Target overhauls baby shop to compete with Walmart, Amazon
CLIFTON, New Jersey — Along with aisles of diapers and colorful onesies, shoppers in some of the retailers big-box stores can now find baby brands typically carried by specialty boutiques. Shoppers can see, feel and test strollers, car seats and high chairs outside of cardboard boxes at about 200 stores, or roughly 10% of the retailer‘s footprint. They can find merchandise from high-end brands, including a $1,000 UPPAbaby stroller. And customers can browse nearly 2,000 new baby items, which are available across all of the retailer’s stores and online. Targets “baby boutiques,” which have rolled out over the past two months, are just one piece of a broader push to refresh stores and woo a crucial customer base: busy families, who have increasingly turned to rivals like . Whether Target makes progress with those shoppers will help determine whether CEO Michael Fiddelke, who stepped into the company‘s top role in early February, can follow through on his pledge to end the company’s three-year sales slump. The retailer is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings on May 20, its first three-month period under the new CEO. Target has rolled out “baby boutiques” to about 200 stores where customers can touch, feel and test items like