High Style for Small People

By Kate Betts

A new generation of young furniture users is emerging, and savvy designers at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York City last month were busy catering to it with sleek high chairs made of colorful foam and playful quilts covered in herds of elephants and pods of dolphins. Indeed, mixed in among the requisite Herman Miller chairs and LED lights were plenty of bassinets, pint-size beds and bookshelves from cutting-edge kids-gear companies like Offi, ducduc and Netto Collection. Some visitors were even toting toddlers and babies as they perused the stands. "This is the first time in 10 years I've seen so much attention to the whole kids' area," said Daniel Kron, a co-founder of Genius Jones, a hip Miami children's store.

Kron and his wife Geane Brito started their retail business as frustrated new parents who, like many of their design-obsessed customers, could not find well-designed products for their children. "We had kids a bit later, so we had money to spend," says Brito. "But the field is dominated by plastic and plywood."

That's changing. As the U.S. retail market for so-called infant, toddler and preschooler (ITP) products grows--sales of ITP home furnishings were up 5.2%, to more than $8 billion, from 2004 to 2005--and high-design products like the Bugaboo stroller sell for three times the average price of such common purchases, big-name designers are suddenly paying serious attention to child's play.

A popular introduction at the ICFF, for example, came from renowned product designer Yves Behar, who was hired by a small, San Francisco-- based company called Fleurville to create a cool high chair. The result is the Calla chair, a pistil-shape foam-and-aluminum piece that will retail for a cool $925 and, like the Bugaboo, will come in customized colors. Similarly, Philippe Starck has applied his eye to strollers, portable high chairs and diaper bags for McLaren, the popular British stroller brand. Designers like David Netto have found their niche giving such nursery staples as cribs and changing tables a Modernist edge. Entrepreneurs are getting in on the action too. P'kolino founders Antonio Turco-Rivas and J.B. Schneider have hired Rhode Island School of Design students to help them conceptualize practical but fun play-space furnishings for the home.

"Modern design may only represent 5% of the children's-furniture market," says Steve Granville, a co-founder of Fleurville. "But it's a very influential segment of the market." He predicts that the big companies will soon move in with their own designer products.