20th century beginnings

With 2008 marking our 50th anniversary in developing innovative child safety products for the nursery industry, there's no doubt that we have come a long way from the days of designing leather saddlery and kneepads for miners.

After we patented the design for a child safety harness with nylon webbing and easy-to-use clips in the 1960s, our product fast became a market leader, which in turn proved to be a successful springboard for a new generation of Cheethams to take over the running of the business.

Recession-proof progress

Since then, Clippasafe has made steady progress, and branched out into a child safety market that takes in everything from socket covers and baby carriers, to stair gates and fire guards. Today, I run the family business with my brother Russell from a factory in Nottingham, and we supply a wide range of branded and ownbrand products to major high-street retailers and independents.

To some extent, we could be considered recession-proof, as the demand for child safety and parenting issues is unlikely to diminish. But, naturally, we have to work hard to convey mutual interest from the trade and its consumers. Turnover is up on the first few months of last year, and we are looking to continue this growth steadily instead of opting for aggressive expansion. We appreciate that certain risks must be taken in order to gain further market share, but the right amount of time and research should be completed first.

Commitment to innovation

With over 100 child safety products across our Home Safety, Auto and Out & About ranges, we always strive to be the key innovators in the field when it comes to the design, development and manufacture of such products in the industry.

In order to innovate, experts in the retail industry have commented that we should be looking back to our heritage, be analysing our success, and modernising it to fit in with the shift in consumer spending patterns. The advent of technology and social networking can only help open up some great opportunities into further innovation.

Online presence key in today's society

An Internet presence has now become essential, as a contemporary, wellpresented website is expected from most organisations - hence why we spent over a year researching the market and developing our new site.

Gone are the days when a few pages on a site were enough. The need to monitor online performance is essential to ensure that all available sales and marketing opportunities are utilised. This requires long-term engagement with web users via social media tools if the nursery industry is to continue to grow, regardless of the economic situation.

My belief is that those on the commercial side of the nursery industry must play an active and helpful role in consumers' lives; giving more than just an end-to-end transactional experience - because offering advice, expertise and high levels of service is key to gaining brand loyalty, no matter who your customer base is.

More social interaction please

To this end, we have been busy looking into new and social media outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, You Tube and Flickr. These sites are not just for teenagers and cyber enthusiasts anymore - they are loved by parents, journalists, businesses and celebrities alike.

We now have a presence on the social networking site Facebook, where we have set up a national campaign to help make mums-to-be safer when travelling by car. And we have also embarked on a social messaging journey on Twitter, in order to communicate further with consumers and trade.

It is most certainly a learning curve with much to be explored, but it is one area of business that I believe nursery suppliers and retailers should be embracing. I am certainly no expert, but because of the flurry of excitement amongst Twitter users, bloggers and general ‘social media-ites', you can not help but want to learn more and be part of this phenomenon.

As I understand it, social media (or Web 2.0) refers to online tools that facilitate digital social interaction compared to traditional word-of-mouth communication. People are using it to connect with each other, tap into resources more quickly and efficiently, stay informed of news and developments within their interests and industries, and build alliances.

The maturity of Web 2.0

Like web usage in the nineties, social media is rapidly coming of age, and is considered a very powerful tool because of its multimedia and networking capabilities. Hitwise UK recently showed that 10.09 per cent of all UK Internet visits at the end of last year, were due to social networking and forums - it is now even estimated closer to 15 per cent.

To give an indication of the scale, social sites in the UK now account for one in every six minutes that the average Internet user spends online. Visits to Twitter have increased by 631 per cent over the last year, and 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook - almost half using it every day. These are all avenues that we as an industry must take notice of.

Exciting prospects ahead

From a business that is steeped in heritage and family values, Clippasafe is looking forward to seeing what the next few years will bring to the fore when it comes to engaging with each other further via the great World Wide Web.

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