Toddletown nursery group branches into franchising

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.’