Walmart partners with firm to roll out kids-apparel service

Kidbox Chief Executive Officer Miki Racine Berardelli describes products available through her online styling service for children at an event in June.
Kidbox Chief Executive Officer Miki Racine Berardelli describes products available through her online styling service for children at an event in June.

Walmart Inc. is jumping into the apparel subscription-box trend with a new service delivering clothing for babies and children. Partnering with online styling company Kidbox, the retailer will offer six personalized boxes through its website each year with clothing items about half off the regular price.

Walmart's online shoppers will have access to more than 120 premium brands for children through the service, which began Tuesday. Customers may order a Kidbox "stylebox" by taking a short style quiz for their children at walmart.com. Kidbox stylists will then create boxes based on the children's style preferences as well as the season and the region where the children live.

The boxes are available for sizes 0 to 14 for girls and 0 to 16 for boys. Each will include four or five items for a total of $48, which Walmart says is about 50 percent less than the suggested retail price for the bundle. But unlike other clothing subscription services like Stitch Fix, which let customers keep only the items they want, Walmart customers must either keep the entire box or return it for a refund.

Parents can order a box and schedule delivery on demand, or they can sign up for automatic shipments. The boxes will be timed for release at each season, as well as the back-to-school and Christmas shopping seasons.

"Over the last year, we have significantly expanded our portfolio of kids' fashion brands as part of our broader effort to establish walmart.com as a destination for fashion," said Denise Incandela, head of fashion for Walmart U.S. e-commerce. "Our partnership with Kidbox enables us to round out our offering with additional national and premium kids brands."

Also, for each Walmart stylebox purchased, Kidbox will clothe a child in need through its partnership with the charity Delivering Good. This mission-driven focus is one of the reasons Walmart decided to work with Kidbox for the service, a Walmart spokesman said.

"We've been really focused over the last year establishing walmart.com as a destination for fashion, and this is part of our broader strategy," she said. "It just made sense to partner with Kidbox," a 3-year-old startup that uses proprietary data science and algorithms with a team of expert stylists to create curated boxes of premium clothing for children at substantial savings.

One of the nice thing about the Kidbox model, the spokesman said, is that the clothing selections are tailored to meet customer feedback on the pieces they receive.

"As the customer continues to order boxes and fills out the notes on the items, the stylist starts to learn more about that child's style preference, and they can better provide the best recommendations for that child," she said. "Also, it's just that convenience model and that value for the customer. It's the surprise and delight factor when the parents get to open the box with their kids."

Walmart has used a number of strategies to grow its apparel sales in recent years, especially in the children's clothing category. In just the past year, the retailer has added about 100 brands for children, including Betsey Johnson, Levi's and Limited Too, and it has retooled its website to make it easier to browse by licensed characters or by activities such as dance and gymnastics.

However, this is Walmart's first venture into subscription boxes for clothing. The retailer started its Beauty Box subscription service in 2014. It sends out samples of beauty products four times a year for $5 a box.

Other companies that offer personalized subscription boxes of children's clothing include Stitch Fix Kids, Rockets of Awesome, Mac & Mia, FabKids and kidpik. Another option is Kids on 45th, which offers a similar styling service but with used clothing.

Business on 04/17/2019

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