Walmart Partners With KIDBOX for Subscription Service
Walmart announced it’s partnering with Kidbox, a subscription-box company akin to Stitch Fix but focused solely on selling clothes for babies, girls and boys. Walmart shoppers will now be able to purchase as many as six different boxes from Walmart.com, curated by KIDBOX, each year. That means there’s one new box available for each season, as well as for going back to school and the holidays, the companies said. Each box will include four to five items and cost $48, which Walmart says will be about 50 percent off the suggested retail price. Parents will have the option to either keep all the items in the box for no additional fees, or return everything and receive their money back. KIDBOX curates the boxes based on a styling quiz that’s completed before an order is placed.
Total Retail's Take: Walmart is making another move to grow its apparel sales, this time targeting kids. The retailer has taken a multifaceted approach to the apparel category, including launching new private-label brands; partnering with other retailers such as Lord & Taylor and KIDBOX to add its premium brands to its site; and announcing celebrity partnerships (e.g., Ellen DeGeneres, Kendall and Kylie Jenner) for exclusive clothing and accessories lines. Apparel represents a lucrative product category in Walmart and Amazon.com's ongoing battle for retail supremacy, and both companies are investing heavily in the space — particularly as apparel sales at traditional department stores continue to decline. According to Coresight Research, Amazon is the most-shopped apparel retailer in the U.S., surpassing Walmart in 2018. To help in its efforts to reclaim the top spot in apparel sales, Walmart is dipping its toes into subscription commerce — a $10 billion-plus market — for the first time with the partnership with KIDBOX.
