If 2010 didn’t bring enough change; I expect 2011’s to be even more far reaching. Anytime in the next few weeks will see the arrival the newest addition to our family, a baby.
Relax, I’m going to use this opportunity for a stream of emotional consciousness on becoming a father, but I would like to reflect on the phenomenal capital investment such a project is extracted from the un initiated. Determined not to fall into the trap of insisting that everything is the best money can buy, in spite of this being my first born, and of course not wanting to do everything on the cheap. The current Mrs. Ryan and I settled on Mothercare.
Mother care is a specialist UK retailer for all things baby and crossing all price points from what my Mum would 'call cheap and nasty' up to what my Dad would simply call 'you're joking!
For a start, I have to say the shop does exactly what it says on the tin, it really does have everything you need, and I think having spent an hour there, we now have everything we need, but also quite a few a lot we don’t need. But with all such brand experiences, it isn’t the store, stock, price or product that will stay with us, but the charming lady that stopped what she was doing to help us drain our credit card. Let’s call her Val.
With the charm of a young granny and the experience of a celebrity TV nanny, Val steered us around the store setting out only simple decisions for us to make at each stop, each one we felt was considered and informed. But none of this, remarkable, most good retailers can provide such service, in fact I was having the same discussion with a colleague about John Lewis and procuring a vacuum cleaner.
No, what made this experience stand out is the way we were snared. Our charming Mothercare protagonist, Val, who only entered our theatre of consumption because was asked a simple question about delivery, reeled us.
“How long do you have to go?” she asked innocently.
“About three and half months.” Was Mr’s Ryan’s honest answer.
Big intake of air sucked across the lips of a lady in her late 50’s with those tell tale lines that give away she once smoked, “Not much time then, we’d better get on.”
And so we proceed to live the Mothercare marketing team’s dream of clients that see them as a one stop shop. It’s only once we had paid and she booked out delivery Val’s cunning and guile become apparent,
“Well that should all be delivered in 4 days dears.” She said innocently
“Oh great” I said, knowing full well I had just doubled the hammering our flexible friend had already received thanks to Christmas and that a contender for Kent’s most glamorous gran’s had just done me up like a kipper.
