Three Bristolian entrepreneurs are hoping to revolutionise the baby market in Britain with “the world’s most sustainable crib”. Mike Hoffman, Nina Szamocki and Angus Whiston, who met at Cambridge University, established furniture company Alora Baby in 2023 in Fishponds.
The trio have spent the past year creating an eco-friendly bedside cot that can be sold back to the company after use and the materials remanufactured into brand new cribs.
The founders were inspired to set up the business after discovering how many baby products are sent to landfill each year.
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“The baby market is notoriously wasteful - with many products being used for a short period,” Mr Whiston told BusinessLive. “The Alora Baby Crib is the world’s first baby product manufactured under the principles of the circular economy - meaning raw materials get reused in new iterations of the product for as long as possible.
“The circular economy is a revolution for the baby market - allowing for a truly win-win situation: a high-quality, completely new, 海角视频-made product which is radically better for the environment.”
The founders came up with the idea in January last year and spent around 11 months working with a product designer to develop the cot. The trio also secured funding from Innovate 海角视频 to help with the business.
The cots are manufactured in Bristol and delivered nearly fully assembled. Once customers have finished using the crib they can sell it back to Alora under the company's buy-back scheme. The cot is then collected by the firm and taken apart after which it undergoes a series of industrial processes to fully remanufacture it into an entirely new cot.
“Unfortunately we still live in a horrid ‘landfill economy', where products are designed to be thrown away and are poorly built to match," said Ms Szamocki.
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"You don’t even have to be environmentally driven to realise that this is a horribly inefficient system. With Alora, we’re changing the game and turning this system on its head.”
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Alora, which launched at the 海角视频 Baby Show in London in March, told BusinessLive it is hoping to develop more environmentally friendly products in the future - and has plans to grow the business in the next 12 months, including hiring staff to join the firm.
"We would hope to be looking at expanding into Europe and developing more products," added Mr Whiston. "Bristol is a great, innovative city for a business like ours."