Product development for family mobility and child transport

Strategy, design, engineering and CMF work side by side in our Geldermalsen studio. In this category that matters: a child seat or stroller succeeds on how safe it feels, how it looks on the shop floor, how it clicks, folds and carries — and whether it can be built at the right cost. We work on all of it at once, testing ideas early with mock-ups and prototypes in our own workshop.

Most family-mobility products are platforms: one stroller architecture carrying several models, one seat design spanning mounting systems and age groups. The architecture fixes the interfaces, mechanisms and product-family choices that later decide cost, weight, tooling and durability. So we put it first — a shared framework the whole team designs and engineers within, instead of engineering bolted on at the end.

“Parents don’t buy products, they buy trust — you earn that in the details.” — Gert-Jan van Breugel

Frame — We frame the challenge before we solve it: what the product must achieve, for whom, and in which market.

Architect — The product architecture that will carry the family: the interfaces, mechanisms and platform choices that decide cost, weight, tooling and durability.

Shape — Concept, form and interaction; desirability and usability developed together and tested with mock-ups.

Prove — We build to learn: mechanisms, materials, CMF and manufacturability, engineered towards production and iterated through prototypes.

Build — Production-ready data and support through tooling and first series, so the product reaches the shelf as intended.

What happens when a product becomes the category benchmark? You raise the bar again. With Thule we returned to our own design — the Yepp child bike seat — and evolved it for today’s families: current safety expectations, cleaner styling and more considered materials, without losing what made the original the default choice.

When Thule decided to enter the car seat market, we worked alongside their team from strategy through design: research with modern families, a product language true to the Thule brand, and the many detail decisions a safety-critical category demands. The result is a car seat range that is unmistakably Thule. Link: See the story behind the Thule car seats → /case/thule-car-seats_2-2/ (URL live and working; slug cleanup + 301 happens via the redirect map, not on this page) Alt: Thule child car seat installed on a rear car seat

For Maxi-Cosi we designed the Lila stroller: comfort for the child, calm handling for the parent, and a refined look that holds its own in the premium segment — shaped around the realities of daily family life: folding, carrying, storing. Link: See the story behind the Lila → /case/maxi-cosi-lila/ Alt: Maxi-Cosi Lila stroller in an urban setting

With Hamax we designed the Outback: a child bike trailer that converts to a stroller — one architecture, several ways to move. Suspension comfort for the child, easy coupling and folding for the parent, and a robust build for year-round use. Link: See the story behind the Outback → /case/hamax-outback/ Alt: Hamax Outback child trailer attached to a bicycle on a forest path​