If the largest shock awaiting America’s first-time dad and mom isn’t caring for an toddler, it’s paying for one: Bringing a new child into the home runs simply shy of $19,000. It’s little surprise, then, that the hallowed establishment of the bridal registry has expanded right into a want record to assist dad and mom purchase necessities starting from system to automotive seats.
On the middle of this motion is Babylist, a web based portal that notched 45% development final yr hitting revenues of $750 million. Chief development officer Lee Anne Blake was a key government in that trajectory (she left in 2025), however since its 2011 founding, Babylist has operated and not using a CMO.
Till now. The corporate introduced Tuesday (April 7) that advertising and marketing veteran Jill Cress will assume chief marketer duties beginning subsequent month.
“What drew me to Babylist is identical factor that has pushed each chapter of my profession—a beloved model sitting on the fringe of its greatest alternative,” Cress mentioned in a press release.
She is probably going referring to the platform’s newest development initiative—increasing from a web based vacation spot (which already attracts half the nation’s first-time dad and mom) right into a bodily one.
After testing the waters with a sequence of pop-ups, Babylist lower the ribbon on its first retail location in 2023, an 18,000-square-foot boutique in Beverly Hills the corporate describes as “an area the place you possibly can attempt child gear, ask actual questions, and really feel assured about discovering what’s proper to your rising household.”
This summer season, Babylist plans to open an excellent bigger outpost at 477 Broadway in Manhattan’s SoHo district.
“We’ve spent over 10 years incomes belief with households and now it’s time to make the world really feel it,” founder and CEO Natalie Gordon (a former Amazon software program developer) mentioned in a press release. “Jill is the individual to do this.”
Cress may also be centered on rising the model forward of Babylist’s reported plans to IPO in 2027.
From monetary providers to household planning
Cress brings a deep and different background to her new submit.
Over her 23-year tenure at Mastercard, she rose to government vice chairman, charged with main world shopper technique. Between 2016 and 2019, she held the advertising and marketing helm at Nationwide Geographic, serving to remodel the 138-year-old establishment into a significant vacation spot on Instagram, the place it presently boasts 247 million followers. Cress then helped to guide PayPal’s ongoing evolution from a click-to-pay choice right into a multi-feature digital pockets.
Most just lately, H&R Block—the storefront outfit based in 1955—recruited Cress to modernize its model right into a mobile-banking platform anchored by AI-driven tax-prep help geared toward Gen Z.
