Design-savvy parents are the target for London-based Bleep Bleeps, whose range of colourful devices come with their own personalities and names.
Founder and chief executive Tom Evans came up with the business after he was up at 3am with his poorly daughter.
“I took her temperature, which was 38.2 degrees, but then I was racking my brains to think whether that was normal or too high,” he told BusinessCloud.
“I did what anyone would do and pulled out my phone to look it up, and afterwards I wondered why the two devices weren’t connected.”
Evans worked in digital marketing, design and technology at the time and came up with the characters and names for each of his ideas.
“Often there isn’t really much design thought going into parenting devices and I wanted to bring a little bit of design-thinking to the parenting world – just because you become a parent doesn’t mean you don’t care what things look like.”
The first product was Sammy Screamer, a triangular tamper alarm that can be fixed to a buggy or bag that sounds an alarm when movement is detected.
The alarm, which comes in six colours, came about after Evans’ wife had her purse stolen from her buggy.
Next to come onto the market in January 2017 is Suzy Snooze, a smart night light, sleep trainer and baby monitor that uses light and sound to help baby get to sleep, which is controlled via smartphone.
Bleep Bleeps smashed its initial Kickstarter target for the first product in 24 hours, raising £90,000, before raising another £70,000 in a day in 2016 for Suzy Snooze.
Research and development has been carried out with the Mumsnet community and the business already has five other products pictured on its website, which it will release one at a time.
Lily Loco is a location pendant, David Camera is a video baby monitor and thermometer, Ultra Stan is an ultrasound monitor, Cecil G is a location bracelet and Tony Tempa is an ear thermometer.
“All our products are inspired by the real-life problems faced by parents. They all become part of the family and are something you want to have on display,” Evans says, adding that English-speaking countries and Japan are the current markets.
“We’ve smashed our crowdfunding targets every time and this year we’ll have three or four different products on the market, which is pretty good for a start-up I think.”