Everything 4 Kids Keeps Customers Coming Back
Jane Kitchen -- Kids Today, 7/1/2011 4:41:16 AM
Radcliff, Kentucky - In 2001, Chris and Wendy Wilburn were just another young Army couple in Fort Knox - he, a tank mechanic, she, a musician - living here and struggling to get by.
But one weekend, Wendy took some outgrown children's items to a local flea market to make a few extra dollars, and she soon realized that there was a market for gently used baby items.
Soon, she was scouting local yard sales for baby things, and selling them at the flea market on Sunday for a profit. For two years, this made ends meet for the Wilburns.
"We made more than we made in the Army doing this on the side," said Wendy.
Those two years also served as an education to the Wilburns, as they learned about what products sell, what they were worth, and what was safe. When their 8-year Army stint was up, they decided to take the business further and open a store.
For the first year, Everything 4 Kids continued solely in the gently used business, selling items in an 800-square-foot space in a small strip mall. But when the property was seized after their landlord was in trouble for tax evasion, the Wilburns took it as a sign to move on.
Wendy found the space, but it was significantly larger: 7,500 square feet, almost 10 times what they had been working with.
"When she told me the size, I thought, ‘We'll never fill this building up,'" said Chris.
And so they decided to add new furniture to the mix, and added a bunk, a twin and a daybed to the floor to fill in some space. 
"We were definitely on a quick learning curve," said Chris. "But soon we found out that there's money to be made if you do it right in the new."
Today, Everything 4 Kids still carries gently used items, but its mix is 70% new items: youth furniture, infant furniture, bedding, gear and toys.
"The gently used items keep the customer regularly coming in, whether it's to sell or to buy," said Wendy. "... Because once you buy your furniture, you (otherwise) may never step foot in my store again."
But between the gently used baby and children's clothes and a "huge" market of maternity clothes, the Wilburns said they have many customers who shop at least once a week, often picking up new items along with the gently used.
"A lot of smart parents are doing the research," said Chris. "They realize that there's some things they have to pay full retail for, and some things they don't."
When customers come in to sell used items, they are given a choice of cash or in-store credit, with the value a bit higher on the in-store credit, which is given in the form of a gift card. Many customers save up for big-ticket items, but even if they leave the store with a $10 credit, when it's in the form of a gift card, it gets them back in, said Wendy.
The Wilburns have expanded significantly from that first offering of juvenile furniture, but they always seek out unique vendors, even when they've had to bring in some lower-end brands as the economy slowed.
"All of our choices were always based on what we couldn't find in our area," said Wendy.
The area itself is a unique one; Fort Knox is just outside their door, which means constantly re-inventing themselves, said Wendy, and keeping the word out about their store.
"Everything goes in waves," she said "It's made us in some sense recession-proof because no one gets laid off." 
But deployments can have a huge effect on business, with 2,000 - 3,000 soldiers shipping out at once.
Still, said Wendy, "Nine to 12 months after the soldiers come home, there is a huge fluctuation in births... the one thing the military doesn't stop doing is having babies."
But Fort Knox is famously impenetrable, and that goes for marketing a store as well.
"Advertising is a nightmare," said Chris. "We can't get a mailing list. We can't advertise inside the base."
As a result, the Wilburns have done some television advertising, and rely heavily on word-of-mouth.
But because Radcliff is so selfcontained and so tied to the military base, in 2006, the Wilburns opened a second location just 10 miles away in Elizabethtown, which features a different clientele and a different product mix.
The Elizabethtown features more high-end brands and trendier items, and the Wilburns often use the store to try new items to see how they do.
Everything 4 Kids' main competition comes from the big boxes - Wal- Mart, Kmart and Target. The nearest Babies ‘R' Us is almost an hour away in Louisville, but still something to contend with.
Aside from product mix, one thing that sets Everything 4 Kids apart from its competitors is its ties to the community. The Wilburns donate merchandise to the local pregnancy crisis center, and offer financial help in the form of payment plans to newly adoptive or foster care parents, working with local social services to make sure they have what they need.
The Wilburns have also run a seasonal store at Christmas time for the past two years, renting out temporary space in the mall to sell giftier items like Melissa & Doug, Kid Kraft and Guidcraft. 
The fourth quarter in the past hadn't been great, said Chris, and so throughout the year, the Wilburns stock up on manufacturer closeouts that they hold in their 8,000-square-foot warehouse until the holidays.
Last year, their Christmas store was a 22,000-square-foot former department store.
"We're lucky in that we have so much storage that we can put in a bigger order," said Chris.
The Wilburns also credit their buying group, NINFRA, for helping with their success.
"Nobody's going to hold a secret back," said Chris. "If they've got something that works, they're going to share. The better the group does, the better the group does."
And Everything 4 Kids is growing, even in a tough economy.
"We've had growth every year since we started," said Chris. "And from the time we opened our first store to last year, we've grown tenfold."
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