Luxury baby gear brand Nuna is opening its brand-new flagship store near its headquarters in Portland, Oregon, a move that underscores how brands are using physical retail to fuel content and product strategies. The store opens this week at Bridgeport Village, a shopping mall that’s located in an affluent part of the greater Portland area. The open-air lifestyle center is also home to trendy premium brands like Tecovas and Salt & Straw, with a new Warby Parker that just opened in June.
The opening marks a milestone for a brand that’s become one of the most popular luxury baby brands among millennial and Gen Z parents; it makes the most-registered-for car seat on Babylist, and about one in five parents said in a recent Babylist survey that Nuna was their favorite car seat brand.
Global chief marketing and growth officer Austin Hodges said sales aren’t the only goal: The showroom will also play a key role in informing future brand strategy and fueling content creation. It’s located about 10 miles from the brand’s headquarters across the Washington state line.
The showroom-style store will carry car seats, strollers, play yards and more, as well as the brand’s new wardrobe collections.
“We can shoot content out of the store to help better educate consumers in real time [based on] the questions they have,” Hodges said. “We have a lot of very highly produced, beautiful content, but what people are looking for when they’re in that exploratory research phase is more like: ‘Let’s break down the difference between these strollers,’ or ‘What’s the next car seat that you get?'”
