The world deserves better prams
Prams are one of the world’s most ubiquitous products. They are a necessity, a means for parents to explore the world with their babies, keep them safe and comfortable, and connect with them.
According to a 2014 report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), it has been previously estimated that around 740,000 prams and strollers are sold in Australia each year. Given Australia’s population of ~25 million, rough maths indicates that this is approximately 1 pram sold each year for every 33rd person. This is a significant product category and it deserves our attention.
That’s not to say that prams are an ignored product category. Quite the opposite in fact. Some research indicates that there are over 81 million different models of strollers out there, and counting. There are countless pram and stroller brands in the world all constantly releasing new designs and new models to sell to parents.
The problem isn’t the volume of prams being produced, or that customers do not have enough choices; it’s that pram innovation has stalled. Most first-time parents cannot differentiate between the majority of prams in the marketplace. Baby stores are a mix of same-same prams: bulky, plasticky, utilitarian contraptions with folding mechanisms and modular components as indecipherable as the next.
The pram industry is well-known for leveraging word-of-mouth marketing, a suitable strategy given how desperately pram innovation has stalled. Prams are inherently personal products, and due to the instinctively protective nature of parents, prams are somewhat immune to top-down marketing. Would you trust the proclamations of a sales/marketing department, or would you trust your friends and their experiences? Additionally, safety-conscious parents are far more conservative with their pram choices when they may be more willing to experiment with their choices in other product categories. Altogether, this means that popular pram brands are able to maintain the mantle of market leadership without necessarily innovating.
Maybe we have already landed on some sort of platonic ideal for pram design. Like the iPad, how many other ways are there to design a touchscreen tablet computer? Maybe prams are as good as they’ll ever be, and the industry has settled on such a design. I don’t know. But the fact that most parents I’ve interviewed actually dislike their prams suggests that we at least need to tryand do better.
Why do parents dislike their prams? Parents purchase prams out of necessity instead of desire. Families have an obvious need for prams (in fact most families own multiple!) but on most occasions wished they were: less bulky, easier to fit in cars, easier to manoeuvre, easier to fold, easier to modularise, among others.
At the end of the day, I actually think the issue is far more elemental. There is just no emotion in the products — that thing you feel when you use a really, really great product that a bunch of designers and engineers really cared about. Prams allow parents to explore the world with their babies and connect with them in new settings. It keeps them comfortable and happy. Buying a good pram for your baby is inherently an expression of love — an expression of your gratitude for their existence. This should be a product that parents love. It’s a product that should be associated with positive memories of love, growth, and connection. But right now, there’s no romance in prams, when all the emotions associated with starting and raising a family should be exactly that.
How do you bring romance to a product? It’s not just about how it looks, it’s not about putting love hearts on the packaging and having it smell of talcum powder. It’s the considerations of how it feels to use all aspects of the product.
What confidence does it instil in you when you fold and unfold it? How satisfying is it to collapse? Does it enhance your connection with the baby, or does it just move them places? Does it feel like it was built for parents, or built for engineers, designers and sales people? Does it feel like an extension of your life or an imposition?
Designing the right answers to these questions is what Eloise is all about.
