buying in early 1993), so was less than half price. We didn't care it was the previous years colour, all we cared was that it had a removable carrycot and could then be changed into a buggy for when the baby was older....all told, it cost us £100 (instead of £250) and lasted us through all 3 boys - youngest was still in it at age 6! Nowhere else could beat that price, so the local Co-op got our money.

Generali

lemonjelly wrote: »

I think that it is idiotic parents who treat their kids as dolls & want to dress them in a particular way, or even to match their outfit who care about the names etc on kids clothes...

Incredibly there are people that think we're idiots for spending £100 on a ticket for the match, a train ticket, a pie and a pint just to watch 22 blokes chase a ball around a pitch!

I bet they're the same idiots that spend all that money on kids' clothes.

ninky_2

1984ReturnsForReal wrote: »

Is that everything on the high street apart from the Supermarkets & DIY?

Ooooooo lovely, the state of UK shopping to come...

my local high street is alive and well - always busy and many small businesses. the reason? a very diverse selection of locals largely due to immigration. internet and drive-to stores just can't meet all their needs / respond quickly enough.

if you live in an area of farily stagnant / predictable needs, competition between capitalists will gradually weed out some competitors and whittle the race down to a couple of front runners who then have market power.

there's no point getting all nostaligic for the british high street of the 1950s. it's not going to come back.