Today we have Kate with us from Music Bugs. Can you tell us a little bit about your business please Kate and which areas you cover?
Hi, I run Music Bugs in South East Wales. We run music and movement classes for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. My aim is to encourage parents and their children to enjoy a lovely time with music and movement through the use of lots of percussion instruments and props and we do this all over the area of South East Wales.
Wow, so quite a large area you cover there and quite a wide range of ages?
Yes, its lovely to see the babies focusing on their parents and enjoying the very close bonding that takes place during the session. As the children get older, they become more confident and independent and start to enjoy more interaction with other children in the class. We do offer different age groups but also offer mixed age group classes too which are very popular.
That sounds fantastic I must admit, I did something similar with my little girl when she was younger. Now obviously you do this now, did you have a different background prior to setting up as Music Bugs?
Yes, I was originally an electronic engineer, that’s what my degree was in. I did that for a few years but the job involved a lot of travelling so I I had to think of something that would fit around the family. So then I worked as a Waterbabies teacher, I took my second child to Waterbabies and absolutely adored it and thought I could do that, and then eventually as all my 3 children grew older I wanted a bit more of a challenge again and the opportunity to buy this franchise came up in the area. The franchisee that was running it was having another baby and wanted to sell so I thought that would be a fantastic combination of not just doing the teaching but also the business side of it which I had a background in so a good combination but it is also a very good franchise that fitted in with the family life.
That does sound like it actually. Obviously you have already said that there are franchises of Music Bugs. Do you know roughly if it is quite well covered in the UK, are they looking for people?
Yes, we are still quite a young franchise, I think that is one of the things that appealed to me is that I think there is the order of 20+ franchises now throughout the UK so there is still plenty of areas out there that don’t have Music Bugs in their area. It means we are a very youthful team with a really fresh young attitude and all very excited about where it will go in the future.
Yes, fantastic. So do you actually have your own website, or are you part of the main Music Bugs website. Can you give us the details please?
Yes, we all have an area on the main website which is www.musicbugs.co.uk if you click on the classes link you can find me there on the map under ‘Newport’. So if you have a young child and live in South Wales – get in touch!
Great, thank you. Now we are called What’s Good To Do so I just wanted to quickly ask you before we end this interview what you like doing in your free time?
Well crazily I have just started helping run a cub pack so that is lovely because we get to work with all the children so I do that with my husband which is lovely because we get a bit of time together and it is something that we do with our children in the evenings because they are in cubs and beavers so that is our main mad thing that we have just taken on lately, but believe it or not it is a real refreshing change from the work I do in the day.
That sounds great. Anyway, thank you so much Kate for coming to talk to us today. It has been really useful.
Thank you very much.