It's kind of difficult to tell if this shop is in fact called The Baby Shop, or whether it's actually, rather oddly called 'www.cheaper-bythedozen.co.uk', as the website name seems to appear more prominent. For such a prominently-advertised website, it's actually quite a disappointment - greeted by a blank box, you 'enter the site' to find a reasonably pleasant welcoming page (although the assertion that 'every mother and father would like to make their child look trendy with baby clothes and footwear' somewhat put me off - for me 'trendy' is the last way I'd like a future baby to look! Bleeurgh!) But then each nicely labelled section at the top is, upon clicking, found to be empty or non-existent. Oh dear!
Anyway, back to non-virtual reality...the actual shop is full to the brim with baby gear - plenty of prams that look to be of good quality and practical, a few car seats and baby toys, and a range of baby and children's clothes. The baby clothes aren't horrifyingly trendy, as the website might lead one to believe with some pretty cute baby grows though there are a few mini-grown-up items. Kidswear is trendier, but then kids these days are probably Facebooking on their iPhones by the time they're out of nappies, and we wouldn't want them to be ridiculed in the playground would we?
The prices are pretty cheap here, and in the current money-crunch who could blame new parents for seeking out bargains. But clothes-wise I'd always opt for the trusty old charity shop - at 6 months they're only going to grow out of it in a few weeks anyway. And primary school spent in Oxfam get up never did me any harm...but then I s'pose those were the old days! read more