Dive Brief:

• The White House, e-commerce site Jet and diaper brand Cuties announced a “Community Diaper Program” aimed at expanding access to diapers for low-income families. The diapers can be obtained directly from Jet or through nonprofits that participate.

• The initiative is a response to a call from the White House to creative solutions to help families in need obtain diapers, which were a $6.2 billion business in the U.S. last year. 

• Jet-exclusive Cuties Economy Plus Packs will be available for anyone to purchase in late April. Starting Thursday, nonprofits can apply to the Community Diaper Program at Jet.com to access the diapers at further discounted rates. Jet will fulfill orders from their warehouses so the diapers can be distributed to nonprofits serving families in need.

Dive Insight:

As any parents of young kids know, diapers can be a huge expense, whether they are cloth or disposable. One in three American families lacks sufficient access to diapers and many say they don’t change their child’s diaper as often as they feel they should, possibly in an attempt to save money.

As with other household essentials, the poorest families in America pay more for diapers than wealthier ones do because their local corner stores often stock reduced quantities at higher prices. In 2014, the poorest 20% of Americans with infants in diapers spent nearly 14% of their after-tax income on diapers, according to data cited on the Jet website.

Jet and the White House are calling it a “diaper crisis,” and Jet said it stepped up to answer the call. “The poorest families in America pay twice as much for diapers as wealthier ones do, but our innovative savings engine and network of supply partners enables us to do something about it,” Dana Hork, director of brand experience at Jet, said in a statement.

The move could also help attract lower-income shoppers to Jet, which has spiked its early $50 annual membership fee but is still striving to feature the lowest prices on the web. The retailer offers a series of options, like forgoing returns, to bring down what it says are its already low prices.

It’s also worth noting that Jet knows the diaper business well, considering that founder Marc Lore also co-founded Quidsi, which includes the successful Diapers.com and is now part of Amazon’s empire. 

While Jet has been described as a potential “Amazon killer,” the retailer may not even be trying to compete directly with Amazon (or even Wal-Mart). In fact, in an interview with Retail Dive last year, Jet CRO Scott Hilton dismissed Amazon for having a “very small fraction of the core retail space.”

And Keith Anderson, Profitero's VP of strategy and insights, told Retail Dive last year that Jet appears to be reaching for new online customers rather than for stealing them away from Amazon. “If you take Jet’s comments at face value, I don’t know if they have a strong ambition to convert a lot of shoppers from Amazon to Jet,” Anderson said. “They seem to be trying to convert new shoppers to be online shoppers, which I find to be a risky gamble. They’re interested in the household that values money more than time… It’s such a precise segment of shoppers that they hope exists.”