Babylist Opens 20,000-Square-Foot SoHo Showroom, Expanding Beyond Beverly Hills

Babylist signed a 10-year lease for 20,000 square feet at 477 Broadway in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood, marking the universal baby registry platform's first New York City location and its largest physical footprint to date. The deal includes 10,000 square feet of ground-floor space and 10,000 square feet of basement space. The exact financial details of the deal were not disclosed, though Lee & Associates noted that asking rents for the two-level space were approximately $3.5 million per year.

Babylist, which is profitable and marked $500 million in annual revenue in 2024, is using learnings from its Beverly Hills location to power its New York City location. The Beverly Hills showroom, which opened in August 2023 at 18,000 square feet, served as the direct catalyst for the New York expansion, and the SoHo store's 20,000-square-foot footprint surpasses it. Molly Goodson, vp of brand and media at Babylist, said the company is looking to "go big" in New York as it courts more East Coast parents, citing user demand to browse products in person, ask for advice, and meet like-minded parents.

The new showroom will sell products, with parents able to scan barcodes to add items to their registries, and will also feature an "always-on" education space for product demos and consultations on everything from choosing a high chair to picking a baby monitor with or without WiFi. Regular programming will include quarterly registry weekends, in which Babylist staffers walk shoppers through high-consideration categories like cribs, offer advice, and host giveaways.

The SoHo showroom will also expand on the content infrastructure that has become central to the Beverly Hills operation. The Beverly Hills location is a major hub for content, with influencers and brands shooting videos there daily and Babylist staffers regularly creating material for TikTok and Instagram; for the New York space, Babylist is building a larger area for content creation, including recording podcasts. The New York showroom will also have two entrances, one in the front and one in the back, to host private events without interfering with customers' shopping journeys.

The New York City location will differ from Beverly Hills in tailoring products and consultations to the realities of New York parenting, like not owning a car, having limited storage, or bringing a stroller on public transit. Babylist will also create nursery vignettes to show people where to put cribs and changing tables in case "you only have the corner of an apartment for the time being," Goodson said.

The brand's experience is being led by Arik Lubkin, former chief creative officer of CAMP, who recently joined Babylist to spearhead the design and customer journey.

Paul Popkin, Morris Dweck, and Annie Squier from Lee & Associates represented the landlord, 477 Realty, while Lydia Bell and Cole Stapleton of Tungsten Property represented the tenant. Lydia Bell described the location's appeal in terms of deliberate placemaking: "We brought a placemaking approach to this process; prioritizing current and future adjacencies for symbiotic operators. This section of SoHo, on lower Broadway, is at a fantastic nexus point for families, tourists and tastemakers."

Paul Popkin framed the deal as filling a category void: "There is a real gap in the market for this type of experiential retail in Lower Manhattan, particularly in the baby category. Babylist identified SoHo as the ideal location for its first New York City store and is bringing a completely new concept to the neighborhood, one that blends retail, showroom and community in a way that simply doesn't exist today. The scale and configuration of 477 Broadway made it the perfect canvas for that vision."

Founded in 2011 by Natalie Gordon, a former Amazon software engineer, Babylist reimagined the traditional baby registry by creating a universal platform that allows users to add products from any retailer. The Beverly Hills opening in August 2023 came just four months after BuyBuy Baby was swept up in Bed Bath & Beyond's bankruptcy, and years after Babies "R" Us shuttered all of its stores in 2018. The SoHo showroom is expected to open sometime this summer. Nearly half of all first-time parents choose Babylist for their registry needs, giving the company a substantial built-in audience as it attempts to define what a modern, experience-first baby retail destination looks like in New York City.