Saturday I got a rare chance to shop at Target without my kids. Normally I am rushing in and out as fast as I can before I end up with a basket full of stuff I didn’t really want to buy.
This time I got to browse, and I say that really slow and relaxing, “brrr-owwww-ssse.”
I headed for the baby isles to see what’s new and to check if our local Target carries the Charlie Banana cloth diaper line. Sure enough, they had them! And…there was someone looking at them! Yay!
I walked up and enthusiastically said “Pretty cool!” to her. She said “Yeah!” and I thought momentarily that she may be a cloth diapering mom. Then she commented on how she couldn’t figure out how to get the diaper back together and I knew she wasn’t “experienced.” She wandered off promptly.
The display was fully stocked and the swim diapers looked nice. Unfortunately nearly every pocket diaper on the front of each hanging section was in disarray and barely attached to it’s packaging. I snapped a few back together and looked around for an employee. I was hoping I could find some poor unexpecting stock person to ask “So, can you tell me just what these are and how they work?” but there wasn’t anyone around. I decided to keep that trick up my sleeve for the next visit.
This continues to be a major concern for the industry. Will people buy, misuse and return the diapers because they are not being provided the proper support, or, will they turn to google for help and discover the online cloth diapering community? The latter could in turn result in more people using cloth and more people shopping at small online retailers as a result of seeing the cloth diapers in a store like Target?
I am curious though, have any of you tried to ask for help with the cloth diapers at Target or another big box store? What was the response?
Certainly having diapers hanging off the display like the ones I saw are not going to appeal to cloth curious families, in fact if they could even tell what they were, they may quickly assume that these modern diapers are confusing and too complicated even to put back on the rack.
It’s exciting to see cloth diapers available to the public in big box stores and I am very curious as to how all of this will pan out.
What are your thoughts?
I’m Julie, a former cloth diaper retailer who discovered a passion for the industry. Now, instead of selling cloth diapers, I advocate them and promote small businesses I love who sell and manufacture them.
I’m the wife of a fireman and mother of three. I have a daughter and identical twin sons.
