Hey mate, no sledging match here, to be honest I probably came...

Hey mate, no sledging match here, to be honest I probably came across shorter than intended as i had written most of the points in the comment above and couldn't be bothered to re-write! I value alternative opinions when backed up with substance (as you have).

Retail in general is tough indeed, but some retailers are bucking that trend, BBN being one of them in the past 2 years. The back story here is in 2016 & 2017 all of BBN's major speciality baby retailer competition closed and had heavily discounted closing down sales. As a result of this BBN had extremely compressed sales and margin during this period.

BBN is now expanding into the void left by said competitors and have seen significant upticks in sales and profit as a result. The key is them leveraging their new found dominance to introduce own label products and the benefit of economies of scale to increase their margin substantially, this is still on track.

Regarding the online threat, I have argued in the past about baby goods being an area where it's not entirely applicable, see my previous comment on the threat from Amazon for example, especially relevant is the last paragraph:

"Having used and loved Amazon in the UK as an amazon Prime subscriber for many years, I'm actually really skeptical about it's ability to dominate Australia in the same way for a couple of reasons.

First of all is distance, Aus is so huge that all the delivery times seem to be a week or more, in the UK the MAJOR selling point was next day delivery on almost everything, believe me it got me out of jail many times with forgotten birthdays, anniversaries etc and meant I used Amazon over possibly cheaper alternatives 9 times out of 10. also the convenience of doing ALL your Xmas shopping from your desk at work cannot be understated.

Secondly, the selection/range of products on Amazon AU is atrocious in comparison to the UK at the moment and is generally more expensive than the equivalent high street shops. The UK version is generally cheaper or at least the same price because they are able to buy from secondary suppliers all over Europe and still be able to supply the goods quickly with free delivery. This lack of supply means less casual browsing etc which in turn affects sales and more secondary sellers signing up etc. Most people I speak to up here in Queensland are underwhelmed with Amazon and don't use it much for these reasons, having never seen how good it can be.

Finally Baby Bunting occupies one of the few remaining retail niches where sentimentality, emotion and physical contact are still important. Everyone, especially first-time parents, not only wants the best for their baby, but they also want to feel the blankets, push the pram, try on the baby carrier etc, that's something you will never get from Amazon, and as such cost perhaps is not their principle concern."

Re the general retail/discounters like Kmart, I agree to a certain extent, but I also find a lot of people want to go somewhere where they can do all the baby shopping list in one go, not go on repeated visits. General retailers just can't hold this level of stock or range due to space and demand constraints I also know from personal experience that going into a baby store for a specific high value item leads to a lot of cross buying either through things you didn't realise you might need, sentimentality or sometimes just plain old impulse buying.

The next six months will indeed be a great indicator, I for one expect further progress, and will not be selling out any time soon, indeed as previous will be topping up if i get a chance around 3.20.