Bugaboo why so expensive

The Bugaboo Frog was spare but sturdy, collapsible, easy to push with one hand, and had wheels that could be switched to cope with snow or sand. The handlebar could also be flipped over the top of the buggy to choose the direction the child faced — toward the world or the parent. Boiler and her husband loved their buggy, and they quickly realised it would be a hit with American parents. So when they returned to Amsterdam, Boiler arranged a meeting with Bugaboo.

The company had been founded in , and introduced its first buggy to European markets in Even after the release of its hugely popular Frog in , Bugaboo still had only seven people on staff.

At the meeting, Boiler made her pitch: she wanted to bring Bugaboo to the US. They asked her if she wanted to buy the company. Instead, she returned to Manhattan Beach in as president of Bugaboo America. She stacked 15 Bugaboo Frogs in her garage — all the inventory the company could spare. She tracked down the Porsche driver who had asked her about her buggy — it turned out he was the head chef at Nobu Malibu — and offered him one.

But her real coup was getting one into the hands of Miranda Hobbes, the red-headed lawyer played by Cynthia Nixon on Sex and the City.

Celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Victoria Beckham were pictured pushing them. When the company released a new model, there were months-long waiting lists to buy one. It was the beginning of a new era in the consumerist frenzy that is contemporary parenthood — the dawn of the performance pram. Bugaboo and its brethren were a leap forward in design and functionality, with swivel wheels, serious shock absorption, adjustable everything — they did a lot more than just roll.

All that new functionality justified the cost, at least to some parents. Buying a stroller started to feel more like buying a car. After the arrival of the performance pram, what you pushed your child in seemed to say something about you as a parent; it was easy to feel like the better the buggy, the better, the more competent and caring the parent.

Why was it so easy to convince parents to spend so much on a buggy? But for all their pretensions of necessity, prams and buggies have always been signs of status — as well as reflections of the anxieties of the era.

For most of human history, mothers simply carried their infants. But it was the Victorians who largely invented the modern pram. Rapid urbanisation crowded people of all classes into filthy cities. In response, some wealthy parents had more practical carriages built for their children. Prams, as they came to be called in the popular press, quickly became objects of trickle-down desire.

Queen Victoria was one of the first celebrity influencers to make them fashionable. Within a few years, there were more than 20 pram manufacturers in the capital; six had showrooms on Oxford Street. Around the same time, pram-makers began targeting the middle-class market, with advertisements that depicted mothers pushing them, rather than servants. Cheaper prams soon entered the marketplace, enabling working-class parents to buy one, and by the s and 30s, prams had evolved from luxury to necessity.

Though the terms are often used interchangeably — and today many models function as both — broadly speaking, newborns lie prone in prams, and older infants sit in buggies, pushchairs or strollers. How people moved around their cities and towns had changed — people went further to visit family or friends, or to the shops — and mothers recognised the ease that pushing a child offered.

The buggy industry has always responded to wider changes in society. Through the s and 70s, cars became cheaper, and more parents needed a pram that could fit in the boot.

It put most of the companies still manufacturing traditional prams out of business. The next big innovation came in , when a marathon runner invented the first jogging buggy — a three-wheeled design that made it easier to take your baby on a run, capitalising on the 80s jogging craze. By the end of the century, babyhood had undergone an unprecedented commodification: parents had more money to spend on protecting and pampering their children, and there was an increasingly bewildering array of stuff to spend it on.

Many people were also becoming parents later in life, when their incomes had caught up with their tastes; they wanted the nursery to look as sophisticated as the rest of their home. If you kind of can't but truly feel like owning one, nothing stops you from looking at classified ads - the resale value of a used Bugaboo Fox that you will be the second owner of and then sell is still considerable.

Also, there are always outlets and sales to check out. Every other Bugaboo stroller is much more specific in use and not much more compact nor lighter. From the discontinued models, the Bugaboo Buffalo is one of the best-rated strollers ever, and for two kids, there's nothing quite like the Bugaboo Donkey.

So why is Bugaboo so expensive? That is also why you see it everywhere - like, for example, in the streets of Stockholm. If you look at how stylishly AND functionally Swedish gals dress, you won't be surprised they usually push their little ones around in a Bugaboo.

One of the important factors is also the availability of spare parts. Also, the possibility to get fabrics and canopies that one can change, refreshing the look of the stroller, is a fantastic idea from the point of modern lifestyle as well as longevity of use. Are Bugaboo strollers worth it?

Which is the best Bugaboo stroller? What is the difference between the Bugaboo Fox and the Bugaboo Lynx? Is Bugaboo a good stroller choice, then? If you can afford it, and it suits your lifestyle - definitely yes. From the point of quality as well as style - and the later value when selling it, there aren't many brands on the Bugaboo level.

Bugaboo is a good one - but not the only one by far. We use cookies to allow us and selected partners to improve your experience and our advertising.

By continuing to browse you consent to our use of cookies. You can understand more and change your cookies preferences here. Find out the pros and cons of each Bugaboo pushchair below or go to our best pushchairs to see if any were impressive enough to become Best Buys. Typically Bugaboo pushchairs can be quite bulky and heavy, but the small and mighty Ant weighs just 7.

We found something surprising when testing the Ant. Take a look at the Bugaboo Ant review to see how this lightweight stroller fared in our tests and visit the Bugaboo Ant travel system review to see if we found any issues with attaching the Bugaboo Bee 5 Cocoon or an infant car seat.