Why Target courted premium baby brands in latest turnaround effort

Not unlike the little customers it serves, the baby category is a sensitive, sometimes temperamental business. Not just any old retail experience will do when you’re selling essential, life-altering products like strollers and breast pumps.

These category-specific needs are partly why the last couple of years have been challenging for some premium baby brands. Ever since Buy Buy Baby got swept up in the bankruptcy of parent company Bed Bath & Beyond in 2023, there’s been a massive hole in the retail ecosystem for baby brands that require a higher-end brick-and-mortar experience for their products.

The question facing brands is which company will rise to the challenge. With many retailers focused on lowering costs and providing plentiful product options, who is ready to offer a more curated and service-oriented approach that made Buy Buy Baby distinct?

Perhaps surprisingly, given its recent struggles to find a winning strategy in the current retail environment, Target appears to be the company stepping up. Earlier this month, it announced a strategic reinvestment in its baby department aimed at making its stores destinations for premium brands. The plan includes the launch of a “Baby Boutique,” essentially a specialized shop-in-shop for higher-end products; an expanded version of its “Baby Concierge” service, which provides expert support to shoppers; additional store space so customers can better find and discover products; and the addition of 2,000 new “thoughtfully curated” items.

Babies and bricks: UPPAbaby is one of the brands collaborating with Target on its new merchandising strategy, as it tries to find a new brick-and-mortar home for its product following the closure of Buy Buy Baby locations in 2024. While the stroller- and car seat-maker was diversified across a number of independent outlets and channels, Buy Buy Baby was its biggest national retail partner and the place where many shoppers could test its products, Amy Alabaster, chief revenue officer at UPPAbaby, told Retail Brew.

Moving more of its business into digital channels helped the brand weather the transition, she said, but ultimately, the executive team “always wanted that brick-and-mortar side to come back in a significant way.”

This commitment stems from a belief in the core value proposition of the in-store experience: “I think physical retail holds critical importance to premium brands like UPPAbaby because customers want to try products before they buy,” she said. “And for us, it’s really important that customers get to experience what makes our products premium.”

So the timing of Target’s announcement was opportunistic for both UPPAbaby and Target, which has faced declining sales and reputational damages from a series of public relations mishaps. The reinvestment marks its latest attempt to turn its business around. But in this case, rather than trying to keep up with its competitors on price or convenience as it continues to do in other aspects of its business, it’s offering a distinctly higher-end experience in an underserved category. “This is a category that’s gone untouched for years, and there is so much potential in front of us,” Target Chief Merchandising Officer Cara Sylvester said in an earnings call.

Getting these premium brands on board took some effort, however, including working closely with prospective partners on what the new retail experience would look like—a level of outreach that convinced UPPAbaby to finally make the move into Target.

“To be very candid with you, Target’s been approaching us for 15-plus years, but a lot of it really came down to whether or not there was a reason for this to exist,” Alabaster said. 

Buy Buy Baby closing was one big reason to pursue a partnership, but it wasn’t the only motivation. Starting in 2024, the brand started working with Target to put together a vision for its Baby Boutique concept that would fit its needs. The result is “a manifestation of their shared vision,” Alabaster said, rather than something developed exclusively within Target.

Less is more: At the core of this vision is a greater focus on quality over quantity—and an elevation of what some see as the most important function of retailers: curation.

It’s the job of retailers to curate their product selection in a way that helps consumers choose and avoid decision fatigue, Sarah O’Leary, CEO of Willow, maker of portable breast pumps available at Target, told Retail Brew. However, she said right now there is a “a shift in the other direction,” in which platforms such as Amazon offer millions of items with minimal curation, leaving customers to wade through customer reviews that are not always reliable.

Target’s investment in its baby category is an opportunity to reset and work more actively and collaboratively with the retailer on merchandising its products, she added.

“There’s not been a place for women to really learn about the products, touch and feel products, and get that curated experience,” O’Leary said. “I think Target is absolutely the account that has the opportunity to lean into that space.”