Allison interviews Alex Knox from Elvie about their Rise baby bouncer that transforms into a bassinet.
You can rock the bouncer manually or set it to several automatic rocking modes through a mobile app. If the baby falls asleep, you can easily transform the bouncer into a bassinet without disturbing the baby by pulling a single latch on one end. This detaches the baby’s harness, extends the bouncer’s side walls upward, and levels out the bassinet’s floor for a comfortable sleep.
The Rise complies with the American Academy of Pediatrics standards for bouncers and bassinets. You can get onto the product’s waitlist at the link below.
Learn more at https://elvie.com
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Transcript of Interview:
Allison: I have five grandchildren, so I had to stop immediately when I saw something to do with babies here. I’m in the Elvie booth with Alex Knox. Tell us about this.
Alex Knox: Well, Elvie is a company that designs products really thinking about mums very much as a starting point. So we started about 10 years ago and we developed a wearable breast pump at a time where breast pumps were kind of connected up to with cables and tubes.
Allison: Oh yeah, I remember those.
Alex Knox: Yeah, absolutely. So we revolutionized that, and then this is another product that’s really thinking about mums and the challenges they have with getting so exhausted. So when we were kind of designing it, we spoke to loads of mums and this sort of burnout was a real issue that was absolutely completely common. Like 93% of young mums suffer from burnout.
Allison: And old mums probably.
Alex Knox: And old mums. All mums. So we were thinking about how can we do something about that, and doing something to help with baby sleep is a way of giving mums a little bit more time to look after themselves, give them some rest. So we’ve developed this lovely bouncer, and it’s quite smart because baby can kind of bounce it, and you can use it manually or you can program it to do the bounce that you want.
Allison: Just set the bounce you want like that. So you hit a setting and then you bounced it the way you wanted it, and then it’s repeating that?
Alex Knox: And it’s connected, so I’ve got a little app that I can load up on my phone.
Allison: So the bouncer, let’s describe this. It’s got four wooden legs that come out across the bottom, and then it’s kind of a little bassinet thing.
Alex Knox: A little bassinet, yeah. Well, in this mode, it’s a baby bouncer. But the clever bit with it is because a lot of what mums find is that their baby, they can see the baby’s starting to get a little bit sleepy, it needs to have a nap. They think, “I can’t leave it in the bouncer because I need to put it somewhere to sleep safely.” But they’re kind of worried that they have to go and disturb the baby to move it to the bassinet. So, we designed a bouncer that will transform from a bouncer into a bassinet.
Allison: Right, I’m gonna need to see that happen. So it’s a bouncing—oh no, he stopped the bouncing.
Alex Knox: And then I just pull this button, the latch underneath here, and it automatically detaches the harness which gets pulled away.
Allison: This has turned into a full bassinet with padded sides.
Alex Knox: Yeah, well no, it’s got a padded sheet underneath, but that’s also breathable.
Allison: They’re breathable sides?
Alex Knox: So it complies with all the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations about what bassinets should be, and all the ASTM standards. So it complies with all the standards about being a bassinet and all the standards that have to do with being a bouncer as well.
Allison: Okay.
Alex Knox: So this means that mums don’t need to go through that dilemma about, “Am I going to wake my baby up again?” So it just gives them a little bit of extra time.
Allison: Yeah, so the main thing that’s different about this, the biggest feature, is this ability to do a bounce that is the bounce you would do for the baby.
Alex Knox: I think the transformation is the thing that, when we’ve done lots of testing, we speak to loads of mums as part of our development process, and that’s the bit they go, “Wow, that kind of transfer baby problem is a thing that they all recognize.”
Allison: And I said you could go the other way too?
Alex Knox: Also, it’s got like a sensor in it now, so it automatically will start recording that your baby is now having a nap. So a lot of mums want to record information about how much their baby is eating, and what their baby’s sleep habits are like, because then they can start to see patterns.
Allison: So on the app, as well as controlling the bounce, it also records all the sleep that the baby has had over time.
Alex Knox: So it’s just opening up now. This is quite a challenging network environment.
Allison: It is.
Alex Knox: So they just put a few in here. So every time the baby’s in, it will show, yeah, that it’s now kind of having a nap.
Allison: Now that’s the baby’s in. Do you know the baby was asleep?
Alex Knox: Well, you can go in. It starts off just like the baby’s there, and then you have to click on it and you can say convert that to sleep. So you can adjust it if the baby only slept for—it didn’t sleep for half an hour. It’s not actually doing sleep monitoring though. It’s just sensing its occupancy detecting at the moment.
Allison: Okay, yeah, that’s great.
Alex Knox: But it does allow you then to, if you look at it over time, you can start to build up the sort of patterns and stuff so you can see this is when the baby’s likely to want to take a nap and stuff like that. So you get a bit more understanding of how the sleep is developing in the baby, because it constantly changes, doesn’t it, with little ones, as you know.
Allison: That’s for sure. So the product is called Elvie, is that correct?
Alex Knox: It’s called Rise, Elvie Rise, and it’s going to be launching very soon. Well, launching here, it’s going to be for sale very soon.
Allison: Okay, do you have a price point on the Elvie Rise?
Alex Knox: Yes, $799.
Allison: All right, very good. And where would people go to find Elvie Rise?
Alex Knox: The PR person’s going to answer the question. Where do we go to get Elvie Rise?
PR Representative: Oh, well you can go to the Elvie site, and we’ll also have some other distributors. But check out the Elvie website.
Allison: Spell it for us.
PR Representative: Let me get you that. Yeah, it’s Elvie, Elvie Rise.
Allison: Elvie Rise at, or Elvie Rise dot com?
PR Representative: Oh yeah, sorry, yeah, yeah. ElvieRise.com.
Allison: Now Elvie—no, it’s just Elvie dot com, isn’t it, here in the US?
PR Representative: Okay, that’s, we finally got there. Sorry, I come over from the UK. Got a long road to go.
Allison: Okay, Elvie dot com. Very good. Thank you very much.
Alex Knox: It’s a pleasure. Very nice to speak to you.