An Interview With Bambini And Bo

This week I’m showcasing nursery furniture for the little ones in our lives. “ Bambini And Bo” are a nursery retailer based in the UK who specialise in picking brands and products that have an unique and inspiring contemporary feel. I caught up with Theo, co founder and director of this lovely family store to find out more… Hi Theo and welcome!

Hi, my name’s Theo Clarke, I am the co-founder and director of Bambini and Bo. We are a UK based family-run baby store selling nursery furniture, decor and transport (pushchairs, prams and travel systems).

What inspired the founding of your nursery retail shop, Bambini and Bo?

My mum started a home décor business in 2018 called “Over The Moon Creations”, specialising in personalised home-made décor. This was a field she had no experience in, just passion, passion to express herself artistically and just the thought alone of people wanting to purchase her creations made her feel Over The Moon.

At this time, I was working full-time as a Building Services Engineer whilst also studying part-time at University to achieve my degree in Building Services Engineering. As you can imagine, my free-time was sparse.

In June 2020 we were amidst a global pandemic. I was out of work and for the first time in my life I had time to reflect, time to think and time to decide on where my true passion lied. It was at this time I decided to put all my time and efforts into creating a family-run business alongside my Mum.

It was a steep learning curve (and still is), which began with months of market research prior to designing and building our website: bambiniandbo.co.uk

I love the name “Bambini and Bo” – what is the story behind the name?

Thank you! Well, all credit goes to Mum on this one. By this time Over The Moon Creations had been up and running for a couple of years, Mum had created hundreds of personalised products, many of which had consisted of baby names.

Our ‘future competitors’ names were all very similar. We wanted a name that stood out; something that we hoped people would remember.

We brainstormed for a few days before finally deciding on Bambini and Bo.

Bambini meaning ‘baby’ in Italian and Bo (or sometimes spelt Beau) being a popular baby name that my Mum had produced a number of personalised products for.

Your shop specialises in nursery furniture, decor and transport with an inspiring contemporary feel. I am particularly fond of the Maya Range Bedroom Furniture – such a pity my children are not youngsters any more! To date, what has been the most popular product from your range?

Funny that you mention the Maya range. This is a brand-new range by Obaby that launched in January 2021. Almost instantly this turned into one of our best sellers. Selling out just a week or two after launching. We then took a number of pre-orders for stock due in February, which was all pre-sold before the stock even arrived!

So well done to the Obaby on that one, they created a beautiful set, loved by us and parents alike!

What’s your most favourite item in your collection?

Tough question, as there’s so many, but the product that comes to mind above all else is the Tidy Books Children’s Bookcase, created by Geraldine Grenadier. We’ve been working with her since the launch of our website back in August 2020 and have developed a great working relationship.

I like these bookcases so much that recently I wrote a blog post on them myself, titled: 10 Reasons Why Parents Are Buying This Children’s Bookcase [Award-Winning]: https://bambiniandbo.co.uk/blogs/news/childrens-bookcase

When picking items to add to your collections, do you select by what has proved popular in the past, current trends, customer requests, personal preferences or all of those things?

I would say the selection process actually starts with the Brand.

We only work with brands that we believe in. We trust these brands and their products; they work hard to keep up and adapt to current trends and regularly bring out new products. A perfect example of this is the Maya range by Obaby as mentioned previously.

As Bambini and Bo is based in the UK, are your products available to purchase and order worldwide?

Currently, we only ship to the UK. But we are still within our first year of trading.

We plan to continue scaling our business at a maintainable rate and wish to better establish ourselves within the UK before we begin to compete with retailers on a global scale.

Also, the new Brexit regulations came into effect as of January 2020, from what I can gather from speaking to others, this has resulted in many import/export difficulties at the moment. So, it is probably not a great time to be importing to/exporting from the UK anyway.

What trends do you foresee for 2021/2022 when it comes to nursery decorating?

I would be looking to my Mum for answers with this one – she tends to have an eye for these things. Although, I have noticed that when it comes to nursery design certain colours seem to be very popular at the moment, blush pink and pearl grey are being used a lot.

Personal now – what outfits and shoes would you normally be found wearing?

Well, that depends entirely on the occasion. But being in lockdown for the majority of 2020 due to the pandemic, there’s not been many opportunities to get dressed up. But you can’t beat a smart fitted shirt, jeans/trousers and a pair of all black Prada America’s cup shoes.

Do you have any favourite shops or online sites?

Depends on what I’m buying. Asos is pretty good as a general all-round store – I can normally always find something I like on there. If it’s designer I’m after, then I prefer to shop in-store at an outlet where I can try it on.

What’s next on your clothes/shoe wish list?

It’s been sometime since I’ve bought any clothes. I’m not even on the Bambini and Bo payroll yet! It’s still early days so all the money earnt is being put right back into the business.

I will most definitely be treating myself to a new wardrobe when I receive that first pay-cheque.

Boots or Shoes?

Depends on the season, chelsea boots work well with jeans in winter but summer when the legs are out it’s got to be shoes.

Links you would like to share e.g. website/facebook etc so that readers can find out more about Bambini and Bo.