Homes Magazine hears from Cheryl and Christy Blayds, who have grown The Nursery Store from a stall selling prams on Salford market in the eighties into a £40m-turnover ecommerce operation, becoming eBay’s first female UK millionaires along the way
The company now known as The Nursery Store was launched by sisters Christy Foster and Cheryl Blayds in 1987, back then as a fairly innocuous market stall selling bargain seconds and overstocks, mostly prams and ‘hard goods,’ for new parents on Salford Market.
Sisters Cheryl and Christy had always had a business brain – before the sisters were even teenagers Christy had a healthy side hustle selling their unwanted old clothes, while Cheryl had a blossoming car wash business as a 12-year-old.
“Due to our home environment, two girls growing up in a single-parent household in Oldham, we learned that we had to work for all the things we wanted,” Cheryl explains. “We began selling seconds on market stalls in 1987, using the money we had accumulated from other small ventures to buy stock. Going through overstocks in warehouses, we realised we had a gift for finding product that would sell. It was hard work looking through everything, sometimes going through 40ft containers of stock, but it was a great time! At first through intuition, and then through experience, we knew the brands, styles and colours people wanted. People thought we were wholesalers because of how many units we were buying, but it was because we kept reinvesting back into the business. That’s how we’ve always grown.
“Buying product remains a passion for us to this day; you never truly lose that trader mentality which is why offering accessible pricing to families of every type is still a priority for us.”
The passion certainly paid off, and as shopping moved online the sisters looked to eBay for their next business move around 2005. Five years later, eBay contacted the pair to congratulate them on being one of the store’s best-performing UK businesses, and the first female-owned one in the UK to hit a million pounds in revenue.
The pair were suddenly minor celebrities, appearing in the Financial Times, and Christy guested on the News at 10 as a shining example of triumph over adversity – not only had the sisters succeeded as a female business, but that had done so in the face of of Christy’s severe dyslexia and ADHD, in an era when awareness and support in school was very different from today. They’d come a long way from Salford market.
“We grew up in a poor, single-parent household in Oldham, Manchester. Nothing was easy to come by and we learned the value of money early in life,” explains Cheryl. “Before long, we were both supporting the household with ‘side hustles,’ to use today’s parlance. Back then, we had basic education uniforms because we couldn’t afford anything else. But the two of us wanted the nicer things (which also made us more popular in school), things like the Slazenger jumpers, so we grafted to make sure we could buy it ourselves. Something about this start in life breeds a certain kind of entrepreneur with a determination to succeed that only comes from these kinds of pressures.
“Our story shows that life isn’t determined by grades at school. Everyone thrives in different environments, and we’ve found ours in business.”
First forward to today, and the newly rebranded The Nursery Store (it previously operated for several years as Online4Baby), still family owned and operated by Christy, Cheryl and their husbands, Darren and Warren, has a £40m annual turnover, a workforce of over 40, and revenue for the first half of 2024 which was up 25% compared to last year.
“The years on the market stall were invaluable for understanding what product sells well, so we already had a leg-up going onto eBay in 2005/06. We knew what to buy, how to position ourselves, where the demand was,” says Cheryl. “At first, we’d fulfil everything ourselves from a room in an old mill in Leigh, writing postage labels by hand, and taking stock to the post office, before moving to a courier.
“It was really fun in those early days – our work room was tiny – and we did everything from there – built product listings, finance, customer service, meetings. Good times and good fun. Christy’s husband Darren and Cheryl’s husband Warren both eventually joined the business, but it was a few years before we hired anyone in. The mentality of ‘do more with less’ extended to Christy and I covering the roles of five people for a long time before bringing in people to do the jobs.”
For Christy, there was a further reason for keeping the business as a family affair: “Independents thrive in the baby & nursery market generally because a more bespoke, personalised service is expected, and it’s extremely difficult for the big box retailers to maintain that,” she says. “The challenge for us is how best to maintain our service as the business continues to scale; we want to deepen our relationship with customers, not become a faceless online retailer. But yes, now more than ever there is a place in the market for a family-owned, family-first business like ours.”
This belief, along with rising costs for sellers on eBay and the rise of Amazon eclipsing the platform, led to the sisters going it alone with the creation of their own ecommerce store, Online4Baby and now The Nursery Store, and they no longer sell through any other third party platforms: “It doesn’t make sense for us commercially, and nor is it possible to truly compete and offer the services our customers expect, when a third-party platform is acting as intermediary,” says Cheryl. “Obviously Amazon excel operationally, but they can’t offer the experience we can. There’s no one at the end of the phone to offer advice, which we know is incredibly important for families, particularly first-time parents.”
With almost 40 years in the nurseries game, the sisters can reasonably claim to be experts in the field, so what advice do they have for recent or soon-to-be parents putting together their first nursery at home?
“When creating a nursery, regardless of budget, the most important thing is to create a warm, nurturing space that evokes calm and is conducive to sleep. Let’s face it, it’s all about sleep!
“Working on a budget, we would suggest keeping the room neutral and bring the personality and colour through in accessories such as prints, bedding, cushions etc. That way you can easily, and cost effectively switch things out when the child gets older,” says Christy.
“I’m a personal fan of Macramé, as you can get some lovely, diverse designs that you can switch up as your baby grows,” Cheryl adds. “Even when money is no object, I would still say think about longevity, for example rather than a themed room which might be relevant when they’re little, will soon become out of favour as they get older. So, use timeless muted shades which will work whatever age. With furniture, buy furniture that will stand the test of time, good quality, that will grow with them and that complements the rest of your home.”
Finally, as we move into Autumn, what seasonal style tips do the sisters have for the trend-conscious parent looking to keep their little ones on point in the cooler months?
“Here at The Nursery Store we are loving the warm, neutral tones, moving away from the cool whites and flat greys. We are seeing a return to the darker wood tones and wicker, which has been around for a while but certainly isn’t going anywhere. Texture is still key, chunky knit blankets, boucle fabrics and soft brushed cottons help create a supersoft, and cosy feel. We have introduced a Cashmere coloured cot into our range, and we think it depicts this trend perfectly.”
Find out more and shop at www.thenurserystore.com.
