April 2008

Its now 1 year since we opened “Sprogs” - a children’s toy and clothes shop in the heart of the Cotswolds.

We still think we were mad to do it! After all, neither of us is on the right side of 40. In fact, one of us is nearly on the wrong side of 60! Having said that, we could have just retired gracefully and been bored and broke. Instead, we chose to take on a completely new challenge - we,re still broke but never bored!

I’m Carol and my husband is Bob. We run “Sprogs,” a little shop selling children’s toys and clothes in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, which is a small town in the Cotswolds. We sell traditional, wooden, tin and fairtrade toys and clothes from baby to age 8.

Neither of us had ever run a shop before and although we have 5 children between us we had no idea what it would be like to do this MAD thing!

So, how did we start? Well, Bob bought a book called “How To Run Your Own Shop,” read it from cover to cover and then said “OK, lets do it!”

A year on, it has been “interesting” to say the least. Hard work? Yes - bloody hard work! Rewarding? Yes, very. Has it turned Bob into the oldest 5 year old? YES! (oops, given away which one of us is the wrong side of 60 now!)

The day starts with a general tidy up and testing of all the toys. Bob says this is vital and that he needs to check that they all work. Mmm, funny how he always spends longer checking the puppets though? Well, anyway, I usually indulge him in this and get on with checking the emails for orders through our website - www.sprogs.org.uk.

Our bestselling toys have been our lovely Rag Dolls. All ethically produced and beautifully made. They all have their own names and they look so cute just sitting there on their own shelf. The puppets that we do have really inspired Bob and he spends most of the day demonstrating them all to children and parents. He’s become so good now that last week a parent asked if he came free with the puppet!! I regularly thank parents for bringing their children in to play with him!

The picture at the top is our latest puppet - Mummy Tawny Owl and her Babies - irrisistable!

The idea of this blog is to tell our story really. It’s quite unusual for two people at our time of life to change their working life so drastically, and we hope others will find it interesting as well as entertaining. Hopefully we will update every couple of weeks. It would be really nice to hear from anyone who has thoughts on anything that we post on here.

Our new product this month is “The Baby Sling”. We have just got stock of these and I predict fun and games ahead. I have created a small display of these in the baby section and have foolishly printed a sign saying “Please ask for a demonstration”. Now, this is where it will be interesting. Neither Bob nor I had a baby sling when our children were small. Yes we had baby carriers but these slings are another ball game altogether. The ones we have chosen to stock are ring slings, very simple to use, no fussy fastenings etc and all made in the UK (we really get happy when we find such a product - made in the UK is so rare we have discovered). Having said that they are simple to use, I fully expect to get a phone call on one of my rare days away from the shop, saying that Bob has put on a sling to demonstrate and is unable to extricate himself from it. I think we may have to have some practise runs! The thought of my almost 6ft hubby encased in a baby sling does appeal to my sense of humour though!

Almost as funny as when a mum asked if we sold “GroBags” the other day, and Bob directed her to the garden centre. I had to do a quick bit of training with him on the new fangled idea of a sleeping bag for babies that for some reason are called gro bags sometimes. Oh dear , never mind he’ll learn - soon.

Thats it for now, thanks for listening!

Carol & Bob

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