Hey Thankyou community
Well, there’s never a dull day in the office at Thankyou. The simplest way I can put it is that as things get bigger, they get bigger. The highs are higher (hello epic New Zealand launch that’s blown our minds) and the lows are lower. As a team we wanted to talk to you today about one of those lows.
You’ve been on the ‘launching Thankyou baby journey’ with us for the past two years now, so we wanted to let you know about some changes to our ranging in supermarkets.
If you read our FY17 Year in Review, you’d be familiar with these two pictures.
What people think working at Thankyou would be like:
What it’s actually like:
It’s a good thing we believe that calm seas never made a skilled sailor, because we found out some news a few weeks ago that we weren’t expecting...
Coles informed us they’re changing their strategy and will be deleting the entire Thankyou nappy range. While this is challenging and confronting, it’s also just business.
The fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry is tough and supermarkets play a cut-throat game. Being a business stocked in major supermarkets, there’s always a risk that a change in strategy or the volatile nature of the industry can mean we’ll have to quickly adapt to decisions out of our control. I cannot stress to you enough the importance of regularly purchasing products you love – that's the ultimate way to protect their shelf space.
Coles placed their last order a week ago, so nappies will start to phase off shelves throughout September and October. Woolworths, our other major retailer will retain half of our range – focusing on the key sizes and you can still find our nappies at Baby Bunting and online at thankyou.co.
I’m proud of the fact that our performance was up (we claimed a significant 10% market share in our sub-segment in the first 3 months and showed 25% growth compared to our previous quarter for our recent ‘get you through the night’ campaign (in-market sales data). Our new and improved nappy has a proven great quality (research showed us parents who tried it would recommend it amongst the leading brands) and our marketing campaigns were successful in driving sales and reaching parents.
In the early years (after we had many waves in the face) one of my mentors told me “Toughen up, because this is the reality of the business world”. Sure at the time it felt harsh, but in hindsight it was some of the best advice I’d received. We have a history of using our setbacks and knock downs to propel us into our future. This will be no different.
We believe that when you know your why you’ll get up and go again. So, why Thankyou Baby? Because the current maternal and child health statistics are every 103 seconds a mother dies in childbirth and 2.7 million babies don’t reach their first month of life because they don’t have access to basic healthcare (with 99% of these deaths happening in developing countries). Because of your choice to purchase Thankyou Baby products, we’ve helped get safe births and healthcare to 94,477 mums and bubs to help bring these statistics down. The birthing centers we’ve built so far in Nepal (and will continue to build) will forever offer mums a safe place to give birth with trained professionals, hygienic equipment and people who care.
Birthing Centre in rural Nepal
We’ll keep you posted with updates, but in the meantime you can head to Woolworths, Baby Bunting, thankyou.co and Amazon.com.au to support the range and buy Thankyou nappies.
On behalf of our team,
Thankyou
Daniel
Got a question about this news? Feel free to comment in the thread below or email us at [email protected]
