Walmart (WMT) is leaning heavily into kids fashion by offering a subscription-style clothing box service—just for youngsters.
Walmart on Tuesday announced a partnership with KIDBOX, an online subscription service that curates style boxes based on kids' fashion preferences and personalities.
It’s a cornerstone of the retail giant’s effort to capture more dollars from the 100 million unique monthly visitors to Walmart.com. As part of that push, the company plans to use KIDBOX to offer more styles and lower prices to younger consumers.
"We've been working hard to establish Walmart.com as a fashion destination, making it more attractive to our consumer who tends to be that millennial consumer," Denise Incandela, head of fashion at Walmart’s U.S. eCommerce unit, told Yahoo Finance in a phone interview.
The new Walmart KIDBOX style box lets kids and parents choose from 120 trendy brands that include everything from BCBG to Puma.
After taking a style quiz on Walmart.com, a stylist uses those insights to build out a box with four to five items for approximately $48, about 50% off the suggested retail price.
It's a flexible subscription service where a parent can choose the frequency of delivery. They can order a box on demand, or automate up to six boxes per year—one for each season and then a holiday and back-to-school box.
A time saver
The retailer has also added more inclusive sizing, with sizes 0-16 for girls and 0-18 for boys.
It also added category destinations to make it easier for kids to browse and discover everything from licensed children's fashion (from big media brands like NBC Universal and Nickelodeon), to essentials for dance and gymnastics.
The KIDBOX "supports a parent's needs in a way without friction," Incandela said. "It saves a parent time and expands our offering and our services."
The offering also features the one-for-one business model that’s popular among millennials. For every Walmart KIDBOX style box purchased, KIDBOX will clothe a child in need through Delivering Good.
In the last couple of years, Walmart has invested heavily in its e-commerce business by relaunching its site, and bringing on more brands and partners. Assortment expansion has been a big pillar of Walmart's e-commerce strategy.
Walmart's fashion team has been working across categories, but put more emphasis on women's apparel to start.
But in that time, the retailer has also been quietly growing its online offerings for kids, adding more than one hundred brands online. Those include Betsey Johnson, Limited Too, and Children's Place, to name a few.
"Everything we do goes back to establishing ourselves as a fashion destination," Incandela added.
Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.