founded 1961 headquarters cherry tree road watford hertfordshire key people alan parker chairman mark newton jones ceo revenue 766.4 million 2010 1 operating income 52.0 million 2010 1 profit 23.6 million 2010 1 number of employees 5 852 2012 subsidiaries early learning centre website www.mothercare.com mothercare plc lse mtc is a british retailer which specialises in products for expectant mothers and in general merchandise for children up to 8 years old . it is listed on the london stock exchange and is a constituent of the ftse smallcap index . shadows of child seats on shopping trolleys cast their shadows on the front of the mothercare at wren park torquay uk contents 1 history 2 operations 3 internationally 3.1 ukraine 4 references 5 external links history edit the company was founded by selim zilkha and sir james goldsmith in 1961 . 2 it was first listed on the london stock exchange in 1972 . 2 in 1982 it merged with habitat 2 to form habitat mothercare plc. in 1986 habitat mothercare plc merged with british home stores to form storehouse plc. 2 in january 1996 it bought children s world from boots 3 and rebranded all of their superstores mothercare world stores . in 2000 the bhs stores were sold to philip green 3 and storehouse reverted to the mothercare brand . 3 in june 2007 mothercare bought the early learning centre elc for 85 million . 4 in october 2007 mothercare launched gurgle a pregnancy and parenting social networking website . 5 in november 2009 mothercare acquired the 50 % of gurgle that it did not already own . 6 in july 2010 mothercare bought the trademark and brand of privately owned rival blooming marvellous . 7 in may 2011 it was reported that mothercare was set to undergo a major restructure in their retail sector resulting in an undisclosed number elc stores moving into neighbouring mothercare stores to lower costs . operations edit the company operates online on the high street and out of town and in november 2009 had over 1 060 stores worldwide of which 389 were in the united kingdom and 671 were abroad in 38 other countries . 8 internationally edit ukraine edit in ukraine the mothercare brand is represented by mbgroup llc . ukrainian mothercare stores are the same as their european counterparts with british representatives carefully monitoring the quality of the stores and their staff . the flagship store was opened in august 2004 in kiev s premier shopping mall globus . it is the largest mothercare store in ukraine both in terms of size and range of products . after rapid expansion the mothercare brand is represented in the ukraine by over 20 stores in kiev and several additional stores in lviv dnipropetrovsk kharkiv odessa donetsk vinnytsia and zaporizhya . references edit a b c annual report 2010 pdf . mothercare . retrieved 25 april 2011 . a b c d mothercare chief executive ousted after fourth profits warning in under a year a b c uk business park storehouse mothercare to buy early learning centre reuters 30 april 2007 mothercare pre tax profits increase tenfold back from the brink baby chums 22 may 2009 . mothercare buys remaining 50 % of gurgle.com . retail week 18 september 2009 mothercare buys up rival blooming marvellous . daily mail 15 july 2010 overseas sales boost mothercare bbc news 16 november 2006 external links edit mothercare official site retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title mothercare & oldid 742060816 categories retail companies of the united kingdomretail companies established in 1961companies based in hertfordshirebritish companies established in 1961hidden categories engvarb from july 2015use dmy dates from july 2015 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages bahasa indonesia bahasa melayu t rk e edit links this page was last modified on 1 october 2016 at 12 57 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view