Babylist parked a Volvo in its new SoHo store

The question is never which stroller reviews best. It is whether the thing folds one-handed while you are holding a car seat, a coffee and a diaper bag, and whether it clears the trunk of a cab, and no amount of scrolling at 11 p.m. answers either. Babylist opened a 20,000-square-foot showroom at 477 Broadway in SoHo on Friday, built almost entirely around letting you find out in person.

The ground floor is a test track

A central boulevard runs into a stroller course built like a New York streetscape, which is the only surface that tells you anything useful about a stroller sold to New Yorkers. Next to it sits a full-size Volvo EX90, parked indoors, so you can practice installing a car seat in an actual back seat instead of on a display plinth. There is a fit-check area for carriers, and a travel section with a taxi trunk and an overhead compartment, so you can learn whether your folded stroller clears both before the airport teaches you.

The strangest corner is the one called the In Your Corner Mart, where Babylist puts the things it sells that are not gear, including college savings accounts. Registry appointments and guided sessions through the car seat and stroller areas are booked at the entry lounge.

Downstairs is somebody's apartment

The staircase opens into a kitchen stocked with bottles, feeding accessories and high chairs, then a run of fully built nurseries with cribs, dressers, lamps and changing tables, arranged across the situations people actually have rather than the one with the good window. It closes in The Apartment: 600 square feet of finished New York home where everything you handled upstairs is shown where it would sit.

Three brands get their own rooms, a Momcozy pop-up, a Medela space and a Zarbee’s greenhouse, with MABĒ, Chicco, BabyBjörn, Gerber, Aveeno Baby, Crate&Kids, Freestyle and Volvo worked in along the way. There is also an event space and a podcast studio.

Why a website is building stores

This is the second Babylist showroom and the largest, three years after the Beverly Hills flagship, and it arrives weeks after Jennifer Hyman stepped in as chief executive. “No one is born a parenting expert,” Hyman said, describing baby shopping as a choice between endless research you cannot touch and a store of wall-to-wall products that does not tell you what you need. The company passed $750 million in revenue in 2025, grew 45% year over year, and says it is on track for $1 billion this year.

Worth the subway ride

Go if you are stuck between two strollers and the photographs have stopped helping, or if nobody has ever watched you install a car seat and told you what you got wrong. That is the part the internet is bad at, and it is free. Skip it if you already know what you are buying, because underneath the greenhouse and the parked car it is still a very well-lit room full of things for sale. Go on a weekday. Bring the car seat you own.

Babylist is in the club: free shipping for Cubbie Club members. See the Babylist offer →