Some 25 years ago, a Dutch stroller brand called Bugaboo entered the market with a slightly nutty idea: a luxury stroller.
Until then, strollers had been an inexpensive commodity, which made sense. Why invest upwards of $1,000 on a premium buggy that your baby will soil with spit-up and poop? Especially when your baby will only need it for a few years?
But Bugaboo was onto something. Celebrity moms, from Madonna to Kate Hudson to Victoria Beckham, snapped up the strollers, and it was famously featured in Sex and the City, spurring other upper-middle class parents to follow suit. And it has inspired many other luxury brands to enter the $4.54 billion stroller market, including Nuna, Uppababy, and Joolz.
Bugaboo’s new challenge is to carve out a niche for itself in this crowded landscape. It’s trying to do this by cornering the market on double strollers for parents who have two stroller-age children. Today, it launches the Bugaboo Kangaroo, which allows you to convert from a single to a double stroller, when your family grows. Its tandem format means the stroller remains slim and compact, even when carting two babies around. It’s the latest addition to Bugaboo’s fleet of double strollers, which also includes the Donkey.
Jeanelle Teves, Bugaboo’s chief commercial officer, says that the brand pays close attention to evolving demographics as it considers what products to design. For one thing, more Americans are waiting to have children. The average age of a woman giving birth for the first time was 27.3 years in 2021, up from 25.6 years in 2011, which limits the number of child-bearing years. A growing number of parents—20%—are choosing to have just one child. But among the 80% of parents who have two or more kids, they’re having them closer together. “People who have children later tend to be more affluent because they’ve been working for longer,” says Teves. “They’re more likely to look for a premium stroller, but they also need the stroller to work for multiple kids.”
While many other brands have double strollers, Bugaboo is investing heavily in designing high end, highly functional strollers that will appeal to these parents. The new Kangaroo has been designed so it works well for a single child, but can expand as the family grows. (The single costs $1,199, while the double costs $1,448.)
Aernout Dijkstra-Hellinga, Bugaboo’s director of product innovation, has been at the company for two decades. Bugaboo began developing its first double stroller 15 years ago, but he says it was critical that the company creates a product that could easily expand from a single to a double. Bugaboo wanted a solution for parents who aren’t sure whether they will have a second child, but are open to the possibility. This also means that a double stroller can shrink back into a single stroller when the older child grows out of it. “You wanted to make sure parents didn’t have to buy an entirely new stroller if they expanded their family,” he says.
Teves points out that many of these older, wealthier parents live in big cities. So they’re looking for strollers that a lightweight and compact. There’s also a very big basket underneath that has four pockets and can hold up to 28.6 lb. “These are parents who need to fold the stroller quickly to use the subway,” she says. “They’re pushing the strollers down crowded streets and through tight doors. For many families, the stroller needs to accomplish a lot of things, including being a shopping cart.”
Bugaboo focuses on making its strollers easy to use in this urban context. With the new Kangaroo, the two children sit in tandem, in front of one another. (This is called stadium seating, as if one child is on the upper bleacher.) The seats can be configured in more than 20 ways. Newborns can be positioned so they are facing the parent. Older children can be positioned either to face the parent or away from the parent. You can even fit a wheeled board for toddlers, allowing you to technically fit three children.
For Dijkstra-Hellinga, the key to creating a good double stroller is maneuverability. The design team thinks carefully about where the center of gravity will be on the stroller, then carefully positioning the wheels and the handle. All of this contributes to a smoother ride and the ability to go around corners with ease. “There’s a lot of trial and error,” he says. “We try out different positions for the seats and the wheels, we try out different kinds of spacing. In the end, the optimal position comes down to a few centimeters.”
But Bugaboo wants to give its customers’ options. It also has another stroller called the Donkey that allows you to put two children side by side. One of these is specifically designed for twins. (Twin births are also increasing, according to the U.S. government, partly because of increases in medical interventions like IVF, which can lead to more multiple births.) As infants, parents want to be able to see both twins at the same time in the stroller. And as toddlers, twins want to be able to face away from their parents, so they can see what is going in in the world around them.
Teves says it is crucial for these double stroller to be very rugged and durable to be able to handle all of this weight. So a major part of the design process is testing all the components, including the wheels and the basket, so ensure that it is able to withstand all of this heavy-duty usage.
As demographics continue to shift, Bugaboo is focused on adapting its stroller range to meet these needs. And ultimately, it’s moving beyond its image as a luxury stroller, used by the elite. (Even though it’s a brand that continues to be favored by celebrities like Gigi Hadid to Meghan Markle.) “While our price points are high, we’re really trying to give customers value for their money,” she says. “We want to make it possible to buy a single stroller that can grow with your family.”