Mamas & Papas

Mamas & Papas protects its brand as it continues its global expansion

Mamas & Papas is already recognised as the UK's leading Nursery Retailer, with 51 UK stores and a further 19 stores in overseas markets. Overall, the Mamas & Papas brand is now available in over 35 countries through wholly owned, franchise and wholesale channels.

To fulfil their mission to be the number one global nursery brand, Mamas & Papas knew it was essential to protect their brand as they expanded into new markets. Strong control over store layout, product handling, marketing presentation and product literature was essential if the Mamas & Papas identity was to remain intact as it travelled across seas.

The Remit

In 2009, Mamas & Papas began discussions with Concrete about how ConcretePlatform could be used to create a central web based environment that would connect all staff, partners and wholesale customers to the business and help them maintain the high standards the brand was synonymous with. It was clear that brand meant far more than just marketing, so Mamas & Papas needed a platform that would, in time, provide a one-stop-shop for protecting their brand and trading their business on the global stage. ConcretePlatform was chosen as the platform of choice to achieve this.

The Solution

Starting with ConcretePlatform's basic environment, Mamas & Papas were able to upload, organise and make accessible all print ready marketing collateral, all business documentation, training manuals and best practice literature, product catalogues and every type of digital content that would help markets and wholesale customers better self serve their trading environment. Removing large quantities of data from the internal network also relieved the resident IT department and infrastructure from this load and gave markets faster access to the materials they needed. 

Step two involved introducing work-flow to the print ready marketing collateral, giving markets the ability to localise marketing collateral for local market needs (price and language) and allow head office to review and approve work before being released for print. This added further control to the brand visibility process yet reduced the overhead involved centrally in achieving it.

Step three was the introduction of an internal job booking system that would allow the in-house marketing and production team to manage the design and delivery of all Mamas & Papas marketing materials. As a web based environment, this allowed the business the flexibility to move production out of house when need necessitated whilst keeping complete visibility and control over the schedule and sign-off process. Once artwork was ready, it could then be simply moved directly into the "published" area of ConcretePlatform.

Conclusion

As a modular environment, Mamas & Papas have perfectly demonstrated the build and buy approach that allows brands to progressively move more of their business to ConcretePlatform. As a strategic partner, ConcretePlatform can advise and demonstrate best practice approaches and work with your brand to achieve better collaborative practice and shareholder value. As the Enterprise Collaboration Platform of choice for Mamas and Papas, we look forward to supporting more of their brand and business process in the future.