Rapid consumption and production of waste is rampant in all industries, but it is especially true for baby gear. Tiny people grow up fast, and parents can be nervous about buying used items (“Is that high chair Really sanitized?”) and are often too stressed to think about what to do with the equipment the little one has outgrown. Enter Alora Baby, which is trying to shift the narrative toward a greener and more sustainable option for manufacturing — and recycling — baby products. The company starts with bedside cribs.
Alora Baby, supported by government grants, aims to introduce revolutionary changes in baby gear, breaking away from the rule that products are designed for a single lifetime. The team chooses to bootstrap, pushing to prove the concept before considering larger investment rounds. The aim is to reduce business risk and get a clear blueprint for the long-term viability of the company.
“We’re stuck in this system, which I call the dump economy, which is basically where things get worse: materials are more expensive, labor is less and less exploitative (thankfully!), but we don’t have the fuel for that engine anymore,” said Angus Whiston, founder of Alora Baby, in an interview with TechCrunch. “Where does this lead us?
Whiston believes the startup’s approach isn’t inherently deeply rooted in technology, but its simplicity lends itself to a potentially bigger and more important perspective down the line. When the business engine is finally up and running, he says the focus will shift to creating IP — specifically, undertaking research projects that will improve margins, resulting in cheaper production at scale and therefore cheaper products for consumers.
The biggest change for Alora Baby is almost philosophical: What is a “new” product?
“We know instinctively what a product from recycled material is. If someone said, ‘Hey, this cup is made from recycled materials,’ we know it’s a new product,” Whiston said. “And if someone says ‘refurbished,’ we know what that means — but also that it’s not a “new product”.
It turns out that there is no distinct, clear answer as to where the intersection point is. If you recycle aluminum, you would remelt it and make “new” aluminum. The is recycled, but it’s also new. For Alora Baby, the company “reinvents” products, and the founder is happy to explain what that means.
“At one end of the spectrum, we could recycle all materials: turn them back into atoms, virgin materials or raw materials,” he said. “That’s great for the consumer, psychologically, but it’s also resource intensive.” Whiston says the other end of the spectrum is simply removing the product. “If you just clean it, that’s the other end of the spectrum. Our remanufacturing process is a series of industrial processes. It includes the kind of stuff you’d expect: sanding, re-boring, and all that stuff. Every single part is efficiently completed, so it is truly new. It may be a little thinner, but it’s ‘new’ in a way that most people would agree is ‘new’. It’s more energy intensive, but in this segment it’s worth it.”
The startup is focused on the firm belief that better products should be cheaper at scale. Indeed, this scalable form of production, coupled with a shift in consumer behavior towards sustainability, could be a venture-backed initiative.
However, the company is not only in the business of making sustainable baby beds. It also highlights an important aspect of the circular economy debate, looking closely at not only the process involved in the production of goods, but also the subsequent fate of those goods, involving various recycling centers and machines.
Essentially, Alora Baby does not just aim to manufacture baby cribs in an environmentally friendly way, but tries to review the entire life cycle of a product: its production, its use and its disposal or recycling. It further emphasizes the criticality of changing consumer behavior, which, according to the founder, is 80% of the challenge facing the company.
As of now, we’re seeing a new breed of companies emerge, challenging the rules and pushing the boundaries, and this new startup is doing just that. Focusing on a greener approach to baby gear, it aims to make an authentic, practical impact on environmental sustainability and develop a true, circular economy that doesn’t wash green.
