est in our industry over the past five years on the part of private groups and larger companies.” Hinze and his wife started the business in March 2000 as a small store in Noosa, following the birth of their first child. “We had just had a baby and went looking for products. There was nothing on the Sunshine Coast and very little in Brisbane so we came up with the idea of opening a small baby shop and that grew into the large format it is now,” Hinze says. “I’m proud to say we are still here after 15 years and are the original owners and founders.” There are now seven stores and a distribution centre, as well as an e-commerce site. The business focuses on the zero to two years market and covers up to four year olds. Preferred locations are within homemaker centres and two stores are located in NSW with the remainder in Queensland. The last few years have seen buyers of competing companies looking to create a national footprint, Heinz reports, so his business was between two heavyweights going head to head. “They opened up some nine stores against our seven in the space of 12 months, so it was pretty hard for us to make adjustments to keep our head above water for a while,” he said. One of those companies has since gone under and the market has consolidated again. “It’s not so cut throat as it was 18 months ago. As to expanding, I think we will – probably another six to 12 months of consolidating and then we can go back to the original plan.” Bubs Baby Shops stores are around 1000sqm to 1500sqm. “You need to have that size to be able to have a decent range. There’s around 100 prams you have to have on the floor, 20 to 30 nursery settings – it’s quite hard to go any smaller than that and do it properly.” He points to Baby Kingdom as having a similar model to Bubs Baby Shops; a family- owned business, Baby Kingdom has been in the industry a little longer than Bubs Baby Shops and has three stores in Sydney. An example of how Heinz could have developed his business is Baby Bunting. “Baby Bunting is the largest in the industry. They started as family-owned stores in Melbourne and expanded, and got bought out and are now some 27 stores, with stores in every state. They are looking to float towards the end of the year.” Years ago a franchise model was developed by Bubs Baby Shops, but it was decided to allow the franchisees to buy out and rebadge, and retain the company-owned stores. “We will keep those two NSW stores, but any further expansion will be in Queensland,” Hinze says. He also sees babies’ and kids’ products retailers attracting more overseas interest in the near future. European companies that were fairly resistant to Australia previously are now a lot more open to it now, he believes, because of the state of their economy over there. “Now they’re looking to make up the deficit they’ve experienced in Europe any way they can. Our industry is ready to take that on over the next couple of years.” As a result, Hinze believes the industry will see a lot more European investors as well as brands. This story first appeared in Inside Retail PREMIUM issue 2042. To subscribe, click here.