Editor's notes

Yes, I'm back from maternity leave, and promise to bore you all with baby stories each and every month...at least as they relate to our business. I am having a blast being a mother, and getting to understand this whole baby business from the customer's point of view.

It's made me realize, for instance, that for those of you in the baby business, you really have at least two different customers to cater to: the before-baby customer and the after-baby customer.

While the before-baby customer is focused on what's cute, the after-baby customer is focused on what's practical. The before-baby customer has nine months to shop around; the after-baby customer has finally found a window of time to get to your store to pick up whatever product she desperately needs, and she wants to be in and out as soon as possible, and with a changing table and comfortable breast-feeding room at her disposal, thank you very much.

Even as someone who's involved in the industry and has spent years looking at new products in the infant market, I must confess, it wasn't until I really got to use some of these products that I've had a really complete understanding of them — what's necessary, what's convenient, what gets used, and what just looks good.

I've talked a lot about branding in past columns, and I still believe that brand names are a convenient short cut for today's busy moms to have a quick understanding of the kind of product they're getting. Sure, some brands are about status symbols, but more often than not there's a whole association that happens with a particular brand — something that says to the consumer, "this is my kind of product."

And that's the way the before-baby shopper operates — the one who's never used any of these products, and who needs something of a road map to get her started. Brands — and the reviews they get in books like "Baby Bargains" — help these women start to muddle through it all.

But the challenge in successful baby retailing may be what happens next. Seth Berger, owner of Stamford, Conn.-based Kids Home Furnishings, who appears on our cover this month, had a lot to say about brand.

In the end, he said, the brand has to be him and his family and staff, and the customer has to trust him. It's a challenge, but an important one. Because nothing — not a status-symbol brand name or a starred review — can take the place of a real, live person in front of you, explaining in detail and with confidence, exactly why a particular product is the right one for you.