Kind + Jugend is the international leading trade fair for premium baby and toddler products that took place in Cologne, Germany last week. Over 1,200 exhibitors from 55 countries came to show their line of products for 2020, to find distributors and retailers or show the world the newest developments in the baby tech industry. GKI Group was amongst them.
Some of you are probably wondering right now, “What does GKI Group has to do with a trade fair for baby products?”. Well, surprise.
We changed our focus a while ago, and instead of focusing on startup investments, we began investing in our own startups and ideas; More specifically in the idea that popped in the head of the group’s founders, Gal and Lital Kalkshtein, three years ago.
As parents, they wanted to make a warm and safe place where babies can play on. The floor is too cold during winters, even in hot countries like Israel. So, after years of planning and designing in our product development lab, we came up with not only one product, but two, and that’s was the beginning of CozyFlow.
So, after three years, meet our brainchild, CozyFlow, a family of products for innovative parenting, committed to improving and simplifying the lives of parents and their babies.
The company’s main products are CozyFlow™ and CozyPlay:
CozyFlow™ is a patent-pending portable heater carefully designed and created with the highest level of safety in mind to create a bubble of warmth that shields babies and children from the cold. CozyPlay is a gently air-heated playmat, where babies can play and move around safely and freely.
A lot of effort has been put into the making, engineering, and designing of CozyFlow, to make sure it is the safest heater for babies. It includes safety features like cold touch, child lock, no-pinch design, an internal thermostat, and more. To make the product even better, we added night light, ventilation mode, “tranquil” mode and even the ability to mount it on a wall. However, the main feature is the ability to plug it with CozyPlay air-heated playmat and in the near future to many of our new products.
We exhibited in a beautifully designed (by Ilan Meidar Architects) booth next to the Israeli company Doona. Hundreds of people stopped by our booth to take a look at CozyFlow. Our heater and playmat managed to shine in a hall full of many different baby products made by the leading brands in the world.
For four days, we went strolling through Kind + Jugend to see the future of baby products and all the latest trends in the baby tech industry. Among the regular suspects such as strollers, cribs and toys, you could find UV bottles sterilizers, a super expensive crib called Snoo, a unique sheet for babies (Nunki sheet), all sorts of monitors, air purifiers, breast pumps, white noise machines like Baby Shusher, smart safety gates with facial recognition, many Wi-Fi connected products, soothing toys, the coolest car by D.Throne, a mosquito bite reliever a “smart electronic stroller” by Bosch but only one space heater for babies, us.
The Israeli baby products
We weren’t the only Israeli company that exhibited at Kind + Jugend 2019. Many world famous baby products baby tech companies were founded by Israelis or invented in Israel.
Our neighbors, Doona, developed a super trendy (and useful) travel system that transforms from car seat to stroller in seconds. Used by many celebrities, Doona is famous worldwide. This year, they came to show the world the Liki Trike, a folding tricycle for five stages of growth.
Mifold is a “grab-and-go” booster, tiny and compact that you can take anywhere. They came to Kind + Jugend to introduce their newest product called Hifold, a portable and adjustable booster. It’s an improved version of the Mifold, three times smaller than a regular booster. I hope they got the boost they needed.
Smart Trike is another popular product invented in Israel a decade ago. It began with a baby tricycle that sold over 20 million units worldwide, but now they are selling folding tricycles, kids scooters, and kids trampolins.
Tiny Love is one of the bestselling baby toy manufacturers, founded in 1991, and actually, the company that invented the activity mat back in the 90s, which became one of the most popular products for babies. The company was acquired by Dorel Juvenile in 2014 and made many colorful and cheerful products such as baby nappers, mobile activity centers, and other toys that won this year’s Innovation Award.
Simply Good was founded twenty years ago in Israel by a married couple with a newborn. Today they are selling beautiful and useful products for babies such as nursing covers, baby blankets, sunshades, nursing pillows, and more. Simply good.
You can’t mention Israeli companies without mentioning some technology.
Nanit is an innovative baby monitor with a camera, wall-mounted or on a stand to give parents an overhead view of their babies, with HD video and audio to track sleep. Nanit also comes Breathing Wear, a swaddle that helps the Nanit Plus camera track breathing.
Better Air is not a baby product by definition, but you’d want it around babies. They have several products for automatically purifying the air by dispersing Enviro-Biotics™ that helps reduce bad odors, dust allergens, mold and other “bad things” you don’t want around you or your baby.
That was only a drop in the ocean of baby products, and in an industry that never stops reinventing itself, it’s still exciting to see newborn innovations and next-gen products for the next generation. Kind + Jugend was an excellent opportunity for CozyFlow to look different, cutting-edge, and to know that we’re heading towards the right direction.
See you in Kind + Jugend 2020 to celebrate our products’ first birthday.
