Baby Registry: The home team: enlist help to make those early weeks manageable

You can expect to have your hands full when your baby comes home and you juggle new responsibilities such as feedings and diaper changes, not to mention trying to find time for yourself. That's why it's so important to start organizing your support system now. Consider these options.

Family and friends: Instead of requesting items on your baby registry, ask a few close loved ones to give the gift of themselves. Create a network of people who will bring you dinner, do a load of laundry, or even watch the baby for an hour so you can take a shower or catch a nap.

Hired help: If your budget allows, you might hire a postpartum doula, whose job function is to come into the home and support the new more. "Doulas mother the mother," says Tracy Wilson Peters, executive director of the Childbirth and Postpartum Professional Association, a service of 2,000 doulas across the country. "We do whatever needs to be done in order to make this time easier," adds Joan Goode, president of the National Association of Postpartum Care Services in Denver. "This includes everything from light housekeeping and grocery shopping to taking the night shift so Mom can sleep. We even teach new mothers how to breastfeed." The downside: Doula services, which cost about $30 per hour, are not covered by most health-insurance plans, so you may want to save up. For more information, visit napcs.org or call (888) 692-2772.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group

Baby Registry: Toys 'R' Us to add learning centers, PC software, baby registry in '95; image and service highlighted in annual report

PARAMUS, N.J. -- Feeling the competitive pinch from discount department stores, Toys "R" Us will undertake some broad new initiatives in 1995 that should better position the specialty chain for growth.

This year, according to its 1994 annual report, Toys "R" Us will:

* Open 100 Learning Center store-within-a-store shops that offer a full assortment of learning-aid products and children's software;

* Debut a full selection of PC software at all U.S. stores as well as in several international markets;

* Greatly expand the space dedicated to large outdoor/ indoor play sets;

* Install a new automated Baby Registry program throughout the chain.

The toy retailer said that it is committed to improving its image through "a variety of pricing and marketing initiatives, the introduction of new in-store shops that highlight our dominant selection of merchandise and an increased emphasis on customer service," according to a letter to stockholders signed by vice chairman and ceo Michael Goldstein and Robert Nakasone, president and coo.

Toys "R" Us suffered from a downturn in video game sales in '94, the result of consumers awaiting the new generation of 32-bit and 64-bit video game systems by Sega, Sony and Nintendo. This should turn around later this year as these new technologies hit the shelves, creating excitement and sales during the fourth quarter.

Toys "R" Us' annual report stated the company's continuing efforts to improve its customer service program and the scheduled opening this year of a state-of-the art distribution center, the company's largest, in New Jersey. It also will open a DC in Germany.

Store counts will swell by another 100 units this year to about 1,100: 40 more toy stores in the United States on top of the yearend 618; about 50 internationally above the current 293; and 10 more Kids "R" Us children's apparel stores for a total of 214.

Toys "R" Us said that it will expand its franchise agreement program so that it can enter more countries in the years ahead. Toys "R" Us opened its first franchise store in January in Dubai and expects to open units in Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Overall, in 1994 Toys "R" Us recorded total corporate sales of over $8.7 billion and operating income of $844 million.

COPYRIGHT 1995 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group