Maison White: Success of a local family run business.

Maison White is an independent, family owned retailer of Fine Gifts and Homeware products operating from their High Street store in Benson, Oxfordshire and their online website maisonwhite.co.uk.

From humble beginnings, in 2010 with a small boutique shop in the village of Coggeshall, Essex they quickly moved to a larger shop in Colchester High Street in 2012, which allowed them to expand their range. Spotting the opportunity of a wider customer base they opened their website at the same time.

The business relocated to Benson, Oxfordshire in 2019 and as the online demand continued to grow they took on a 2000 sq ft warehouse nearby just before the outbreak of Covid 19. They outgrew that 2 years later and moved into the present 5,000 sq ft unit.

The business no doubt benefited from the online opportunities presented by Covid, coupled by their eye for growing product trends and opportunities and focusing on quality brands.

With space being limited, they first saw their strongest expansion opportunities in the childrens’ toys market as they started to build their range of Jellycat Soft Toys, and are presently among the top 3 online retailers and offer the brands full range. To develop that category they expanded into key branded wooden toys; Le Toy Van, Tenderleaf and Big Jigs.

The move to taking on a warehouse allowed them to also expand their homeware products into the bedding and curtains categories, and are now a leading online retailer of key brands such as Orla Kiely, Sara Miller, Morris & Co. to name a few.

Along side the above, Maison White offers a vast number of other items in these categories with a growing profile of desirable gifts for any occasion.

Maison White continues to look out for the next brand or product category to provide their customers (kids, parents and grandparents) with a wider shopping experience. Through their success in the kids toy market, they spotted the opportunity to offer traditional ride on and push along toys, where children can explore, play and engage in physical developmental activities, instead of solitary electronic games etc. This recently led them to expand this category into Scooters. Once again following their strategy to sell the best brands on the market they engaged with Micro Scooter, the leading and best quality scooters available. This was another immediate success with some key products and they plan to grow this to encompass Micro’s entire range.

Apart from offering quality branded products, Maison White firmly believe in providing the best service, in terms of stock availability, and speedy and accurate dispatch. Their growing 5 star reviews says it all.

Along with the success of their online business Maison White firmly believes in maintaining its bricks & mortar store to serve the local community of Benson and surrounding villages. They are able to offer their local customers to explore a sample of what is available in store with the opportunity to pick from the entire range of some 6,000 lines for next day pick up.

What’s next? Firstly they need a bigger warehouse having already filled the current one!

The business currently employs 8 staff.