Babies R Us reboot set in 3 state Kohl’s stores

ABabies R Us reboot is coming to Norwalk, Manchester and Plainville in time for the 2024 holiday shopping season, with no immediate word whether the infant and toddler supplies brand will pop up in more Connecticut cities and towns at a later point.

Kohl’s announced a Babies R Us “experience” for later this year at the company’s Darinor Plaza store at 500 Connecticut Ave. in Norwalk, one of 200 stores nationally to carve out floor space for Babies R Us merchandise. Also in the works are Babies R Us stores for Kohl’s stores at 155 Tolland Turnpike in Manchester and 200 New Britain Ave. in Plainville.

Kohl’s has 20 stores statewide, with a corporate spokesperson offering no timeline for any larger roll-out for the Babies R Us initiative. In addition to floor space, Kohl’s will be adding a Babies R Us registry for parents to pick out preferred gifts for showers and other events.

Kohl’s has a similar marketing arrangement with Sephora, with Macy’s having Toys R Us sections in its Connecticut department stores and nationally. Since the Toys R Us bankruptcy closures in 2018 and previously that included stores in Norwalk, Manchester and Plainville, Walmart and Target have become the state’s de facto big-box stores for toys and child gear, with independent shops continuing to open across Connecticut as well.

Kohl’s is looking to regain its post-pandemic momentum, after reporting a decline in sales in its 2023 fiscal year ending this past February. In the final quarter of the year that encompassed the height of the 2023 holiday shopping season, sales were down four percent from the same 13-week stretch a year earlier, despite the growing base of Sephora “small format shops” in its stores, as the company describes them.

But Kohl’s returned to profitability in fiscal 2023, and some individual stores appear to be generating a turnaround. Customer foot traffic was up 7 percent in April at Kohl’s on Connecticut Avenue in Norwalk, to about 52,000 visits as tracked by Placer.ai, even as some other retailers at the plaza saw declines over the same four-week window.

Across Babies R Us, Sephora and merchandising assortments for “impulse” purchases by shoppers, Kohl’s anticipates spending $500 million this year to upgrade its stores for the new initiatives.

“I think we’re a little bit behind the eight ball in terms of really building out the impulse business — obviously a lot of people are doing it, and we expect significant growth out of that category overall,” said Kohl’s CEO Tom Kingsbury, speaking on a March conference call with investment analysts. “With Babies R Us, it’s just part of our overall campaign to get younger customers into our stores. Sephora has done a phenomenal job helping us with that; the Babies R Us is just part of that. We really feel that it’ll help bring in a younger consumer.”

Alexander Soule/Hearst Connecticut Media file photo The Babies ‘R’ Us and Toys ‘R’ Us logos in 2018 in Norwalk. Kohl’s is rebooting the Babies ‘R’ Us brand at 200 of its stores nationally, including Norwalk, as well as in Manchester and Plainville.