Baby Biz Getting Big on the South Shore

I went down to Campanelli Stadium in Brockton (home of the Rox) this afternoon for the Metro South Chamber of Commerce's Tech Expo.

They seem to be breeding baby entrepreneurs down there... the winner of the small business award was Bob Monahan of UppaBaby, based in Rockland. (I'd written about them here.) And after my talk, I met Philip Smith and Rheanon Romero, whose company RT Kid Works makes crib bumpers; Rheanon is a recent grad of Bridgewater State.

Stroller wars

When I heard that Boston had its own entrant in the high-end stroller sweepstakes -- a company competing with Bugaboo for the affections of well-off urban parents -- I couldn't resist writing about it.

Here's the opening:

In a 19th-century former shoe factory in Rockland, Bob and Lauren Monahan design a distinctly 21st-century product: the $600 baby stroller, complete with shock absorbers, a sleek aluminum frame, never-flat tires, and a handle that adjusts in height to be equally comfy for both mom and dad.

They started UppaBaby less than three years ago, and already they're positioned squarely in the middle of a fast-growing market: the high-end stroller sector, where design-conscious parents shell out between $500 and $1,000 to buy an all-terrain ride that increasingly resembles a sport utility vehicle for their spawn.

And here's the video, where UppaBaby founders Bob and Lauren Monahan demo the stroller and talk about the company's very fast growth: