Baby Store Hours  ▪  Mon, Tues, Friday, and Sat 10:30 am - 6 pm    ▪   Wed and Thurs 10:30 am - 9 pm  ▪ Sun 12 - 5 ppm

►Beltway Baby Book -  "Great Beginnings is a serious devotee of the quick-stop, A-to-Z baby shopping. This colossal store is about a mile from Lakeforest Mall...plan to spend a considerable amount of time. It takes a while to go through every crib, stroller, and rocking chair known to humankind. Great Beginnings offers helpful service, good value and serious middle-of-the-road and upper end options. Their staff is the best."

►Families Magazine - Great Beginnings was chosen to the Best of DC guide.

►Partnership Award - Presented to Great Beginnings by Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan for "initiating and developing a children's car seat inspection program."  Great Beginnings dedicates space and manpower resources to help facilitate trained safety specialists who will check car seats for proper installation, age/size appropriateness and to determine if the seats have been damaged or recalled. New data from the National SAFE KIDS Campaign showed that 74.6% of seats checked in Montgomery County from February 2001 to March 2002 were used incorrectly.

►The Washingtonian Magazine - "Great Beginnings has a great selection of well-priced baby and kid furniture from brands like Pali, Sorelle, and Dutailier along with accessories like mirrors, stepstools, and lamps, most in simple styles. Despite the huge array of merchandise, there’s a lot of space. The service is excellent."

►The Nest - "a delightful, well-organized and easy to navigate store... everything you need for your baby under one roof... friendly, knowledgeable staff will help you choose the stroller that's right for you... wide selection of cribs, bedding and dressers... they often beat other stores' prices... they are willing to hold the items you purchased until after the baby comes... staff was extremely accommodating - they even delivered and set up a loaner crib until ours arrived"

►Kids Today Magazine

Great Beginnings offers innovative programs  

The extensive stroller area is manned by dedicated employees who can walk customers through the more than 200 makes and models on the floor.

By Jane Kitchen

GAITHERSBURG, Md. — This 80,000-square-foot independent superstore has been operating in the Washington D.C. metro area for 15 years with a single store.

When designing Great Beginnings an open, airy feeling when customers walk in the store was highly desired, and they have succeeded at that. With 22-foot ceilings, the store features neat, open room settings arranged by manufacturer, with 120 crib vignettes and 50 teen vignettes on the floor.

Cribs range from $200 to $1,800, and include manufacturers like Ragazzi, Pali, Munire and Natart. The teen section includes offerings from Ragazzi, Flexa, Rumble Tuff, EG and Morigeau. Plus a clearance center allows good deals to be found.

Around the perimeter, different sections feature apparel, feeding and safety, toys and developmental products, gear, artwork and child-size furniture, making the store easy to travel.

The apparel area includes brands such as Kushies and kissy kissy, and the buying is done by a former Nordstrom clothing buyer. General Manager Brian Green said the department focuses on boutique brands with more of a European flavor and quality fabrics.

Great Beginnings works with several local artists who have painted murals throughout the store in exchange for referrals to customers — a win-win situation for artist, owner and customer. The latest mural, which towers over the stroller section, features a Victorian park setting and adds mood to the store’s tall walls.

The stroller and carseat area is manned by one part-time and three full-time employees who are dedicated to that section — something that becomes important when you have 220 strollers on display. “We show models in every color,” Green said. “If you show it, you sell it.”

The gear section has been a success for Great Beginnings, which has both installed carseats and conducted carseat checks for the past 10 years. The store is very involved in the community, and Holy Cross hospital has an office in the back of the store where Lamaze classes and babysitter certification classes are held.

Also in the back of the store: the Bored Husbands’ Lounge, which features leather sofas, a copper ceiling reminiscent of old-time bars, and CNN on the television. Great Beginnings has paid attention to details; no expense has been spared on the women’s restroom, which features Italian tile, granite countertops, toddler-sized toilets and a nursing lounge with leather chairs. The store also employs a full-time housekeeper to keep the place looking good.

Like most independent specialty operators, Great Beginnings is all about customer service, but at Great Beginnings, hand-held service is the name of the game. The store offers personal shopping on Wednesday and Thursday nights, where customers can set up appointments to walk through the store with Green or another manager to pick products for registries. Appointments are booked up six weeks in advance.

He provides the customers with his own suggestion list of must-have products in each category, and explains his choices. For items like strollers, he talks to the customers about their lifestyle and needs and then helps them make their choice. The whole process takes about an hour and a half, depending on the customer, and Green said it helps tremendously with inventory, return rates and damage rates.

For customers who want to keep the gender of their baby a surprise, Great Beginnings offers an innovative program where the parents pick the merchandise for both sexes, and then the store finds out from the doctor what the sex of the baby is and orders the appropriate pieces, so they’re ready to be delivered after the baby arrives.

►Earnshaw's Small World  Magazine-

October 2007 Edition Pages 40 & 41 “SMALL WORLD, BIG IDEA – CLASS ACT” 

“As the Nordstrom of the baby industry, Great Beginnings of Gaithersburg, MD offers everything for new arrivals, from strollers and high chairs to bedding.  Though measuring an impressive 80,000 square feet, the mammoth store is still a mom-and-pop shop at heart, according to general manager Brian Green.  That close knit feeling is due in large part to the services it offers, a list that includes classes and demonstrations.

The store has an ongoing partnership with the local fire and police departments, which trains volunteers and gives customers free car seat inspections several times a month.  Green estimates about 22,000 car seats were installed last year alone.  ‘We’re very proactive with car seat safety and with the liability of our own staff,’ he said.

In addition, Great Beginnings employees work in conjunction with the nearby Holy Cross Hospital to host infant CPR, baby massage and breastfeeding classes.  Nurses and doctors from the hospital run the sessions a few nights a week and on the weekend. ‘It didn’t really start off as a sales technique,’ Green explained.  ‘We’re a local store and we know a lot of people.  Our goal was always to establish a relationship with our customers first and then to sell.’

While in-store classes benefit patrons and their kids, retailers agree they often translate into greater foot traffic, increased name recognition and sales.  ‘They’re bringing customers into the store,’ Green explained.  ‘It gets your name out there, makes you visible to the community and helps you giveback.’  But furthermore, Green contends his store’s car seat inspection service and breastfeeding classes are responsible for creating big sales in those departments.  ‘During the breaks, customers walk around the store and impulse buy-they’re getting lotions, outfits and bottles,’ he noted.”

As seen in, quoted or referenced: Washington Post Washingtonian Magazine Denver Post The Nest Kids Today Magazine Small World Family Magazine

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