Baby & kids D2C
In baby care, ROAS isn't earned at checkout. It's earned at the doorstep.
Your buyer is a cautious first-time mother who pays COD so she can inspect a safety-sensitive product before paying. That caution is rational — and expensive: COD RTOs at ~26% versus under 2% prepaid, refused hygiene SKUs can't be restocked, and on a 5–15% margin shelf a booked 4× routinely lands below 1× POAS. Margifi recomputes every campaign on courier-confirmed delivered revenue.
- COD RTOs at ~26% vs under 2% prepaid — and baby care runs 50–60% COD.
- A refused pack of diapers or wipes is a full-COGS write-off, not a ₹200 freight line.
- On a 5–15% margin shelf, a proud 4× routinely books a POAS below 1.
Typical ranges for COD-heavy Indian baby & kids brands — your real numbers will differ. Category benchmarks — not Margifi results.
Profit truth
On a 10%-margin shelf, a 4× ROAS is a loss wearing a medal
Diaper and wipe margins run 5–15% — a commoditized shelf with almost no buffer. So a 3–4× booked ROAS routinely lands at POAS below 1.0 once COGS, freight and returns stack, while Meta keeps crediting orders that were refused at the door days ago. Add the COD tax — 50–100% higher fulfilment cost, contribution 8–15 points lower — and the campaign you're proudest of is the one draining cash.
- Delivered ROAS per campaign, recomputed on courier-confirmed revenue and reconciled daily against what Meta booked.
- Profit waterfall: revenue → after COGS → after shipping & returns → after ad spend → net.
- COD-vs-prepaid margin split — see the 8–15 points of contribution the COD tax quietly takes.
Returns & RTO
No size chart, hygiene write-offs, transit breakage — baby returns bill you three ways
India has no standard kids size chart and a baby outgrows a size in 2–3 months, so parents guess — kidswear returns run 25–40% with fit driving ~53%. Then the return itself gets worse: a refused diaper, wipe or feeding item legally can't be restocked, so you eat full COGS plus both-way freight, and toys arrive broken and get refused at the door. And festive gifting — your biggest spend window — nearly doubles category RTO to ~39%.
- NDR & Out-for-Delivery worklist — call the save-able orders inside the 24–72h window, ranked by rescue value and pincode risk. Live
- Return loss — reverse freight + the restock cost you set — charged to the exact size, SKU and ad, not a lumped returns line.
- Delivered-ROAS trend + in-transit projection, so festive scaling runs on delivered revenue, not booked.
COD reliability
Her COD isn't fraud — it's caution. Score it before you ship.
First-time mothers in Tier 2–3 default to COD because they want to inspect a safety-sensitive product before paying. Most of them deliver fine. But COD carries no doorstep commitment — it RTOs at ~26% vs under 2% prepaid and fails at 62% vs 38% — and a brand at 50–60% COD loses 5–8% of total revenue to COD-specific costs alone, with no way to tell the cautious first-timer from the serial refuser hiding in the same queue.
- COD RTO rate by region and pincode — separate the lanes that deliver from the ones that bounce before you ship.
- COD → prepaid nudge sizing — a well-timed prepaid ask converts 20–30% of COD intenders.
- COD-vs-prepaid delivered-margin split, so the COD tax is priced, not guessed.
Products & catalogue
Blended ROAS is subsidy accounting — 60% of your catalogue rides free
Onesies, bottles, toys, diapers, bundles — wildly different margins, return rates and write-off risk, collapsed into one blended number that feels trustworthy. Operators find ~60% of SKUs are unprofitable to advertise while 40% subsidise them, and a 3.5×-ROAS campaign can lose money on every sale of a high-return, low-price item. Your DPA feed doesn't know any of this — it spreads spend across every product, including the ones that come back broken or unsellable.
- Catalogue / DPA product-level profit — spend, delivered ROAS, RTO and delivered profit per product_id; prune the losers from the feed. Live
- Per-SKU delivered-profit ranking with Scale / Keep / Stop verdicts — down to the size and variant.
- Dead-stock value & days-of-cover, so you stop buying ads for stock that only moves in the wrong direction.
Where baby & kids usually lands
Benchmark ranges for the category — the only real numbers we publish are from our live pilot.
Margifi for baby & kids — FAQ
No — blocking COD in this category is blocking your buyer. Margifi scores the lane, not the payment method: most regions deliver fine, and the refusal-heavy pincodes are a small, identifiable slice. Keep COD open, screen the risky lanes before dispatch, and nudge the rest toward prepaid — a well-timed ask converts 20–30% of COD intenders.
See your real delivered profit, baby & kids.
Connect Shopify and Meta and watch order ROAS become delivered ROAS — net of every RTO.