Water Babies Brand Guidelines: The 2002 Baby Swim School Franchise From Ilkley to Devon

A baby swim school started from home in 2002.

Water Babies is a baby and toddler swimming school that runs through a network of franchises. It was founded in 2002. The company says it was co-founded by Paul and Jess Thompson, who left careers in teaching and chartered surveying, and that the first lessons were set up in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, with bookings taken by phone at the family’s kitchen table while their house was being renovated.

Sports Management, a leisure-industry magazine, profiled the business in its November–December 2016 issue and described Paul Thompson as its co-founder. It reported that the idea dated from 2000, when he took his young daughter to swimming classes and felt the experience could be improved and made easier to reach, and that he built a programme in which infants learn water skills in step with their age and stage.

Growth came quickly, by the company’s account. It says Water Babies reached 100 customers in its first month, that a member of the family was one of its first franchisees, followed by a family friend, and that within five years its classes were running across the UK. By 2016, Sports Management reported, Water Babies taught about 50,000 babies and toddlers a week through 66 franchise outlets in seven countries, among them the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, China, New Zealand and Canada, and it named Germany as its next market. The same year, the magazine said, the British Franchise Association named it Franchisor of the Year.

The business is no longer run from West Yorkshire. TheBusinessDesk, the regional business news site, described it in November 2024 as Devon-headquartered, and the company’s own pages call its holding company, Water Babies Group Ltd, Devon-based.

“Teaching you to teach your baby to swim.”

The core of the method, as the company and its founder describe it, is that a parent or carer is in the water with the child. Paul Thompson told Sports Management in 2016 that parents act as assistant teachers, and summed the approach up as “teaching you to teach your baby to swim.” Lessons are built around songs and games, the magazine reported, and the company had recently begun using sign language in some classes.

The offer has grown beyond lessons. By 2016, according to the same article, it included underwater baby photography and WaterBumps, an aquatic programme for the months before and after birth. The company’s 20th-anniversary post, published in January 2023, still listed underwater photoshoots alongside lessons and described the July 2022 celebrations, with parties for customers at pools across the UK and a conference for staff, franchisees and suppliers.

Teaching is a large part of the story the company tells about itself. Sports Management reported in 2016 that Water Babies had worked with the Amateur Swimming Association on a Level 3 teacher qualification in baby swimming, and that it had opened its first dedicated swimming centre, in Xi’an, China, in June that year; until then, its managing director told the magazine, the franchise network had depended on hiring pools. In 2024 the company said it had around 600 teachers and partnerships with Swim England and the Royal Life Saving Society.

Awards are listed on its about page. The company says it received the Investors in People Platinum award in 2025, ranked second in Elite Franchise magazine’s list of the UK’s top 100 franchises in 2025, and won the British Franchise Association’s Brand Awareness & Franchisor Trailblazer award in 2024.

Classes, pools and franchises.

Children’s swim, music and activity franchises sell a weekly class rather than a product, so their identities are built around the session itself. The swim schools present their lessons by age band: Turtle Tots divides its programme into baby, toddler, preschool and independent stages on its website, and Water Babies described parents in the pool as “assistant teachers” when Sports Management profiled it in 2016.

Photography carries much of the brand work. Water Babies sold underwater baby photography alongside its lessons by 2016, according to Sports Management, and pictures of parents and small children in the water are the companies’ own material. This guide reproduces none of those photographs and names no child, parent or teacher.

Naming does similar work. Programmes get names of their own: Turtle Tots calls its pregnancy yoga classes Turtle Tums, and in 2016 Water Babies called its programme for before and after birth WaterBumps. Mascots stretch the brand name further, and Turtle Tots introduced a turtle mascot and asked families to suggest its name. Booking is handled online, through lesson finders, regional location pages and customer portals of the kind on Turtle Tots’ website.

The corporate side speaks in a different register. Founder stories sit on “our story” and “about us” pages, and in the cases of Water Babies and Turtle Tots they begin with founders who were new parents themselves. Franchise pages set out territories, training and head-office support for prospective owners, while trade titles such as Startups.co.uk, TheBusinessDesk and Sports Management record licences, territories and changes of ownership. This guide keeps what those independent titles report apart from what each company says about itself.

New owners from the United States.

The first step into the United States came in May 2023, when the company announced that it had bought Waterbabies USA, a swim school in Renton, near Seattle, founded in 1997. The purchase, it said, gave it the trade mark to trade as Water Babies in the United States. At that point the company gave its UK network as 52 franchise outlets and around 600 teachers, with businesses in Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada and China and a recent launch in Germany.

Ownership changed the following year. On 30 October 2024 the company announced that Water Babies had been acquired by Elmsley Capital and Westerly Group, two US investors that it said had backed children’s enrichment businesses together before. TheBusinessDesk reported the deal on 3 November 2024, for an undisclosed sum, and said the managing partners of both firms would join the board. At the time, it reported, Water Babies taught more than 80,000 babies a year through a network of 70 franchise businesses across the UK, Ireland, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, China and the US. The company says Paul Thompson stayed on as a non-executive board director, and its chief executive at the time of the deal was Howard Harrison.

The figures move with the network. The company’s about page, read in 2026, cites more than 52 franchise outlets and over 1,000 employees, and lists lessons in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada and the US. The company’s own name for the brand is written as two words, Water Babies, while the American school it bought traded as one word, Waterbabies.

For a design guide, Water Babies shows how a class business can build a brand around one shared experience, a parent and a baby in a pool, and then carry it across franchise territories and countries. Compare Turtle Tots, the baby swim school founded in Bristol in 2011, and Tumble Tots, a UK children’s activity franchise. For this guide we use a deep pool blue and a shallow aqua with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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