Baby Registry
In 2024, Kohl's partnered with Babies'R'Us to introduce a new baby assortment and launch a Baby Registry—Kohl’s first registry experience in more than five years. Our team had fewer than five months to move from initial discovery to launch, requiring rapid alignment across stakeholders, research, and product teams.
We conducted competitive analyses and customer diary studies with both expecting parents and gift givers to understand how customers plan for major life events and shop collaboratively.
We conducted competitive analysis and customer diary studies with both expecting parents and gift givers to better understand how people prepare for major life events and shop collaboratively.
Through this research, we identified several key behavioral insights:
Most registries are created by first-time parents, who are navigating the process for the first time.
First-time parents often feel anxious about making the wrong purchasing decisions and look to the retailer for guidance and reassurance.
Gift giving is an emotional experience, with the intensity increasing the closer the relationship between the giver and recipient.
Gift selection often reflects the giver’s identity or relationship to the recipient, acting as a way to strengthen and signal social connection.
Discovery
We hypothesized that introducing a Baby Registry would help establish an early, long-term shopping relationship between new parents and Kohl's during a major life milestone. By supporting parents as they prepare for a new child, the registry would encourage ongoing engagement as families continue to shop for their children as they grow.
We also believed that registry owners would act as central connectors, sharing their registries with friends and family who may not already shop with Kohl’s—introducing the brand to new audiences and encouraging exploratory shopping.
Finally, we expected the registry to drive halo shopping behavior, where customers visiting the site for baby-related purchases would also buy items for themselves, their partners, or their homes, ultimately increasing revenue beyond the baby category.
Hypothesis
Since launching the Baby Registry, customers have placed over 11 million orders, generating $719M in revenue within the first two years. The registry successfully positioned Kohl's as a destination for major life milestones, driving significant engagement from new and existing customers while strengthening long-term shopping relationships with growing families.
Impact
The Baby Registry MVP was intentionally designed to support the real needs of expecting parents as they begin preparing for a new baby.
From a product strategy perspective, we quickly realized that the most efficient MVP would have been to launch a flexible listing feature first.
Lists would support registry use cases while also appealing to a broader audience of shoppers looking to save, organize, and share products. Developing feature enhancements as well as a generalized Listing feature became our first priority post-launch.
Monetization Opportunity
We also identified an opportunity to monetize the Baby Registry through sponsored content, creating value for both customers and the business. Brand partnerships could support product discovery for expecting parents while generating additional revenue for Kohl's.