how many Momma and/or Baby sites ARE there?

[rcjordan]

Geez, I was spelunking around the various affiliate programs under the "family" category looking for travel-related stuff. I had to page through endless BabyThis and MommaThat sites. I sign in this morning at CJ and -guess what- there's another one...

That's one ecomm category that is apparently overripe for a shake-out, imo.

[Drastic]

I wonder if recent report findings (have seen a couple - don't remember where), that women are becoming the dominant gender for online purchasing, have contributed to this.

The typical Mom being often considered the center of the household, more likely to make online purchases than Dad, and most likely to search for anything "baby", may have spurred a mini-explosion for mamma and baby stuff in these type categories?

[mike]

Although there are many small online baby stores, consolidation has already hit the big players.

iBaby was acquired by BabyGear.com, who then went bankrupt. BabyCenter is owned by eToys, so I guess it will be gone very shortly too. The only other big online baby stores are iMaternity and BabyStyle/eStyle, and I'm not sure they will last that long.

Of course there are many smaller baby sites coming online all the time.

I guess it is basically the same as other online shopping sectors like pet stores, vitamin shops, etc. Nearly all of the major players lost the hundreds of millions of VC/IPO money they had and are now bankrupt, but there are dozens of small, private companies left and new ones all the time.