Lalo bets on aesthetics and simplicity in the toy category to win over parents this holiday season
In a sea of brands vying for spots on top toy lists, baby and toddler brand Lalo aims to stand out by appealing to the sensibilities of millennial parents.
Lalo launched in 2019, aiming to carve out a niche in the baby space with a focus on designing essentials like chairs and bibs that come in minimalist colors, like sage green or blueberry, that would blend into the homes of modern parents. But during the fourth quarter, most of Lalo’s sales come from its toys and play sets, like a play kitchen that parents could deck out with other accessories like mock pots and pans and a little chef’s apron.
This year, Lalo is focusing even more on this category by launching a play fridge, a shopping cart, a workbench and a puzzle tile mat. The brand has also redesigned its play kitchen so that it comes mostly assembled and requires no outside tools. In a space that’s dominated by both toy juggernauts like Fisher-Price and giants in the home goods space like Ikea and West Elm, Lalo is trying to stand out in the play category by focusing on both aesthetics and ease of assembly.
“Over the last few years, we’ve been really, really focused on owning the family home and connecting with parents during different moments and milestones,” said Michael Wieder, co-founder, president and CMO at Lalo. The company’s approach to product expansion now is to release a series of products that cater to these different moments — like mealtime, playtime and bath time.
Technically, Lalo has always been in the play category — its hero product, the 3-1 chair, converts from a high chair into a play chair. But the brand started significantly focusing on the category in 2020, when it released a dedicated set of play chairs and a table. Wieder said it is one of Lalo’s best-selling products year-round, but “definitely during Q4 is our number-one purchased product.” It’s also a popular purchase for first-time customers.
“We’ve entered tens of thousands of homes just last holiday season with just that single product,” he added.
In 2022, Lalo released a play kitchen set after months of development. But it wasn’t until Wieder was assembling it for his own daughter that he started to pick up on critical ways that the process could be sped up. So Lalo released a redesigned version last year that comes almost entirely assembled; all parents have to do is screw in the wooden legs, and it can be done in under a minute and a half.
That, in turn, has informed Lalo’s strategy as it rolls out more playsets. The workbench, for example, comes with a screwdriver included and just a handful of screws. It’s designed to appeal to the parent who dreads the idea of having to frantically assemble a 50-piece dollhouse the night before Christmas.
Play kitchens were a hot toy even before the advent of the Easy-Bake oven. But over the years, more companies have gotten into the space to cater to new generations of parents. West Elm advertises a $700 mid-century play kitchen, while on TikTok, the phrase “Ikea play kitchen makeover” serves up videos of parents adding a backsplash or cane wood overlays to the doors of their child’s play kitchen.
Lalo aims to win on simplicity. Its play kitchen, for example, comes in at $395, below West Elm’s but above Ikea’s $90 Dutkig model.
Still, during the holiday season, aesthetics aren’t the only thing on parents’ minds.
Brittany Steiger, senior analyst of U.S. retail and e-commerce at Mintel, said that consumers overall say they are value-conscious this holiday season, just like last holiday season. In a survey of nearly 2,000 internet users as part of Mintel’s Winter Holiday report, more than half of respondents agreed that financial stress is making it hard to celebrate winter holidays in the way they would prefer. Among parents, that rose to 65%.
However, there’s a catch: Parents are less likely than non-parents to say they are going to pull back on gift-giving or set a budget for the holiday season. Put together, “parents are really showing financial fatigue,” Steiger said, but “we know they prioritize winter holidays as essential.”
What that means, Steiger said, is that parents are looking to brands and retailers to help ease their financial fatigue through offerings like tiered discounts or loyalty programs. And even though their budgets are under pressure, they still are willing to spend a little more; Steiger said Mintel’s data shows that parents are more likely to prioritize faster shipping than non-parents, for example, and, as much as possible, try to shop from the brands that their kids are excited about.
For brands that cater to parents, “finding the balance between monetary value and other non-monetary forms of value [is crucial],” Steiger said.
Going forward, Lalo sees the play category as a way to bring more parents into its brand more frequently. Two years ago, Lalo also launched a series of curated toy boxes designed for babies and toddlers at various ages that are available both on a subscription basis or a non-subscription basis. Wieder said that about half of Lalo shoppers who buy these toy boxes opt for the subscription.
Lalo has also experimented with licensed products tied to various popular franchises like Paw Patrol.
“I think always during Q4, play will be the most important part of the family home for us and the biggest chunk of revenue,” Wieder said. “And there’s a ton of growth opportunities there for us as a brand.”