Kate & Mark Curtis acquired Dancing Boutique from the original founders in June 2019, carrying on the family ‘owned and run’ history since the business started in 1971.
With backgrounds in Publishing, Finance, Advertising, Tourism, and Industry they had spent their years developing and improving businesses and felt that Dancing Boutique was a truly exciting opportunity in an industry they love.
The couple have three children, one of whom graduated in 2020 as a dancer at Laine Performing Arts. Having become ‘dance parents’ as their daughter started her ballet training from the age of eight years, they grew to understand how important a good service driven dancewear provider was for fittings, ballet shoes, pointe shoes and the expertise to understand their daughters feet.
In their first year, Kate and Mark focused on reviewing all aspects of the business, keeping what worked and improving what would make the service to their dancers and schools even better.
As Mark says ‘The fitting, sales and customer service staff had been working with dancers for many years and already provided a great service. Giving them the tools to make this quicker, more fool proof and allowing them to just focus on delighting customers seemed to make sense’
Having added modern stock control, purchasing and retail systems, a rebrand, delightful new website and a refurbishment of the shop by early 2020 the world changed.
The Dancing Boutique team have worked hard through the Pandemic to ensure first class service to their customers, an online pointe shoe booking facility that has seen over 1000 fittings taken up since its launch, exciting new product lines including a range of diversity dancewear and shoes, a new school wide uniform for one of its major schools and close relationships with its suppliers.
As Kate says ‘It has not been a period that we had planned but that is the same for everyone. However, we are in a great position to keep building now we are out the otherside and are thrilled at the support and great feedback we have had from our customers. We must be doing something right!’
Update 2022 – in August 2021 we took on new distribution and warehousing premises to help us fulfil customer’s shipped orders and help us hold ever more stock lines to feed the Tunbridge Wells shop and our growing number of schools. Onwards and upwards, we keep building!
Further Update July 2022 – we moved to fabulous new premises in Tunbridge Wells and can now be found at 8 Camden Road, Tunbridge Wells, TN1 2PT. Onwards and upwards!