Baby Products

Babycare products are those products intended to facilitate the care, feeding, even mental development of the littlest Americans. These babycare supplies are sold to baby’s parents, grandparents, or others, through the three principle mass channels (supermarkets, chain drugstores, mass merchandisers), as well as through natural grocery/HBC stores (such as Whole Foods Markets), and through prestige outlets such as upscale department stores (Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus), and both upscale and downscale baby boutiques.

Babycare supplies are also sold through the pop-prestige channel (The Body Shop, Sephora), which takes prestige-priced HBC brands to the masses, via open-sell formats in which these brands are stocked on the open shelves, accessible to “average” shoppers – as opposed to the traditional prestige format, in which expensive brands must be guarded by chic clerks behind locked glass counters.

In addition, babycare supplies have sell-through in convenience stores, newsstands, spas and salons with retail counters, and so on. A growing share of sales is made through direct-sales operations, a channel driven by Internet websites with e-tail functions, and television infomercials and home shopping networks. “Direct” also encompasses mobile, as well as – still viable – print media such as mail-order catalogs, print ads, direct-mailed coupon books, etc.

“Babies” are defined as kids ranging from newborns up to age one year.

But classing babycare supplies according to age-suitability can be very difficult: Some of the products – a shampoo, a toy, a pacifier – may indeed be used by toddlers or even preschoolers. It is virtually impossible to exclude sales for such use, while having to include the dollar overlap reflects the practicalities of daily life, anyway.