C and over the 12 months of opening we tripled sales,” said Mardon. Since then, the business has closed its Leichhardt store and moved to a large format 1000sqm premises in Camperdown, which doubles as a head office. It also operates an online store. Mardon told Inside Retail PREMIUM the business is now looking for budding mumpreneurs and entrepreneurs to tap into the $3 billion baby market under Minimee’s business model. “We feel like we’re at the stage where we’ve perfected the business model and we know what works in the baby business, so we want to give mumpreneurs or people who are really family oriented who have wanted to set up a baby business, but don’t want the risk of the unknown and the difficulty of breaking into the market,” she said. The franchise offering will push Minimee’s flagship store model of 400sqm, and initially focus on NSW, but Mardon says the business will consider opening a number of different formats in different locations, depending on the opportunity. “We won’t open 50 stores in 12 months, it may be a few stores until the end of the year. We are taking a considered approach and want to find the right fit.” Australians’ total expenditure on baby products and services has increased by 14.5 per cent over the past five years, with parents spending an average of $10,000 on their baby in the first year. Minimee stocks more than 100 baby and child brands, including BabyBjorn, Bugaboo, Stokke, Mamas&Papas, Joolz, and Oeuf, and offers shop in shop concepts to some of its more renowned international brands. “The thing with the baby market is it’s very difficult to get an account with the big brands, there are barriers to entry because the big international brands are in huge demand so you just can’t get an account with them easily, but we’ve got all of the major brands, we don’t have a brand that is missing,” said Mardon. This story first appeared in Inside Retail PREMIUM issue 2039. To subscribe, click here.