Dive Brief:

• Gap is expanding its BabyGap subscription service with a new sleepwear option it's calling BedtimeBox, the company said Monday.

• Much like its original babyGap Outfit Box, each bedtime box, delivered every three months, contains three sleep sets. Parents select their child's gender and size and Gap stylists choose the items.

• Each shipment costs $49, which is 40% off the retail price. As with the company's BabyGap Outfit Box and its Old Navy brand's Superbox, returns are free and there's no styling fee.

Dive Insight:

Bedtime is one of the most frustrating times of day for parents of young children, and there's really not much that Gap can do about that. But its new sleepwear subscription offer will help ensure that parents at the end of the day will at least have plenty of pajamas in the right size.

The brand has been testing its BabyGap Outfit Box for nearly a year, and has been seeing high retention rates and low return rates, Margaret Yang, senior director of buying for Gap Kids & Baby Online, said in a company blog post. Building on a pilot launched in May for frequent shoppers, Gap launched the BabyGap box in October.

Subscription services took retail by storm a few years ago, especially in consumer goods markets ripe for disruption. Birchbox, founded in 2010, launched at a time when beauty sales were almost unheard of online. And men's grooming brands Harry's (co-founded in 2013 by a Warby Parker founder) and Dollar Shave Club (founded in 2011) took advantage of consumers' frustration with the expense of drugstore razor offerings to go direct to the consumer, complete with a replenishment program. 

"We are living in a retail environment where all companies need to be direct marketers," Jim Fosina, founder and CEO of Fosina Marketing Group, said in a statement on the increased demand for subscription services. There are now 5.7 million subscription box shoppers in the U.S. alone, many with the easy options, like those found at Gap, to quickly and easily change their incoming boxes, Fosina said.

The setup has expanded into fashion in a big way, too, as Stitch Fix, Amazon and others have launched more recently. Logistics are more complicated in that category due to a host of variables, like style and fit, that are not nearly as consistent as the replenishment of known quantities of consumer product goods. Those factors would seem to be only exacerbated by the unpredictable growth spurts of very young children.

But it also means that little kids consistently need new clothes, making apparel subscription particularly logical. "The new BedtimeBox is another way for us to move closer to the customer, and fulfill their needs with sleepwear, which is a category we know parents need to restock constantly as their child grows," Yang said.