Pearson leads Kidsunlimited to next level
When Lee Pearson joined Kidsunlimited as finance director two year ago, the company wasn’t making any money. However, in two years, he’s turned around the nursery chain’s fortunes so that it’s on track to make 40 times as much it used to.
Kidsunlimited offers progressive childcare and now operates about 50 sites in the South East and North West, looks after approximately 5,500 children every day and generates annual sales of £30m.
During his tenure, Pearson has also taken on the CEO mantle and helped prepare Kidsunlimited for a buyout, which was done in conjunction with LDC.
Pearson is now devoting all his time to the top job and is going to appoint a new FD to help him take advantage of the myriad of opportunities the business is presented with.
“We’ve gone from an ownership model that was built around the business being ready to be sold very quickly to an ownership model where the board owns most of the shares,” he says.
“The plan is to move the business on fairly aggressively, fairly quickly. I think the very nature of the chief executive role is less driving P&L and rather being more strategic.”
Part of the reason why Kidsunlimited is doing so well is a change programme implemented by Pearson to make the collection of payments from parents easier.
“We now have about 20 people in the finance function because it does all the billing. We worked out that a good reason for parents not to pay is if you don’t invoice them in the first place so now we invoice them. The number of pure finance people is about eight or nine,” he says.
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Tags: kidsunlimited, lee pearson, finance director, fd, nursery chain, buyout, ldc, chief executive, payment strategy,
