A highlight for the retailer was the rollout of its Store of the Future concept across three locations in Q4 FY25. The refurbished stores have delivered a 28 per cent average sales lift since launching, significantly exceeding Baby Bunting’s expectations of 10 per cent growth.  The retailer plans to refurbish another 10-12 stores in FY26 and a further 10-15 stores in FY27 and beyond. It now expects the Store of the Future concept to drive a 15-25 per cent uplift in sales. Baby Bunting CEO Mark Teperson spoke with Inside Retail about the factors driving the success of the store refurbishments in an exclusive interview after presenting the retailer’s results on Friday.  Inside Retail: After reporting on the opening of Baby Bunting’s first Store of the Future earlier this year, I was eager to follow up and see how it has landed with customers. And it seems like it couldn’t have gone better.  Mark Teperson: A 28 per cent lift in a store refurbishment is a really extraordinary result, so we’re very pleased with how our customers have reacted.  What gives us great confidence is that we’ve seen improvements in metrics right across the board. We’ve seen improvements in the top line, of course, and that’s been underpinned by new customer and returning customer growth, as well as dwell time, basket size, average transaction value and margin improvement. All three stores [featuring the Store of the Future concept] have consistently delivered improvements across that suite of metrics, and that’s what gave us the confidence to upgrade our guidance on the Store of the Future, from 10 per cent [sales growth post-refurbishment] to 15-25 per cent over the next 12 months.  IR: Why do you think the stores have outperformed your expectations? MT: For customers who have shopped with us for a long time, [the new concept] is a complete departure from what they’re used to. The feedback from customers and our store teams really reinforces the investment that we’ve made in experience.  I remarked on the call earlier today that we’ve actually reduced the number of options that are available to a customer in [the refurbished] stores. We rationalised our range by between 17-25 per cent, and what that’s enabled us to do is to provide more space for our best-performing products to connect more meaningfully with customers.  There’s more curation, there’s better thought. Moving from a category-led experience to an activity-based experience has resonated strongly with consumers. Our NPS levels are amongst some of the highest that I’ve seen in retail. We consistently deliver NPS in the vicinity of 75 to 78 points on a weekly basis across thousands of customer feedback points. I think that is a real point of difference.  We have a team that deeply cares about the purpose that we are there for, and that does lead to much better performance when you can connect those things together.  IR: The stores are the most outward-facing example of the work that’s been going on since you joined Baby Bunting. I’m curious about the changes that have been happening behind the scenes, such as changes to organisational structure or operational processes. MT: We’ve made many changes and improvements over the course of the last 18 months. We made structural changes to the way that we’re organised so that our back-of-house better reflects the customer experience that we present in our stores.  We’ve made new appointments to the team. We brought in some fantastic talent. We’ve also promoted some fantastic talent from within the business, and we’ve created new teams that didn’t exist before.  As an example of that, all of our creative used to be outsourced. We’ve now built an entire creative team in-house, so we’ve got a creative director and a team of people that are dedicated to telling the Baby Bunting story.  We’ve also invested very heavily in data and analytics, which is providing the business with outstanding insights that allow us to trade and optimise the business in ways that we’ve never been able to do before.  IR: Are these things that you brought from your time in the fashion footwear category and other industries that weren’t necessarily a part of the Baby Bunting business before you joined? MT: There are certainly lots of things where I’ve been able to draw on my fantastic experience in other industries and businesses. The Store of the Future was inspired by two decades’ worth of retail safaris and the experience that I picked up at Accent Group around delivering innovative experiences.  The data and analytics work was what I honed when I was at Afterpay, building out that muscle and function for that business, and I saw how impactful it was in driving and accelerating growth.  And then, my broader learnings around how to create a culture and a team that is strongly aligned around purpose and performance are part of the magic that makes it happen.  We talk about strategy, structure and people, and it really cascades in that order. Once you’ve developed your strategy, it’s about making sure you have the right structure to support that, and then having the right people in the right roles to enable that.  IR: As you come up on two years within the business, you’re now able to show the world what you’ve been working on. What are the things that you still want to achieve at Baby Bunting? MT: There’s a real hunger that lives within me, and I think within the wider team, to reimagine what this category can be for customers. We’re doing something that hasn’t really been done before. We certainly have plenty of work cut out for us over the next three to five years, refurbishing our fleet and opening another 80 stores across both Australia and New Zealand. And then, potentially, where else could we take this model?  I’ve been talking about this notion of reimagining experience for a long time, but to actually have had the opportunity to do that across all corners of the business, working with a tremendous team to be able to scale this opportunity has been a real joy. It’s been a lot of hard work over the last two years, but there’s a great sense of achievement with the early results, and we remain focused on delivering the strategy over the next few years.