I’m beginning to get to that age now where people you know are starting to get married, have kids, or do both of these things! Recently for example, a good female friend of mine had a little a little girl with her partner. She was the very first of my close friends to take a big step in to adulthood, something which the rest of us are still trying hard to fathom!
Photo of Baby Bow by Lindsey B via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
There is a wide variety of baby mattresses in the market today, and it can be hard choosing the right one. This is a guide to the different kinds of cot bed mattresses you can buy, which should make more sense of the choices out there.
Your child’s comfort is, of course, important. But high on the list of requirements for parents is the health and well being of their little one. With this in mind, what makes a safe mattress? The FSID (Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths) suggests that a mattress should be “firm, flat, waterproof mattress in good condition.” A brand new mattress offers much better support for the baby, while helping to reduce health risks.
So if these pointers are sufficient, is it necessary to look for a specific hypoallergenic cot mattress, or will any new mattress do, dependent on budget. To a certain degree, perhaps not. However, there might be a concern about asthma or allergies that can cause discomfort. For this reason, hypoallergenic mattresses have been created to reduce this discomfort.
How Do Hypoallergenic Mattresses Work?
Hypoallergenic cot mattresses tend to be made from high density foam, which still offers comfort and support for newborns. Soft, microfibre covers are designed to be easily removable for washing. It is this cover that is treated to be antic bacterial and anti fungal. The covers are also dust mite repellent. Covers tend to be machine washable at 60 degrees this will kill any dust mites.
Hypo allergenic cot mattresses can sometimes be a little more expensive than standard mattresses, but there can be marked health benefits. If your baby is particularly susceptible to allergies, or there are concerns surrounding asthma, such mattresses are certainly worth considering.
You can find more information on baby allergies online.
It’s no great surprise that the shopping habits of UK consumers has changed dramatically over the last few years. Pressures from the economic recession aside – while important – the natural progression to buying online has increased fundamentally.
According to the IMRG, the e-tail market of the UK grew by 16% in the UK. Online sales now account for 17% of all retail sales in this country. While the percentage might seem small, the level consistently grows. Buying online is becoming second nature to many, but the up and coming generations with purchasing power see buying online as a basic shopping experience. The pressure on eCommerce outlets is on.
Because of the need to provide a smooth running, quality shopping experience, the work behind the scenes of a site needs to be totally reliable. This means that a the hosting for your site has to be able to provide excellent guarantees and a service that won’t let you down. You need to be able to rely on someone being on hand to ensure that you have the necessary back up you need, even during the odd hours of the day and night. You don’t want to miss out on that last minute purchase before bedtime!
Companies such as Intelligent Retail expect the best possible service from their support and hosting. This in turn provides the best possible support for their customers. Intelligent Retail provides EPoS till systems for over thousands of licences for the company’s branded Connect system. Many of these stores also use them for webdesign. Intelligent Retail is a company that relies on a ‘best fit’ approach to all of its business connections, with both its customers and as a customer. This led to the use of Rackspace’s systems.
It was Rackspace that offered the best in hosting services to meet the needs of Intelligent Retail and its customers. They were able to understand the complexities required from an eCommerce and retail service provider of Intelligent Retail’s calibre. The lesson to be learned here is that whoever you chose for your hosting, they should understand what you want to achieve, and help you achieve it.
If you’re a retailer then you will probably will have heard of EPoS. This is Electronic Point of Sale and refers to an electronic version of the traditional till system which has been used for decades by retailers all over the planet.
The driving force behind any EPoS system is of course the computer EPoS program which is used to power the system. This piece of software runs usually above an operating system on a normal home PC system and powers all of the till system peripherals such as touch screen monitor, barcode scanner and cash drawer commonly found on all EPoS systems.
The computer epos program ties in all of these hardware peripherals and also ties directly into centrallised stock control, allowing the retailer to not only populate external channels with stock but also receive orders back to the shop till, meaning that (if the system has been designed intelligently) the stock tree is automatically decremented, showing which channel has provided the sale – a great thing for end of month reporting.
For pushchair retailers it’s obvious that using anything else than a fully functioning EPoS system is not really going to be cost effective, as time wasted on manual systems can be used far more effectively elsewhere.
We’ll be posting here shortly so please check back.
