Shopping for baby products can be an frustrating experience sometimes. The market is flooded with inferior (and sometimes just plain dangerous) products with extremely poor designs. Just about the only thing good about these products is their price — they are all dirt cheaply made in the great manufacturing capital of the world, China.
Because of that reason, I am always on the look out for great designs priced for everybody. Not having visited Daddytypes for a few months, I hopped over to the site and found an article mentioning the Orbit Baby Infant System. It’s a company founded by a couple of Stanford grads with ideas to make transporting babies safer. Great ideas with a good cause, I thought. The design is delicious and the concepts look wonderful… Wonderful until I saw the price, that is. At about $900 a pop, this “safe and good looking” product is effectively priced out of reach for most working class parents.
That’s what I don’t understand about innovative products like Bugaboo or the Orbit Baby. Do the rules of economics not apply to those systems? Can they not find an equilibrium where they can manufacturer something innovative and affordable all at the same time? I mean, it’s not like there are no substitutes out there! Why can’t there be an Apple in the baby products market? Why can’t there be a Target supermarket for babies?
Now that I Know how much the Orbit System costs, I feel like a snob just by drooling at the pictures. Is it true that maybe the manufacturing cost is just so high on such a well-made and designed system that the product can be justifies at that price point? Or is it simply a “Stanford” thing that it’s OK to be snobs because this is the Bay Area where most people make lots of money from the high-tech industry anyway and can afford to spend that kind of money? Maybe the profit-making scheme is blinding their noble objective to make the safest baby transpotation system? Or maybe they think being safe should always come at a price (only the rice should be able to survive a crash in their system)? I just don’t get it.
Maybe more classes in economics will help me see the world more clearly.
Blah… Just another rant from a financially strained parent…