Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/hows-business-status-report-10-on-for-profit-child-care/5011565/
In preparing this tenth, not-quite-annual status report, I decided to take a look back to see what trends I could observe in our reporting of for profit child care since the 1970's. Reviewing the status reports and news stories from nearly 20 years of industry watching, I discovered a number of interesting trends as well as some important non-trends.Little Change at the Top
In 1971, an article in Baron's Financial Weekly dubbed child care as the "electronics industry" of the 1970's, and listed 125 companies with aspirations of becoming national child care chains. Most of these companies made outrageous claims about their growth plans and educational "innovations." So heated was the market that child care advocates were grimly bemoaning the coming age of "Kentucky fried child care."
However, these aspiring child care giants were woefully naive about the complexity of providing children's programs. By the close of the decade, nearly all of these ventures had failed.
Four of the companies that did survive these turbulent times - KinderCare, La Petite, Children's World, and Childtime (originally Gerber's) - have dominated the for profit world ever since. For two decades, these companies, which all originated within months of each other in 1969-1970, have been the four ...