Podcast Overview
Five minutes. That’s how long it took Laura Davies to agree a deal to buy Scandiborn, a competitor three times the size of her own business. Making it work took the next two years.
Richard Hill sits down with Laura, founder of The Kid Collective, whose story starts 18 years ago in a spare room selling reusable nappies, learning eCommerce from online forums with no maternity leave.
When her loyal community kept moving on after 18 months, she launched The Kid Collective to keep them longer, tested what stuck and landed on toys. After the eco market crashed post-Covid, Laura sold the nappy brand, went all in, and in May 2024 acquired Scandiborn. In July 2025, both businesses moved into one warehouse over a single weekend, with zero web downtime.
This isn’t a polished success story. Their first joint peak “hit us like a ton of bricks.” The backlog passed 8,000 orders, stock had nowhere to go and paid marketing had to be scaled back. Laura’s line in the sand was every Christmas order out by 22 December without a single cancellation and they did it.
Richard and Laura also dig into choosing which brand partners to go all in on, why the Nuremberg Toy Fair matters every January, merging two teams onto Shopify without losing the culture, and how two brands in one market avoid cannibalising each other, from pricing to Meta strategy.
If you’re weighing up an acquisition, running more than one brand or bracing for an untested peak, this one is packed with hard-won lessons.
Listen to the full episode now, and don’t forget to hit subscribe.
Topics Covered
00:00 Introduction: Laura Davies, The Kid Collective and Scandiborn
01:10 Choosing which brand partners to go all in on, exclusives and the Nuremberg Toy Fair
07:00 From reusable nappies in the spare room to launching The Kid Collective
09:50 Buying Scandiborn, three times the size, in five minutes, and merging into one warehouse
14:30 The first joint peak: an 8,000+ order backlog and the 22 December deadline
18:50 Migrating to Shopify Plus and structuring teams without losing the culture
22:30 Fast-fire round and the Rainbows Hospice fundraising partnership
28:45 Running two brands: SEO, paid media, pricing and avoiding cannibalisation
36:20 What’s next: range expansion and moving beyond a flat structure
38:20 Book recommendation and where to find Laura
hi Laura how we doing hi Richard I'm very well thank you
thank you for having me it's great to be here no problem at all
I really appreciate you coming in I'm really looking forward to this
um as a um father of
to fairly grown up children
but um looking at some of the different products
um you sell brought back a lot of very very very
fond and very very special memories so I'm excited to to get you on
and to have a chat yeah thank you now
there's a lot of areas I think we could cover so I'm just trying to
sort of bring my uh focus in and I think um
obviously you've got a couple of brands
and we're gonna dig into how one became two and so forth
sounds like a children thing when I say that but haha
um but I think um
you know a lot of our lessons and a lot of our clients
you know they have a lot of different brands
that they work with and I know you have maybe 50 ish brands yeah plus
but I know there's one or two that you're really really well known for
yeah um and I'm curious how you sort of
decide or calculate which one is to go so more it all in on
and obviously some obvious things that come to mind
you know around margin and relationships and in
the way the way you come about them
but I'm really interested from your side
of of the of the business
how you decide on which ones to sort of go all in on
yeah absolutely so yeah we operate across two um e commerce
platforms so the Kid Collective and scandiborn so they both have
slightly different um propositions
so across yeah you're correct across both
brands we probably work with about 50 or 60 different um
toy brands and nursery furniture yeah kids decor etcetera etcetera um
and yeah we absolutely have some brands that are absolutely
core to to what we do in our business and um
lots of different factors
go into those purchasing decisions
and then you we're really really relationship focused so
the partnerships that are meaningful to us
we absolutely value those and and you know
we work really hard on those so um in terms of
the brands that like she said that we go all in on yeah um it
it can be
to do with lots of different factors such as the depth of the range
yeah um obviously margin will play a role
yeah um but also how we work with them as a partner so
we we love we absolutely
love working on exclusive so if we can get an exclusive launch we
we will go all out we'll put everything into it and we love that
so and that's really important to us
um and then yeah just that collaborative working so you're looking at
marketing you know what can we do together
and sometimes it might be a case that
we take a brand we we we find a new product that we go
our customers are gonna love that yeah and we've introduced brands
into the UK market and
we we we build that we build that for the brand
but yeah that obviously adds massive value to
us you're bringing that that brand to the UK yeah in in some instances
yeah yeah absolutely
you're getting approached quite a lot then from sort of
new new brands to the UK
we do but we we're also we have a keen eye so you know we do keep
a close eye on things like social media like what are our customers
talking about yeah we look at the US market you know
Nuremberg is a huge toy fair that we visit every January
yeah absolutely massive five days sore feet
in Nuremberg in Nuremberg it sounds like a good trip it's it is mega
we come home very tired but we all but that's that's where
any newness that's where it's gonna be and that's where we'll spot it
so um so yeah if we can bring newness to the market love that um
but then also we'll work with with some brands that are already
really established in the UK market so things like Tony's
or Yoto audio players um so yeah we we kind of work in
different ways with with the different brands that we work with
um and it evolves all the time as well you know nothing stays
stable so that's the other
good reason to go to these expos
and get out of the country
you may be in and go and see what other people are doing and
oh I didn't even know this thing or
you might have seen a little snippet on social media and then
you meet the
the guys that run it and you know these are really cool guys and
people and oh yeah and nobody in the UK
OK opportunity bit more margin maybe if you're exclusive and so forth
absolutely um yeah I I
remember the days I used to sell
computer components before I had the agency for 10 years
and I used to go to um a couple of expos
very regularly Vegas and in Germany
and that was where we would sort of
get a bit of an edge I used to think as well where we go and find and
now in this agency I do the same
obviously not for product I go to a lot a lot of SEO conferences
but out of the UK I make a point of going out of the UK
going off so I go off 2 3 times a year
and learn meet people and hire people and
hi consultants and people all different
all different things and I find that just gives us a little slip
one of our little not so secret'cause we talk about
not'cause we talk about it every fifth episode but
but it helps isn't it 100% I think um
you know a lot of business people
you know it can be a smidge of a lonely place running a business
and so therefore you become
can become quite insular and like you got your warehouse and
your people and your stuff
and that's what you sort of get to know and what you maybe see on socials
where if you get out meet the people
go and meet the people in your industry there's always a conference
to do with it doesn't matter what you sell
there's always a conference
so it's quite nice from a
downtime point of view as well although they're
they're very full on aren't they yeah
you don't need about three weeks
or three days sorry when you get back just to
yeah d m d decompose decompose decompress
let's not decompress well maybe edit that out hahaha
to decompose it was that good decompress oh golly
so um
scaling you know and growing I think typically
you know there's a there's a few ways that most you
know most people will say to
to to build a business and to grow a business you know
stay into existing customers
within existing customers and so forth
but what I'm really keen to understand is this sort of um
the decision around the acquisition obviously
um started with one brand about 18 years ago somewhere there
yeah the business has been on quite a journey
yeah so yeah we originally started out in um
reusable nappies eco baby products that was what we did yeah
and I started that when my eldest
was born and it was very much you know
from the spare room you know on my own knew nothing about e commerce
knew I just literally went on forums
at the time it was like how do I build a website that was literally it
and then um yeah over the years
you know we we grew really steadily um and organically
in that market which was a really niche
market but you know a fairly small one
and I obviously at the time I was I was
raising my babies as well I have two children
and I you know I went through that whole process
and I didn't have maternity leave I didn't have any of that jazz
you know I was literally on the phone
to the office as I was giving birth to my second
ha ha um so that that was my journey at that time and then
we identified that we well we we built a really
really strong community of customers like they
at one time I remember saying we could literally list anything
on this website and our
and our community would buy it they would just all in
but obviously they were with us for a really short window you know
not to 18 months at at the max yeah um so we thought well
how can we utilize this community that we've got and just
keep them for a little bit longer
so that was when the Kid Collective was born
and we at that time we tested different product yeah ranges toys
interiors
and really quite quickly we identified that toys
was what was sticking that was that was
yeah what was working so we just followed
that and we followed the customer and we followed our community
and when we were we were so fortunate that we did that because
you know we rode that wave we went through Covid and all of the
the econ bubble that that bought
with both of those brands and apikorus and the Kid Collective
but then after that what came was a massive crash in the eco product
um world you know customers were their focus wasn't on
sustainability anymore it was on the cost of living yeah and um
that really
unfortunately that that side of things really dipped um
but at the same time the kid collective and the toys was growing so um
yeah I just made the decision at that time so we sold the nappy brand
and we went all in on the kid collective yeah and we um
yeah just we rebranded that we built out the range and then then um
an an opportunity was was manufactured by chance really um to acquire
one of our competitors which was scandyborn
which was it was they approached you then or no um I I I approached um
and timing is everything the timing was right and within
five minutes so you got a feel for that they were maybe looking or you
um
I'd heard something yeah um
so I went straight to the top and I
and I made an enquiry and within five minutes it was done it was ours
and and that was that was a reverse acquisition the scandiborn
was three times the size that we were so it was a project
and it was brave but it it was an opportunity that absolutely
was not I was not going to lose that opportunity I
moved heaven and earth to make that happen because we knew
the brand equity that scandiborn had in the market
huge well known brand name entity um and we knew that
we knew what we could do with it by bringing it into our infrastructure
so um so yeah we made it happen and then in May 2024
that became ours yeah
um so a couple of years ish yeah yeah so at that time we
the the biggest hurdle that we had actually was the
logistics side of things so we were not in a position to bring
that operation into our existing site
it was
way bigger than we were prepared to handle at that time but
we were really fortunate we got connected with an amazing
3P L in Darby um shout out to the send
guys we we wouldn't have been able to do it without them um
so they really helped us they knew that it was
a going to be a short term
thing yeah um so they they ran the logistics for Scandi born for um
just over a year while we
concentrated on so everything's with them at this point
yeah yeah yeah so we
we concentrated on the website you know we we tweaked and we
tidied and we
started to put our touch into it we did full range reviews
and yeah moved brands out bought new brands on
did all that jazz added lots of new heads to the team
and got kind of that that side of things established and then
alongside that I was looking for a warehouse space
that would work for us to
bring it all in to bring it all in so yeah a year after that we moved
so probably the warehouse
was probably the trickiest thing it was so you've got obviously
two very different brands but
similar if not the same market um obviously
probably some different age range things in there and so forth
big customer base you're buying in a pedigree brand
it's very well known you've got but no doubt as you've alluded to
you've got two different platforms two different locations
two different teams what was maybe the
what maybe took the longest to sort out than the warehousing
it yeah it was the warehousing I mean we
there although the two sites have have different ranges
there is some overlap
but we were in a position where we were literally holding
stock of the same product in two warehouses under two systems
you know we we might have sold out of
a key line on one website and yeah we'd have it in the other
warehouse for the other website and we couldn't
we had no capacity to merge that so
it was it was frustrating
but it was what it was there was nothing we could do about it
yeah it just was and we knew it that it was short term
um so yeah when we moved everything into one operation which was
July last year um
do you know what it actually went really quite well
the team were amazing like it it was a meticulously planned project
and everything came in we got it
we didn't even have any web downtime like we did it over a weekend
we got everything in all located up and and fine
and then
um so yeah we had a couple of months just to kind of settle in and
we are a very seasonal business so
that in itself brings a challenge at the best of times let alone when
you've just merged two big operations so
by
by November um it was like oh my God like this is the first year that
we're we're handling
the logistics for Scandiborn obviously we've done the kid collective
yeah before but this time it was both and it hit us
like a ton of bricks we thought that we were prepared and we were not
um so yeah last just a sort of share volume
change the volume was yeah yeah it was intense so
we ended up in a position to give a
list as a fail for sort of volumes of
orders a month so we're talking well we
went from this to couple of thousand to 10,000 type
yeah at one time our back our backlog of orders was over 8,000
we couldn't we couldn't ever
get them down because they were coming in
faster than we could ship them out yeah and um
and what it meant
it meant that we had a big bottleneck as well because
we had 8 thousands orders worth of stock sat on the shelves
that we couldn't
get out but then we were still having deliveries coming in
with nowhere to go because all of that
yeah it was it was really compounded yeah um
so that was not ideal so good
not not a good problem to have but obviously business is good
but operationally logistics was
it was interesting it was interesting
so yeah like we had to make some decisions like
come December like we we really had to scale back on
and paid marketing spend cause there's no point paying
to acquire all these customers I know that's
yeah when we can't we hate those we get those emails
unfortunately from a couple of clients and for the same reason
we've got one particular client there
three times a year pause all ads
warehouse can't cope we're like you're joking you've had
the best month ever yeah and that we have to pause
cause it might be staffing issue people
off or something's happened or just sheer volume yeah yeah yeah it's a
frustrating decision to make isn't it yeah turn up turn all the
turn all the performance off all the paid off it's like you're joking
yeah so obviously warehousing um challenging but
obviously you got through it I think is the way we did
for me it got to the point where as long as I think it was like the
deadline was the 22nd December as long as all of our customers
Christmas orders are shipped by that day yeah
that's all I can ask at this point like and we did it you know we
we had some change last minute changes to the team and we'd
we just we had we had to get it we had to get it yeah
the last thing I wanted to do was cancel orders
um so it's more a case of getting just used to
hiring more warehouse people and then getting obviously you knew
the new norm
was here so actually you thought it might be here but it was here
so just getting used to and liaising with the couriers to
so what drop a drop a 40 footer and what not and
yeah we I'm simply simplified it and
there was a lot yeah there was a lot a lot that went
that went on just to make it work but then as soon as
as soon as January was here the first thing we did was write
full peak review like everybody
what is yeah what happened what went wrong
we do what went wrong yeah
uh how do we fix it so we've literally spent from January
to now planning
so that I wanna I wanna get into that because I think um
obviously no doubt from two to 20,000 you know
slightly made up numbers but you know so this massive
shift in volume obviously it's gonna
it's things are gonna creak
considerably and then you've got peak compounding everything
but then you bought these two businesses that have got obviously
similar clients you know their parents of children
but maybe different ages and so forth from different products
but then you've got two sets of tech two sets of people
the location thing I feel we've covered off
how did you decide what to keep what to maybe
move away from people leadership how did you bread I think that's
from a listener point of view they were thinking you know that
I know this firm that are looking to sell and such and such
yeah you know but um
they're on this platform and we don't know that and
also all these questions that spin round and
you know they've got team that have been there forever how we how
we need to
look after them but how can we do that cause we've got to keep everything
moving um obviously logistics and and location is a is a big one
but yes some of the other bits like the tech
you know no doubt you've got a text
deck here and then you're like what the hell is this yeah well
at that time the Kid Collective wasn't on Shopify yep
scandiborn sat on a Shopify Plus and we had been
you know conversations had been about migrating
Kid Collective to Shopify but
you know I hadn't ever used Shopify and then obviously
when the scandiborn
thing came up it was like well actually we got an opportunity to
learn shopify yeah through scandiborn
which we did really quickly and then
less than a year later
the Kid Collective was fully also migrated on Shopify
but Scandinavian came with like top tier tech stack it had everything
already there you know had all your gorgeous and yeah um
it's like you inherited a Ferrari sort of thing
no literally you maybe had a yeah whatever over here
it was 3 series over here
yeah it no literally yeah it was it was all there all beautiful
so then we've just kind of
we've we've kind of merged
some of the kid collective stuff into so like gorgeous runs both
yep um now you know we were on Clavier already but
you got team members team managing
gorgeous for example but they're managing both brands
yes so you better streamline them yeah
we've got one we've got one customer service team that work across
both brands so it is for it is
like some teams work across both like our e commerce
trading team they work across both yeah um but Hailey will have
some team members that tend to focus
on one or the other cause the tone of voice is different
slightly across the both
is is it the same writers and copywriters and
content people though still the same people they're just obviously the
speak differently about this brand and differently about that
yeah they they will tend to
work on one for the most part but then obviously as
then demands you know they they might shift across one or the other
yeah yeah and then marketing like we have a marketing manager
for both brands one of each but then they share an assistant and a um
brand of visual designer she shared across both yeah buyers
we have a buyer for each brand
but then they share an assistant and they work quite collaboratively
because some of the products are across
both ranges so it's really
it just it's what works and and some teams are cross both and
yeah other heads are yeah specific to to one brand
or the other so we yeah we've made it work it's
not that side of things really hasn't been too painful and we did
you know we did introduce a lot of new people
into the business at that time um
which I was a bit worried about you know culture
we've always had a really really lovely culture
obviously when you introduce lots of new people once it's like oh
but actually we've been able we've been really lucky
to be able to retain that so yes that's
always a tricky bit isn't it you spend
you know many many years building
you know and you get to know the people very very well and you know
we're 16 years with the agency now and
you know there's a lot of lot of mega mega relationships and culture
obviously to them bring in maybe a whole new group of people yeah
it's quite a lot you know that would that's a
say challenge but yeah that would keep me up at night that would be
that would be the bit the people yeah the the
yeah the rest I think will
sort itself out but obviously the people are the key thing really yeah
so well done
very very well done thank you we've got a fab team yeah well done
so what I like to do now is a fast
fire round five questions
okay one word answer oh okay or maybe five words I'll let you have
you ready okay sure sure
so the Kid Collective or scandiborn which one keeps you up at night
uh scandiborn okay
makes sense a lot bigger a lot more going on yup yup
organic growth or acquisition the faster way to scale brands in 2026
scale brands
I'm
oh I don't know ha ha three two one both ha ha ha ha ha
you need to so yeah yeah okay but if you had to choose one
I feel like at the moment my head
my head is in the organic side of things for some specific reasons
um so I'll I'll go with that organic okay
one word that nearly broke you during the Scandi Barn
acquisition um integration
one word
um
I don't know logistics logistics
logistics yeah yeah Blue Park or Shopify Shopify
check your easy one in there
best brand partnership the Kid Collective has ever had one name um
oh that's putting me on the spot
we've got so many wonderful ones I love you all
but you know what I'm the one I won't be so naughty give us 2 or 3 I
because I feel bad from that one actually um
so we've got a brand that we introduced to the UK market
and I'm gonna attempt the German pronunciation um Stapelstein
so it sounds good to me our stepping stones
and they have been so amazing for us um and yeah we're
like a signature partner
is that a brand you met at one of the conferences you went to um
no I actually don't think it was I
I think that
that I mean we're going back a few years now but I think that
literally came maybe from social media we'd seen it somewhere
and we did an outreach and
the partnership went from there so yeah wicked one
um kinetics is another I was gonna ask you about that nice yeah really
really good really good strong brand um
little Dutch is massive for us yeah
um but then we've got some like
obviously we're always bringing in newness
all the time but we've we have got some new
partners that are are newer but
there's so much the sacks of potential and we're yeah
we're really really
enjoying working with them and I bet it's gonna be a great year for
you
it's really just the
stuff you sell yeah the people you sell it to and the
pleasure they get and the pleasure you get and so
we seen this new thing from oh my God
it's toys like yeah well exactly
who doesn't want to work with toys
yeah when I go to the um is it
I haven't been for years now but you go to like the um
some fair in in and that and you go and see of them
some toys there I think I can't remember now
sure there is but you see just all this new stuff
like oh my God like a kid in a toy shop sort of thing ha ha ha
these conferences
yeah yeah yeah it's amazing I love it brilliant so quite a few then
um well thank you for that wasn't too painful no so yeah
to tell us about the Rainbow Hospice in the kinetics partnership yeah
I'm really intrigued to find out about that absolutely
so yeah Rainbow's actually reached out to us they're a Leicestershire
based East Midlands charity and um
yeah they got in touch and met they are amazing amazing team um
and we actually went for a visit to the hospice and a tour around
just to really understand what they do
um and it was incredible like amazing and everything's
it although it's dealing with obviously a really really difficult
subject matter everyone there is so
upbeat and positive it is an amazing environment
um so yeah we we went there and we've also within the team and myself
I've got like friends and family that actually have a direct
connection to rainbows
as well so it just felt like oh my god like this is amazing
and then rainbows we were like ah kinetics
have a rainbow range and kinetics is such an amazing brand
for us so we bought kinetics into the conversation
and they were just as excited about it as we were um
and obviously you know they were they work really
really well with us and and
really really great partner so we went for a visit
with them as well and we just yeah came up with a plan of of
supporting them with fundraising basically so every time
somebody buys a kinetics pack from ourselves £1 is donated
to rainbows and then we've um
since we've moved to our new warehouse in Market Harborough we host
in person warehouse events we just had one last weekend actually um
we've created a monster every time it gets bigger and bigger people
are yeah wild um so
yeah rainbows actually come out to those events as well and um
you know we run tombola as an additional fundraising
for them as well and yeah it's just a really nice collaborative um
peace that that we do with them and always looking at
what we can do next and kind of build build that out and it's
you know it's when when we have the in
person events as well like we have so many people that
obviously no rainbows and they say oh like I love
I love what you're doing like with rainbows and
it's just that community piece um
yeah you know we we can give something back and it kind of engages
everybody on on
another level as well so very rewarding
yeah yeah very rewarding yeah it's incredible
yeah I didn't know you did that actually that is that is um
yeah so they're coming to the
warehouse and so forth and you get all the different
they're like like a kid in a toy shop ha ha ha ha
yeah if you have a look on TikTok
you'll see the footage from from this weekend it was yeah it was busy
ha ha ha I was looking at some of those products and um
they look so there's no right or wrong way to make them so
it's very sort of
it's open ended play yeah open ended play yeah it is yeah yeah yeah
they're great they're really really high quality product and
yeah and people love them
good well thank you for sharing that um I think um you know what I'm
gonna change direction a little bit obviously
you've gone from you know obviously
very very very successful business and then it's massive
step change yeah I think um
you know I'm intrigued
you know how that what that meant on the performance side
so in terms of like SEO paid media was it like
you know you start you were spending say X on
certain things and they were like I mean they're spending this and
that
you know how did you maybe consolidate all that what happened
you know in in on that journey and maybe where are you now with that
yeah so before before the actual acquisition
came through like we had we
had visibility of all of that data so it that was it was really
interesting at that because you're basically
seeing a comparison I bet that was a great member wasn't
it it was yeah I didn't know they were doing that I thought
naughty like look at all this yeah um
so yeah yeah really interesting um and
yeah it helped kind of inform what we were already doing
and looking at that from a sort of holistic perspective and how we take that forward
now there's been some work to do around that in terms of
where we've got the um product
overlap yeah because we've
you know we do have to look at some brands and say right this is
yeah we're gonna focus efforts through this brand and this brand cause
yeah there's no point you know just cannibalizing yeah
um we see that a lot yeah so we deal with that a lot
yeah we've had to be careful with that but equally
there's things that we can do so by having the two
brands and the two different propositions um
we've kind of been able to leverage the market so
where we've got products that might sit on both
if the wider market cause obviously we're a reseller so other people
will be selling some of these products as well
now if if the market becomes more price competitive for example
we can kind of leverage
what we've got in terms of scandiborn and the Kid Collective and
we will do like price matching on the Kid Collective
to the wider market but we would never do that on Scandiborn
Scandiborn is a maybe protect the margin a little bit yeah where
yeah it's really given us more without doing anything
like price
fixing or yeah no it's it's yeah it's given us it's given us really
a really strong market position
that as well as obviously our buying position is
yeah strong now as well which helps um so yeah so there's definitely
been worked to looking at that paid piece of of how we structure that
and you find you've then been able to scale the paid
more because you've probably
you got more control of the market
you got a bigger part of the market yeah so therefore you obviously
like say you maybe
spreadsheet it out we don't need to bid on that because this or we'll let
we'll let this brand of that we'll
let this brand of that or actually we might bid on both for that
you maybe wouldn't do that that often but you might yeah
because there's a lot more competitive competition
so you want spot 1 two 3 and 4 maybe even organic and SEO or yeah
um but then if you found then cause you've been able to
control certain brands maybe a little bit more
control the pricing yeah you can then
sell a bit more because you not spending as much or
definitely I mean it
I mean I'm sure you can imagine it is an absolute beast like it's a
Mammoth and it's so many moving
parts all the time so many things to consider and and make it all work
and so like we've definitely
we've definitely scaled matter a lot more yeah um
in the last sort of 12 months yeah really really been pushing out
on there for the kid collective I think one of one of the
the most striking things for us actually was looking at
the Kid Collective against scandiborn and
the difference in like the m R because scandiborn is already
such a really well known brand the Kid Collective is a
is was and continues to be smaller
um but because scandiborn is so well known like
the cost of acquisition is so much lower
yeah like we yeah the brand does does a lot of the list yeah it does
so again it it's looking at the whole the whole thing and
yeah like our activity on meta for Kid Collective is more
product base it's more sales base whereas scandiborn it's more brand
yeah yeah so like we've we've done
a lot of we do a lot of sort of off site
projects so like hospitality
partnerships like we partnered with The Grove
Hotel and Luxury Family Hotels um and
a lot more of that kind of content creator influence
piece so there's a lot of that kind of content
whereas the Kid Collective is more like we've got this promotion
on and and yeah like that
so it's it's different but it
absolutely work in progress like it's always it's interesting
I think we could do a whole episode on that cause I know we work with and speak to a lot of brands
that buy other brands
you know and then inherently
usually it's a good thing um
but you know I'm thinking of an example we've got a brand
that we started working with
and then fast forward 18 months later they've bought
four of their competitors okay
now we've gone from I think I can't remember exactly but 50,000 skews
to 200,000 skews
um but a lot of sites got the same excuse on
so spreadsheet it out just to simplify it five brands
who you know and then you probably got four leadership
teams so you did have maybe that's been
adjusted slightly now considerably maybe um
so then who's who who are we letting
have the advantage you know where which brand is gonna go where yeah
and then budgets for his budget on brand his budget on website his
budget on country
cause that's quite often a thing you know you got different
leadership teams in different countries
and different targets in different locations
how do you slice up the products the budget
you know and ultimately team
you know it's quite a lot to juggle it's not
it's not really really straight forward
you know like I said you've got some very very strong brand equity
here maybe yeah and then you just shifting boxes here
but that box makes a lot of money so it's not like
you know it's it's good business and yeah it's quite a
but you've got to do the work I think and
it's not like a one hit done it's very much like
okay I should have did that but actually now bottom line is
yeah problem or
it's a logistic where's the stock how quick can we ship to yeah
lot to think about there is a lot to think about
yeah so very well done I feel like this could be a three hour
a three hour but I will I'm very conscious of time so I think um
you know what I'm keen to understand is
what's next you know you've obviously
many years building your your baby yeah
your third baby my third baby yeah
and then this brilliant acquisition
yeah you know this very well known brand
you know there's some big moves big leavers and obviously
learn an awful lot I'm guessing in the next
in the last couple of years specifically but obviously
got the got many many years of experience to build up to that doesn't
that maybe doesn't happen day one
you know so all those um stripes that you've you've earned what's next
what are some of the things maybe that are gonna really help you grow
cause you've obviously grown massively
yeah so yeah we we've literally spent the last two years
embedding Scandinavian obviously with systems and then um logistics
so I feel like the groundwork is like laid now we're ready
we're ready to scale and we've got
yeah lot lots in the pipeline
the next 12 months is gonna be super super exciting and lots going on
watch this space um
but yeah like in terms of in terms of you know product
continuing to to
to look at that collection and grow that um
in various different forms um
expand on the Scandi born range as well you know it it
it's still quite heavy yeah in toys but there's so much more we can
yeah really push yeah we do
do furniture and things as well but there's so much more we can do there so yeah that's really exciting
um and then yeah we we will be looking to grow the team um
next year quite considerably so
one of I think one of the biggest challenges with
the acquisition and where we are now
is we remain quite a flat structure in the team yeah um
which has worked and that's what's brought
us to where we are now however
we're kind of at that tipping point now where
we we're gonna need to bring in some more senior hires and
yeah and focus on that leadership team
yeah so that's yeah that's kind of
that's a big project coming up and and that is obviously
gonna really help you know focus in and and make sure that
yeah the direction and and everything
is is going where we want it to but yeah it's exciting I love it
yeah I'm excited to see you again in 18 months I'll be back
where we're going I sense there's some obviously some big growth
um targets there some big moves on the horizon
well thanks for coming on the show
I like to end every episode with a book
recommendation do you have a book to recommend to our listeners
I do so this one I read quite a few years ago
um it's called The Hard Thing About Hard Things
uh Ben Horowitz I think you pronounce it um so yeah it it talks about
making difficult decisions when things are
tough and you know obviously I've been on a
real journey with the business and it's not all been plain
sailing you know it's been
been a roller coaster but it's yeah the book is all about
dealing with those hard decisions and whether it's people problems
or cash problems and I think when I just remember when I read it
it kind of made me feel like
I'm not alone when things get tough you're not
alone unless you're reading it yeah
I could relate to that yeah and that it's just I think
resilience is so so important and
that's definitely something that I've
been able to develop over the years is resilience
cause you have to like things are not always gonna be easy um
so yeah that's my that's my book that sounds like that's yeah that
sounds like my kind of book
yeah we'll so we'll link that up in the show notes
well thank you for coming on the show
that those who want to find out more about you more about the
the two brands what's the best way to do that
um so you can find me on LinkedIn um so I am Laura Davies
and yeah website's kid collective dot co dot UK and scandiborn.com um
and yeah keep in touch I you know I am on LinkedIn all the time
um so yeah do connect well thank you for coming on the show
thank you for having me thank you
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