Since Buybuy Baby relaunched in November 2023 under new ownership, the retailer’s focus has been on reestablishing its brand name, in part by growing its digital audience.

Buybuy Baby currently operates 11 physical stores, all in the northeast region in the United States. Raina Khumush, director of marketing and digital at Buybuy Baby, told Digital Commerce 360 that the retailer is pleased with its performance thus far. She said it has proven that customer loyalty to the brand “is huge.”

“The customer response has been really strong to both the digital side of the business and the store side of the business,” Khumush said. “We’re essentially doubling every month.” She did not attach a dollar amount to the growth.

Khumush added that Buybuy Baby’s current team includes members who worked with the brand before the relaunch, others who had experience in the baby industry, and brand-new team members.

“The brand itself has tons of heritage and goodwill, and it has this great legacy,” Khumush said. “We’ve really brought that forward into the new business, but we are also rebuilding, re-envisioning, reimagining this business, and we’re building a new business model as well.”

The Buybuy Baby relaunch began just before the Cyber 5 sales period in November 2023, reviving the brand’s retail presence.

What happened to Buybuy Baby?

Buybuy Baby was part of Bed Bath & Beyond, which went bankrupt in April 2023. Overstock then acquired Bed Bath & Beyond’s intellectual property for $21.5 million in June 2023. Court documents show that in July, a buyer named Mark Srour-Serure, the owner of Dream on Me Industries, acquired Buybuy Baby’s trademark and digital assets for $15.5 million. New Jersey-based Dream on Me was one of Buybuy Baby’s former vendors.

The acquisition gave Dream on Me the rights to Buybuy Baby’s intellectual property, which encompassed:

• Its digital properties, including first-party data that Buybuy Baby collected. This consists of customer names, addresses, phone and fax numbers, email addresses and other identifiers. It also includes web browser cookies and other browser- or device-specific identifiers, according to the court documents.
• Mobile platform. This includes Buybuy Baby’s applications on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
• Advertising and marketing materials, samples, artwork, photography, images, videos and more.
• Business data and business internet properties.

In August, Overstock relaunched the Bed Bath & Beyond ecommerce website and later changed its name to operate under Beyond, Inc. Since then, Overstock relaunched its own website, distinguishing itself from Bed Bath & Beyond’s ecommerce site. On the other end, Buybuy Baby relaunched its website Nov. 18.

“When the brand was acquired, what was acquired was essentially just the IP,” Khumush said. “There was really no other assets that were acquired along with that. The website had to be completely rebuilt, starting from scratch. In that sense, there wasn’t necessarily an option not to do so.”

Beyond Inc. is No. 63 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. Bed Bath & Beyond ranked No. 47 prior to its bankruptcy.

Buybuy Baby born again

The Buybuy Baby relaunch came in the middle of the holiday season, less than a week before the Cyber 5 period — the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.

“Our focus was really about getting retail ready, getting to know our customers again, either inviting existing customers back or getting to know new customers that were coming into the brand, and trying out some different marketing tactics,” Khumush said.

Buybuy Baby is still establishing new baselines for its digital marketing metrics, Khumush said.

“We do have some of the previous data, so we are using that to some extent to understand what’s happened in the past, but we definitely are taking a fresh approach, trying to look at everything with new, fresh perspective, and we’re also in a phase right now where I would say we’re testing a lot of different things,” Khumush said. “Our goal is to continue to do that: test, monitor, and then optimize all the different types of marketing channels that are available to us, and so we can ultimately get to the goal of having this optimal marketing mix. Right now, we’re still very much in this test-and-learn phase.”

Khumush said Buybuy Baby’s current team acquired the brand’s previous email lists, but email is a tricky part of the brand’s new-customer-acquisition approach.

“Our business is interesting because it is a business that requires a significant amount of new-customer acquisition,” Khumush said. “Obviously, people are in the prenatal and postnatal stage of life for only a finite amount of time.”

Even with an existing email list, she said, Buybuy Baby is still trying different approaches to see what resonates with its audience, including segmenting based on shopping behavior.

Buybuy Baby relaunch is a social experience

Khumush said Buybuy Baby is “heavily” using social media — Instagram and Facebook in particular. The brand also wants to grow on TikTok and Pinterest.

The retailer has committed to doing one large in-store event per month for the foreseeable future, she said, and it will livestream those events, mostly via Instagram.

“What we think that will allow us to do is reach a broader audience,” Khumush said. “Obviously, because our stores are so concentrated right now in the northeast, we don’t want to forget the fact that we have all of these fans and customers nationwide who do want to still engage and participate in these events, but they can’t be there physically. We’re trying to test ways to see how we can create a digital experience for them, where they can feel like they’re still a part of it, but they don’t necessarily have to be physically there in the store.”

She added that Buybuy Baby has seen “really good return” on its Instagram advertising. She also said the retailer has leaned into Instagram more than any other social media platform over the last few months. And influencer marketing has been a large part of that.

Buybuy Baby influencers and new initiatives

Influencer partners have livestreamed the retailer’s in-store events as well.

“We also had an influencer do a run-through of our website,” Khumush said. “How to go onto our website, what to expect when you come to our website, how to shop our website. We’re seeing that content is resonating really well with the audiences. Those are the kinds of things we also want to continue to do. Tap into that influencer base to continue to promote store events, new product launches, new services that we may be launching now or in the future.

In addition to using influencer marketing and hosting in-store events, Buybuy Baby has launched a consultation service that customers can sign up for through the retailer’s website. Buybuy Baby is offering free, 60-minute consultations to expecting and new parents.

“They can make an appointment to come into one of our 11 stores and work with an expert to guide them through either creating a registry, how to choose the best stroller or car seat for your baby, how to design the perfect nursery from the crib to the glider to the bedding to any of the decor,” Khumush said. “They can give advice on breastfeeding or bottle feeding and really any other topic that a new or expecting parent might be interested in learning more about.”

The consultations are currently only available at the retailer’s physical stores, but Khumush said the retailer is looking to make virtual consultations available in the future.

“We definitely have other services and things up our sleeves that we want to launch this year,” Khumush said.

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