When Buybuy Baby closed its doors in July 2023, it turned out to be a fleeting farewell. Less than four months after being acquired by Piscataway-based retailer Dream On Me Inc., the beloved baby goods brand is having a rebirth.

Since last fall, Buybuy Baby has reopened 11 of the 115 stores that shuttered in the wake of Union-headquartered parent company Bed Bath & Beyond’s bankruptcy. From there, it expects to add more than 100 brick-and-mortar locations nationwide within the next three to five years.

To help lead the effort to reposition the brand, Dream On Me tapped a former Bed Bath & Beyond executive who is familiar with Buybuy Baby – Glen Cary.

During his nearly two-decade career with Bed Bath & Beyond, Cary spent 14 years with Buybuy Baby, helping grow the business from eight stores in the New York metropolitan area to a chain with over 100 locations across the U.S. and Canada.

After departing the company at the end of 2021, Cary went on to become chief operating officer of 99 Cents Only Stores, a value chain in the Southwest. Shortly after Dream On Me purchased Buybuy Baby, Cary said they contacted him because “they were looking for leadership and exploring what they were going to do next.”

“It is exciting to reestablish it and rebuild it because there’s such strong customer excitement and affinity for the brand,” Cary, who serves as chief stores officer, told NJBIZ. “It’s very unusual in retail, as we’ve all seen various bankruptcies over the last decade plus, for a brand to come through and not really be damaged in the eye of the customer. Everyone was just more disappointed that there was no baby store to go to when that time came in their life or for their friends, family or coworkers.”

Launched in 1996 by the sons of Bed Bath & Beyond co-founder Leonard Feinstein, Buybuy Baby was considered the most valuable brand in the company’s portfolio.

Known for being a one-stop-shop for parents of little ones, Buybuy Baby is “so special because it serves such an important time in people’s lives,” said Cary. So, when Bed Bath & Beyond went bust, Buybuy Baby was “collateral damage” and its closure created “a huge void,” he said.

“Having built the business … and having studied the industry for so many years, we know America needs a baby store – a place where customers can find numerous top-quality brands, speak with experts and make informed decisions about all of the products that are needed for not only when you bring your baby home, but those first critical years,” he explained.

Even as Bed Bath & Beyond struggled in recent years with slowing sales, low inventory levels and competition from big box chains, Buybuy Baby’s performance remained strong, with an estimated market value of $1.3 billion last spring.

While Bed Bath & Beyond went through bankruptcy proceedings, several parties reportedly expressed interest in keeping Buybuy Baby open as a going concern. However, when no viable bids emerged, the company opted to seek approval of a more limited sale of Buybuy Baby’s intellectual property rights to Dream On Me, a longtime vendor.

In addition to spending $15.5 million to secure the trademark and digital assets of Buybuy Baby, Dream On Me also shelled out $1.17 million to take over 11 brick-and-mortar locations on the East Coast.

Operated independently from Dream On Me, the new venture is led by CEO Pete Daleiden, a former Bed Bath & Beyond executive who spent three of his 16 years with the company as a vice president of merchandising, planning & allocation for Buybuy Baby.

In commenting on the reopening, Daleiden has said he believes Buybuy Baby’s future is bright. “Our team is committed to ensuring that BuyBuy Baby remains the go-to destination for all parents, caregivers, and families seeking thoughtfully designed and quality baby and child-focused products, and exceptional customer service.”

‘Truly a startup’

Given the value of Buybuy Baby’s brand, Cary said it was crucial for the team to move quickly so it didn’t lose awareness among consumers.

“We made a very strategic decision to launch before everybody was lined up and ready to go. Once we felt we had enough critical categories in place, we launched and then we continued to refine … ” he said. “You can wait for perfection or you can be first. My feeling was we need to be there for the customers, need to re-engage the communities, start serving them and iterate these over adjustments over time.”

Regaining its mantle as the preferred shopping destination for all things baby hasn’t been easy. After the chain’s e-commerce site and locations were liquidated and closed last summer, Buybuy Baby began staging a comeback. Along with developing an elevated online and in-store experience, it has also been busy rebuilding relationships with vendors, conducting marketing efforts and carefully crafting an expansion plan.

“It’s a huge lift as a startup and it’s very different than running as a subsidiary of a huge corporation. So, we’re truly a startup at the ground floor and re-imagining everything. And, with a heavy bias to reactivating the business, getting open and then continuing to improve over time,” Cary said.

“There’ll be a lot of great things coming from the team – the team has a lot of energy for the communities and the customers,” said Cary, who noted that many of the store managers and members of the marketing, tech and merchant groups previously worked at Buybuy Baby.

“We’re fortunate to have a lot of seasoned experience in both baby industry and some in particular with Buybuy Baby experience,” he added.

At the recently reopened stores – which include four sites in New Jersey: Bridgewater, Paramus, Cherry Hill and Woodbridge – shoppers are discovering a new format focused more on experiential retail as well as community-oriented events.

The stores feature a curated assortment of baby and maternal wellness brands in addition to an elevated checkout experience, which includes handheld point-of-sale devices for seamless scanning and the integration of QR codes to offer customers access to additional product details.

Also launching soon is a new website, along with a revamped registry that will allow customers to add and purchase items directly from a dedicated app.

Cary stressed the importance of an omnichannel strategy, saying, “We proved in these 11 stores that we can reactivate the business quickly, then we can iterate and upgrade over time as the remaining products and assortment become available. It’ll continue to build and emerge as we activate different technology and different platforms.”

“What we’re overwhelmingly hearing is ‘Thank God, you’re back!’” said Cary, who noted that the checkout experience, as well as the current registry offering, “have been well received” by customers.

The locations are also focused on hosting in-store events “with everyone from infant massage and doulas and lactation and sleep training and everything across the spectrum of these local businesses that serve the parents in the community,” said Cary.

“Now we’re in the process of seeing which ones really resonate and how we can build that platform for the future, whether it’s mommy meetups, stroller strides or other things. We view our role as kind of that connection point. So, in some cases we develop content and we’re the authority on something. But for the most part, when you go beyond the product, it’s really being the place where we can benefit, our customers can benefit and these independent business owners can benefit,” Cary said.

“We understand that if it’s just about buying products, a customer can transact anywhere,” he said. “That’s why it’s so important we provide reasons for them to come into the store beyond just shopping. These are just critical life stage decisions that, as a family, are the first time they’re making them in most cases. And so, we want to be there if they need expert advice for as long as they need it.”

Growth spurt

In terms of vendor relationships, Cary estimates Buybuy Baby has “hundreds” and that rebuilding those connections is an ongoing process. “It was challenging because communities, the customer and the media associates us with the former ownership and the former company,” he admitted. “When you buy the brand and you reactivate it, you take everything. You can’t just pick and choose the good memories. Building new relationships, reassuring them that they’re with the right partner and what we can offer is taking time, but largely they’ve been helpful, excited and responding well.”

At most retail chains, product decisions are made about a year out, so when Buybuy Baby opened last fall, it “had to work through an assortment of whatever goods were available in the market,” Cary said.

By the end of this summer, he expects a wider variety of apparel, as well as diapers, wipes, baby food and formula. “A lot of those things take a little longer to get active, set up and have different nuances to them,” he said. “So, we chose to hold back on that at launch. And each week, some of those health and baby care items are flowing in, like Honest brands and some other big partners, so we’re reestablishing that section.”

“We’ve been working across the board to reactivate every category. Because of the bankruptcy … and everything was so public, many of those brands redirected goods or pulled back. It seemed to take the better part of the year to work through that process,” he said.

Despite the “edited down assortment in some categories,” Cary said, “Even on day one with 11 stores, we had no equal in the U.S. We were immediately the largest baby specialty store that is an omnichannel player.

“You have a lot of great baby retail with Amazon, Target, Walmart and various independents, but no equal to this,” he said.

We understand that if it’s just about buying products, a customer can transact anywhere. That’s why it’s so important we provide reasons for them to come into the store beyond just shopping.
– Glen Cary, Buybuy Baby chief stores officer

When it comes to the brand’s reintroduction into more communities across the Northeast and the U.S., Cary said executives have “a very well refined, clear map of what the essential markets are – where the families are living, where are the high growth markets and where the need is biggest.”

“As you look at this next phase of growth, the Northeast gave us a clear cluster to get started here. We’re working on similar clusters for Southern California, Texas, Florida and other key markets and we’re at various stages of lease negotiation and agreements with landlords that have the former locations sitting empty,” he said.

As part of the process, Cary said the team reviewed every former location and will reactivate those stores or a similar-sized space “if the opportunity is right.”

“If it’s something that we can do a light capital touch, that gives us the ability to go much faster than a startup would’ve been able to do otherwise and we’re reviewing all that now,” he said.

“But at the same time, that window closes very quickly. So, it’s a careful balance in decision-making of thoughtfully growing and looking forward, not backward, but balancing that with the investment required to open. And so that’s the path that we’re working through with the team here and a lot of key landlords right now,” Cary said.

While the average footprint of the new stores is between 25,000 square feet and 28,000 square feet, Cary said Buybuy Baby is developing a “store of the future” concept that will be optimized in size and geared toward a digital-first customer.

“We believe that we can run stores of whatever size is needed … at the larger ones, we have a clear view of aging up our strategy so that we can have kids with youth furniture, larger clothing sizes and other things that these families need in the early childhood years and make those larger stores productive,” he explained. “And then certainly, we believe we can be much, much smaller if we’re curating the assortment and offering an extended assortment online.”

“We’re looking for the right use for the square footage of these somewhat larger stores,” he said. “And some of that is converting to event space, expanding the activities in store. Then, as we grow, one of the key things to think about this brand in the past is that the supply chain required so much of the inventory to be stored at store level. In our future model, that’s not the case.”

While the bankruptcy of Bed Bath & Beyond made headlines, the relaunch did not receive as much media attention, which, Cary said, has been challenging for the brand from a marketing perspective.

“We’re in it every day. Industry insiders are aware, the brands are aware, but all day, every day, customers are surprised we’re open,” he said. “If you think of it this way, unless you happen to be expecting or your friends, family or coworkers are expecting, you could pass a Buybuy Baby store every day of the week and never even think about it, so you wouldn’t be on our mailing list because those are very targeted to either previous or expectant parents. Getting the message out has probably been more challenging than I certainly anticipated,” he said.

“But that just takes time, I think. As we used to describe it ‘Our customers love us and leave us,’ because they’re heavily engaged at the time they need us, but then after that, they’re not paying a lot of attention.”

Buybuy Baby’s return follows a similarly speedy comeback by Bed Bath & Beyond. After winning the home goods retailer’s IP auction in June 2023 for $21.5 million, Overstock.com relaunched the brand two months later with a refreshed website and mobile app where shoppers can purchase home décor, furniture, bedding and kitchenware.

It also comes after the revival of Babies R Us.

In July 2023, the baby-branded banner with Jersey roots unveiled a new flagship store at American Dream — its first brick-and-mortar store to open since New York-based WHP Global Management acquired it three years ago.