Working with industry experts who run Toddletown’s group of four nurseries, the new Toddleworld franchise will help partners through every stage of the process, from acquiring a new site or existing nursery, to registering a nursery with Ofsted, to reviewing and analysing financial accounts.
Eamonn O’Connor and his wife Urvashi founded the nursery group in 2013, running Toddletown Pre-school in Chiswick for four years before acquiring the Wigwam Day Nursery in Reading. At this point, industry expert, John Warren, came on board on the quality and curriculum side, and Sophie Haylock on the HR side.
The group's third acquisition was Mulberry Corner in Eastleigh in 2018.
A newly-built site in Farncombe (pictured), called Toddletown Day Nursery, Godalming, opened last January and will be the franchise’s model site.
Mr O’Connor told Nursery World, ‘The Toddleworld franchise concept was born during the first lockdown last year, when the management team took a closer look at how we could use our skills and expertise around how to build a nursery from scratch or how to acquire one and deal with all the transitional management and challenges.’
Although the nursery group do not really like the word ‘franchise’, they admit that it’s useful because everyone has an idea of what it means.
But Mr O’Connor said, ‘If we want to distinguish ourselves from other franchisors, the main differences are that we don’t give partners a manual and say if you come across this problem, turn to page 48. We build the nurseries for our partners: sleeves rolled up, we do everything that needs to be done.
‘Also, we allow partners to decide their own brand name and imagery. So although all nurseries ought to be recognisable as Toddleworld nurseries, they won’t be Toddleworld branded.’
Toddletown’s own plans for expansion will not be put on hold due to this new project.
‘We will continue to acquire and build new settings on our own account, but we are also now in the market to help others who want to enter the sector and we are looking for interested partners.
‘We will work with them to get them from zero to self-sufficiency in 18 months. That’s our promise, regardless of their level of experience.’
To make this commitment, Toddleworld is looking for the ‘right partners that it feels it can work together with’ and aims to work with up to five partners this year.
Mr O’Connor said that this is something positive to look forward to in what has been a challenging time for the sector.
‘We think now is a good time to start building a nursery - by the time it would be ready to open, it would be September, when we will hopefully have been through the worst of it.’
Toddleworld charges an initial franchise fee of £30,000. For this, the team works with the partner to undertake everything that is required to build the business.
A virtual tour of the model nursery is available here: