INTERVIEW Babyzen A large gate opens up on a beautiful alley of cypresses, leading to a large terraced house surrounded by a swimming pool and a field of olive trees. No, we’re not describing a summer house worthy of one of Marcel Pagnol’s novels but the headquarters of the Babyzen brand. The company is located outside Aix-en-Provence’s city-centre, in a unique and luminous location where a team of a few dozen people –mostly women- are working in a friendly, family-like environment. It should be said that this type of dynamic is in Babyzen’s DNA, a family-owned company created by Julien Chaudeurge and his father, soon joined by his wife Claire in 2011. Their lead product? The YOYO pushchair who managed to seduce renowned celebrities such as Marion Cotillard, Jean Dujardin, Kim Kardashian but also Air France, who made it the only pushchair authorised as a carry-on luggage. Handy, foldable, evolving with a beautiful aesthetic, this pushchair is now sold in no less than 80 countries. Discover the story behind this familial success. JULIEN COULD YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT in Paris with our 2-year-old boy. We couldn’t help but YOUR BACKGROUND? WHAT DID YOU DO notice that having a pushchair in the city was hell, it BEFORE FOUNDING BABYZEN WITH YOUR wasn’t practical at all. They were too heavy, bulky, the FATHER? bassinet was stiff and you had to unscrew it from its base, fold it and hope that everything would fit into I have worked in the automobile industry for a while,your trunk. it was my passion, first for BMW then Fiat at different positions: marketing and then commercial operations.WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUNG PARENTS As for my father, he was an industrial product designerNEED MOST? who specialised in toys and children’s products in the 80s. He was working from home so I saw him aWhen you become a parent, your life gets a lot harder. lot, sketching on his drawing board. I was raisedWe couldn’t do the things we were used to do anymore, surrounded by design and creation so I was kind ofwe had new issues and the pushchair was one of them! drawn to it. We couldn’t go to the restaurant since the pushchair could barely fit between the doors.We needed a HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA OF product that was more practical so parents wouldn’t CREATING A PUSHCHAIR? feel hampered in their daily life. From the beginning we’ve asked ourselves how we could make life easier Jumping head first in this adventure, I didn’t evenfor parents living in the city. Six years passed between know what the product would look like but I knewthe moment we came up with the idea and the what it would be able to do. Claire and I were livingpresentation of our first Zen pushchair in 2009.. 89