Order at baby elephant  by the 21st for December 2011 for Guaranteed Christmas Delivery.

Here is a reminder of our gorgeous gift packing for your Christmas pressies. Baby Elephant  make it easy to send a gift to a loved one either at home or abroad……..we can also include your special hand written message that is  for you.

The team at babyelephant wish to say a tremendous thank you for all our customers and suppliers in 2011 and those who have help to support babyelephant over the last year.

The customer services team will be closed on  the 23rd December for the Christmas  holidays and will return on Monday the 3rd January.  Any orders placed during the Christmas & New Year period will be delivered on the 3rd January.

There are lots of interesting developments  planned  for Baby Elephant in 2012 so stay posted!!

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

This month at  Baby Elephant we are delighted to have some gorgeous new products on the site - for New Mums these fantastic baby change bags from Babymel are chic and handy from just €60. These babybags make a wonderful gift and investment as all mums know this is an essential peice of kit, when taking the little one out and about. The Babymel Amanda bags are  great because  not only are they classically chic , they also include insulated zipped bottle pockets must have  changing mat. Which are all wipeable!

For Mums to be we also have the new Versatile Birthing Shirt  from The Birthing shirt Company. When we discovered this product the team at baby elephant thought that this would make a very durable yet wonderful  gift for a Mum to be, in all stages of preganancy and after.

The birthing shirt is made of the softest organic bamboo fabric. The design has been tested by pregnant women to enusre that it meets their needs.It is highly comfortable and it has been endorsed by the UK   NCT (National childbirth Trust). The birthing shirt is an ideal gift for a mum to be growing into her pregnancy or as a gift for the Hospital bag, so that a new mum can look great in the post delivery photo’s!!

Baby Elephant are so excited that the Owls, Swallows and Rabbits have arrived from the divine new Irish company Old Rectory. Founded by sisters Stephanie and Joanna Sloan (mothers to 6 boys!) these clothes are not only beautiful, 100% organic and Irish designed but also durable, perfect baby gifts!

We cant resist these Newborn Gowns

These timeless prints will never go out of fashion vintage yet contemporary these newborn gowns are 100% organic cotton so kind to new baby and the environment – we are in love!

Beautiful Bandand Bib for Dribbly days

I know, I know but we just cant help it check out these super cute bandana bibs perfect for new little bunnies. Also as the heatwave never appeared we are still offering the 15% discount in the hope of encouraging it! Simply enter  Sun15 at checkout to avail of it.

www.babyelephant.ie organic and pampering baby gifts, new mum hampers and pregnancy presents.

Sunday Business Post, 5th June 2011

In the last of ten articles about online retailer Baby Elephant, Cillian Barry explains why breaking Britain isn’t easy

It’s been nine months since the birth of our second baby, and this is my final article detailing the ups and downs of a newborn child and a newborn business.

Backin September I ambitiously, and probably foolishly, set a sales target for Baby Elephant in Britain. As the months went by, some people noticed that my mentions of business in Britain became shorter and more infrequent; I was quietly hoping you might forget about it.

It quickly became clear that our Baby Elephant was going to need a lot of support for its trip across the sea. Even an elephant was never going to get noticed in Britain without a big marketing budget. We approached with caution, spending approximately €10,000 on creating a British version of the website, an affiliate network campaign and Google Adwords. As my silence suggested, sales have been slow, with as few as ten orders per month from Britain – a very small percentage of our overall sales.Even on performance-based marketing activity, we were losing money on each sale because we had no brand awareness in Britain – our click-through and conversion rates were over 70 per cent less than they were in Ireland. In theory, search and social media reduce the barriers to entry for an online retailer abroad, but even Google is not able to perform miracles.

If we had had more money and a gambler’s nerve, we could have supported a brand-building campaign, employed a PR agency and carried the high cost per new customer in the hope that our cost per sale would come down over time as brand awareness rose, conversion rates went up and repeat customers bought from us directly.

We held back, believing that we could have grown revenues, but lost money for at least three years. We got traction by focusing on a niche within a niche, so instead of just promoting ourselves as a gift site for mothers and babies, we highlighted ‘organic baby gifts’ and ‘pregnancy gifts’.

This gave us some chance with Google, as it reduced the amount of competition we faced and allowed us to target more specific search terms better.

So, other than the fact that consumer businesses should be very wary of launching in Britain, here are the lessons we learned.

The first is that there is a very wide gap between theory and practice when it comes to setting up and marketing a business. Plans have a tendency to show a profit only on paper because most advertising will not work, and will not deliver sales or brand awareness on a limited budget.

Advertising works for large companies with large budgets that can afford to invest in the long-term development of their brand. For a small company, the money is better spent on someone who understands Google and can get your Adwords and SEO set up well.

Secondly, there continues to be a great deal of talk about social media and the potential of social commerce, but there is still very little evidence that Twitter, Facebook ads or a Facebook page can cost-effectively drive sales. Likewise, mobile commerce will be very disruptive for high street shops, but will not deliver a meaningful level of sales for us this year.

However, it is worth understanding how people are using both, and thinking about where we might best position ourselves in the future.

Thirdly, while looking for the big idea that will help us cut through, we need to continue focusing on getting the basics right – making sure our website is easy to use, that our e-mail newsletters are not ending up in spam folders, that we say something on Facebook our target audience welcomes, that our website is easy for Google to search and return for relevant search results, that we have an effective plan for encouraging people to become repeat customers and that we are not wasting money on the wrong clicks from Google Adwords.

Fourthly, it helped to make sure that any money we did spend was done as a low-cost trial that clearly showed what our return on investment was. It is worth outsourcing some areas of the business.

It certainly saves us a great deal of money having our website build and maintenance done by a development company in Ukraine and retaining a Dublin-based company to look after packaging and delivery. Without a tight control of spend, it would be very easy to spend €100,000 at the set-up and launch stage that would take a long time to earn back.

Finally, it is difficult setting up and running a business on your own in terms of time commitment and financial requirement, but also because of the emotional strain that comes from dealing with the highs and lows on your own.

It means that owner-managers often don’t take time to stand back and critically review the state of their business and identify opportunities for innovation or growth. To counter this, meeting other business owners is always worth it, as it represents a chance to share ideas and see that others face the same challenges.

In the last article, I mentioned we were looking for a company to partner with. We are very happy to say that we have agreed a deal with entrepreneur Norah Casey, owner of Ireland’s largest magazine company, Harmonia.

As a media and marketing partner, it will promote us through its many magazine titles and websites, and we will provide its readers with exclusive gift offers and hampers created specifically for each magazine Like having babies, if you were to Look at it rationally, no one would ever set up their own business.

It costs money, takes up all your time, causes you constant worry, takes a long time to grow up and is very unlikely ever to pay you back– but we still keep happily having them.

If you’ve enjoyed these articles and haven’t already done so, go to www.babyelephant.ie and buy something.

Baby Elephant visited a Baby Gorilla!

We went to see the gorgeous new Baby Gorilla in Dublin Zoo its a boy! Little Kituba and his amazing Mum are well worth a visit.

We still love the old classics.

Baby will be up to the minute this summer with these classic stripes so spoil a new baby with a Breton Stripe or Nautical Stripe romper they never go out of style. Perfect Baby Gifts!

We can’t contain our excitment for this heatwave!
We are so delighted the the sun is here and talk of a heatwave that we are offering a15% discount for June just input Sun15 at checkout to avail of it.

Old Rectory Coming Soon!

www.babyelephant.ie The Perfect Gifts for Pregnancy, New Mum & Baby
Practical & Pampering. Organic & Luxurious hampers.

Looking for the right partners
Sunday Buisness Post   08 May 2011

Cillian Barry is approaching the end of a nine-month stint helping to run his wife’s online business Baby Elephant (www.babyelephant.ie and www.babyelephantuk.com)

April seemed like a month of unbroken blue skies and the longest Easter holidays in memory. The bank holidays just kept coming. It was perfect for short breaks in Ireland, beer gardens, days on the beach and ice cream vans, but not such a good mix for most online retail businesses.

People shop online during work, so anything that keeps them out of the office is good for them, but bad for sales.

As mentioned last month, the number of sales per month continues to grow, but with our average spend per order down, we had been looking at ways to minimise our cost per sale. We have been improving our search engine optimisation, making small changes to the site that make it easier for Google to find us and return us in results for relevant searches.

This has had a positive effect and we are now coming up near the top of page one for several relevant searches on Google in Ireland, in particular for keywords related to pregnancy gifts.

This has resulted in an increase in companies buying new mother and baby gifts for clients and employees from us. For them, using Google to find a company that they can easily buy from and have the gift delivered makes their life easier. Their average spend is also higher than other customers, with corporate clients spending an average of €75 per gift compared to €50 for other customers.

The Easter break was a good time for chocolate bingeing and business reflection.

There are many benefits to being the owner/manager of a small business, no office politics, not having to invent Friday afternoon meetings to get out of the office for an early weekend or embarrassing mornings after an office night out, but it also has one big downside – you have to do everything yourself.

You look after the website design, development and maintenance; product sourcing and buying; strategy; customer care; accounts and finances and marketing and communications. This is a challenge and often means that you don’t have time to stand back from the business, review and see the opportunities for growth. It also means you don’t have colleagues to solve problems or share frustrations with.

While many people start their own business to give themselves a better work/ home balance, often the result ends up being the opposite. Unless you create a best selling iPhone app, being a part-time business owner is a fulltime job. Even if you are not sitting at your desk, you are always at the end of a phone or e-mail for a customer or supplier.

It is increasingly difficult to switch off from any job, but harder when there is no one to cover for you.

After two very good years, it is becoming clear that on our own, it is difficult to grow a business beyond a certain size. Baby Elephant has done all the basics well and despite the recession there are still lots of babies being born. But without something extra, it will continue to be a well liked, small business that makes a very modest profit.

So we are talking to several companies, with a view to partnering with them under an arrangement that they take over certain key areas of the business in exchange for part ownership of the company. It is suited to a company that already has an audience to which it can promote the Baby Elephant website, such as an existing online retailer, a media owner or a corporate gift company.

The partner brings the audience and support services and we bring a small, debt-free company with a strong product range and website, a good number of loyal customers and a small number of active corporate clients.

The idea is that it is better to have a small part of something big than a big part of something small.

Downturn leads to cost focus
03 April 2011

It has been seven months since I took over the marketing of my wife’s online business, Baby Elephant (www.babyelephant.ie and www.babyelephantuk.com), following the birth of our baby in September last year.

This is the eighth in a series of ten monthly articles profiling our successes and failures.

As mentioned last month, the baby was not sleeping and we were struggling to develop any kind of routine. I am relieved to report that we had a sleep nurse come in for a two-hour session and show us where we were going wrong. After two nights of him crying for approximately one hour, he was able to sleep through the night.

It would be great if business were as easy. After a good start to the year, March was a quiet month for Baby Elephant.

After speaking to other business owners and online retailers, it seems as though things are slowing down. There is a feeling that the latest budget, the further increase in unemployment and the bank mess means that people are spending less.

As with your own children, there is a tendency not to dwell on the imperfections or bad habits of your own business.

This means small business owners are often slow to react to a problem or a change in market conditions. This situation is often made worse by most business owners’ reluctance to look closely and honestly at the numbers.

So, faced with a quiet March, we took time to look at our fixed costs, average spend per order and cost per sale. One benefit of being an online retailer is that your fixed costs are relatively low; we are satisfied these are closely managed and no savings are available.

While our sales have doubled in the last 12 months, our average spend has fallen as a result of us extending our product range to include some lower priced items, and due to people having less money.

When our average order was €80, we could afford a marketing cost per sale of €10-€15, but if our average spend drops to €50, we only just break even if we spend the same amount to get that sale.

Therefore, our variable cost per sale is the area that we need to focus our attention on.

While we benefit from not having the rental cost that shops have, the downside is that online retailers do not benefit from passing trade as a shop does, so your marketing costs are a must-have, rather than a nice-to-have.

Therefore, the only way to get your cost per sale down is to focus on ‘free’ marketing activities such as search engine optimisation (SEO), PR, our e-mail newsletter, Facebook page and direct sales to corporate clients. If we can increase the percentage of our sales that comes from these activities, then our average marketing cost per sale decreases.

The other factor that will lower this variable cost is our conversion rate, so we are looking at some shopping cart analysis software that will help us review when and why people do not complete a purchase.

Industry average for shopping cart abandonment before completion is as high as 70 per cent, so if we can make the payment process easier for customers, we will see an increase in our conversion rate from site visit to purchase.

Like the sleep nurse’s session, this review of Baby Elephant took two hours. The benefit of both is that they forced us to focus, make the difficult decisions and get on with it.

Baby Elephant’s New Baby Prints!
We are thrilled to have Irish artist Aoibhne Hogan’s gorgeous baby prints on the site the perfect gift for little collectors at €60!

Spoil Mum or a Mum to be this Mothers’ Day!
Give a Mama in Waiting or new Mum a box of relaxation and pampering this Mothers’ Day from our Mama Gifts from €27.

New Shoes!

We have got some super cute new baby shoes. Treat newborn Paws to these natural leather shoes that protect little feet, all hand stitched with no toxic glues (we know how they like to nibble their toes!). The elasticated ankle ensures Little Elephants and Birdys stay on firmly.

Baby Elephant loves a Spring Clean!
We have been busy giving www.babyelephant.ie a spring clean thanks to Tom Hayes and his team in Lightbox the site is now easier to use with handy features such as search by price and category. Let us know what you think by Email or on Facebook.

06 March 2011 – Cillian Barry

The baby is behaving, apart from a new-found inability to sleep for more than 90 minutes.

He lulled us into comfortable complacency for the first four months with stretches of four or even five hours’ sleep, but then decided he was going too easy on us.

We’ve listened enthusiastically to suggestions from family, friends, books and baby forums and, with great optimism, tried everything.

Every few days we try a new bottle, because supposedly it’s all about flow and teats. Previously believing that a sleeping baby was down to simple good luck, we now recognise that having a plan probably helps.

On Baby Elephant, we’ve benefited from some luck and planning, and the website has been behaving itself – with sales in February up by just over 100 per cent on the same month last year. I wish I could tell you that this was down to my efforts on the British launch, but that can only claim a small part of this increase.

Sales in Britain continue to be hard-earned, as we struggle to find marketing activity that will deliver a positive return on investment.

This is due to the online market there being more competitive, and the fact that we do not have the resources needed to build the brand in the same way we have in Ireland.

Both these factors mean that we have a low conversion rate, resulting in a higher cost per sale than in Ireland, and we don’t enjoy the savings that come from word-of mouth sales which have no direct marketing cost attached to them. One significant factor in the increase in sales has been our new site design which was launched in early February.

It took us two months to get the design right, but thanks to the patience of Tom Hayes and his design team at Lightbox, and feedback from Facebook fans and customers, we have a site that does the Baby Elephant brand and product justice.

It is hard to get website design right from the start and often what you want and need only become clear after the site has been live for several months.

The first version of the Baby Elephant site didn’t deal with the basics of leading with product and price, so the new homepage is intended to better highlight these, making it easy for person to buy.

It includes a section allowing people to search for a gift by price, more clearly defined gift categories broken down into Mama-to-be, New Mother and Baby, and also a prominent position for a featured product each day.

Our February site analytics show that the site redesign has had a positive effect on our conversion rate from site visit to sale.

Conversion rates for online retail will vary by between 2-4 per cent. It is probably the most important metric for anybody selling online; even a small improvement will result in a significant increase in sales.

For instance, if we get 10,000 visits to our site in a month and only convert 2.5 per cent, we will get 250 sales, but if we increase that to 3 per cent we will get 300 sales. This means that we have increased our sales by 20 per cent by increasing our conversion rate by 0.5 per cent.

When you do the sums on it you quickly realise how important site design and user experience is – making it easy for customers to browse and buy makes a very big difference to your bottom line.

Now the website design is right, we must again refocus our attention on getting people to our site in a cost-effective way.

Despite the potential of social media such as Facebook and Twitter to drive sales, the reality is that Google and our monthly e-mail newsletter are still the most effective ways we have to find new customers, and bring existing customers back to the site.

Feedback on the new site design would be most welcome at www.facebook.com/lovebabyelephant, as are suggestions for getting a baby to sleep for more than 90 minutes.