Puddle Ducks celebrates it's 20th birthday this year, and to celebrate, we've been delving into our archives. Here is a blog post written by one of our founders, Tracy Townend, back in 2012 to celebrate our 10th birthday! We've added some bits in bold to see how far we've come in the 10 years since then!
Wow - Puddle Ducks is 10! I think it is almost more emotional than realising I have an 11 year old daughter [now 21]! I met Jo at antenatal classes and we both went on to give birth to little girls on the 26th March 2001. We became firm friends and Puddle Ducks was hatched about a year later – at a time when baby swimming was still considered quite a ground-breaking concept. We have nurtured and watched the business grow up, alongside nurturing and watching our girls grow up. And now, suddenly, we realise we are looking back over 10 years.
Jo and I feel very privileged to have taught some gorgeous children and their parents and worked with some fantastic people. As a business, we have now awarded a Puddle Ducks franchise to 21 lovely people [currently 34], have over 150 staff [now well over 400] and teach almost 5000 children a week [as of today, it's more than 25,000!]. We are very proud of this and thank all our customers and staff for believing in Puddle Ducks. We’ve come such a long way since starting our classes with just an hour a week, 10 years ago.
Ali B was the first to join us in 2005, and she is still a very special asset to Puddle Ducks, having written every single lesson plan in our programme as well as having trained all our teachers [and she's still going strong!].
Two other special people in Puddle Ducks history are Jane and Sarah. Four years ago, these two lovely ladies launched the franchise network when they simultaneously began running their own Puddle Ducks franchises in Bristol and in Dorset [Jane and Sarah are both still franchisees in two of our biggest franchises].
But the most special people in our business are you – our customers. No matter how big our organisation gets, every single baby and child (and pregnant Mum-to-be) will still be treated as the most important person in our business. Because you are.
Everyone in Puddle Ducks is totally passionate about our programme and about teaching swimming in a fun and individually tailored way. From the me-time of our Aquanatal classes, to the baby-led swimming of our Floaties and Splashers classes right through to the grace and elegance of our Advanced Swim Academy level, we delight in the smiles and the achievements of our customers.
Thank you everyone, for sharing our journey over the last 10 years. We hope that many of you will continue to enjoy Puddle Ducks for many years to come [we have Tracy, we have].
