Ru™ Booster

RuTM Booster is the first compact 2-in-1 high chair. It is lightweight, specially designed for busy city life and life on the go. The five-point safety harness can be converted to a three-point one as your child grows. The seat is easy to clean, the straps can be removed and washed and the collection tray can be cleaned in the sink or dishwasher. The silicone seat cushion is not only comfortable, but also a food-safe place mat that you can take off for snack time. The RuTM Booster meets the latest safety standards and is certified free of harmful substances.

The jury on Ru™ Booster:

Parents with a baby or toddler know the problem well: it’s not easy to find a good chair for your child to sit at the table. You want something compact, that is easily portable to use when you’re out and about, is sturdy, washable and grows with your child. Ru™ Booster has reinvented the high chair. When folded, it’s a small briefcase, unfolded it is a reliable seat that you can easily take with you to the grandparents or on holiday.

What does this award mean to you?

This Henry van de Velde Award is an amazing dual honour for Bombol. It not only acknowledges the design itself, but highlights the mountains that designers and companies have to move to make true sustainability affordable - which often goes unnoticed. It gives small-scale pioneers like us a platform to demonstrate that our Mono-Material™ design choices - however complex in development - ultimately save costs in production and recycling, that long-term thinking is cheaper than a disposable culture, and that ethics and economics don’t have to be extreme opposites. This recognition is an obvious starting point for us to continue this momentum. Because circular design pays off, and you can only achieve a real impact if responsible design is accessible to all.

How did the idea for this project come about?

We used to sit on phone books. When I saw my children playing with pop-up books, I thought: can a chair pop out of a book? And there you have it, the Ru™ Booster: a flat toddler booster seat that turns into a cosy seat for babies.

FOR PARENTS

We promised ourselves we’d never be boring parents. But lugging baby stuff around makes going out a logistical nightmare. With Ru™ you’re like Mary Poppins: leaving the house stress-free, with all the comforts of home in your bag!

FOR THE HOSPITALITY SECTOR

Traditional high chairs are often impractical. Ru™ meets hospitality standards, is ultra-compact when folded and is easy to clean. Hospitality establishments are ideal for parents to try out the Ru™ Booster. With their own Ru™, parents unwittingly advertise the product to new hospitality customers. One market feeds the other - two birds with one stone.

What makes your project so special?

Always ready to travel, the durable Ru™ Booster for children big and small combines two products in one: not only is it budget-friendly, as it reduces the number of products parents have to buy, but it extends the lifespan by several years. Far too many baby products in good condition end up in landfills because children grow up so fast.

Ru™ has a low carbon footprint in production as well as transport thanks to its unconventional design process: first choosing safe materials with low CO2 emissions and then compensating for material flexibility with structural solutions.

In a few labour-friendly assembly steps and Mono-Material™ design, production and recycling is simple, ethical, inclusive and cost-efficient.

Do you have any further plans for this project?

Yes! The Ru™ Booster is just the tip of the iceberg and is part of the KengaRu™ Seating System that will be released soon. KengaRu™ combines five products in one: a high chair, junior chair, adult chair, and booster for big and small children. Just as a baby is fed on the parent’s lap, the Ru™ Booster is a small seat that snaps securely onto the Kenga™ adult chair to form the certified KengaRu™ child and junior chair.

Many ‘lifelong’ high chairs are simply scaled-up children’s models that are uncomfortable for adults - even though adults use them for longer. The Kenga™ adult chair was designed from the outset for comfort, and thanks to the foldable Ru™, you can enjoy that home comfort anywhere, anytime. Stay tuned!

How does it contribute to a better world?

Besides empowering parents to actively venture out and about with their little ones, we want to prevent products in perfect condition from ending up in landfills simply because children grow out of them so quickly.

Today, sustainability is often just about using recycled materials. But each recycling cycle has a solid carbon footprint. In addition, products are often made of different recycled or virgin materials, which makes it difficult or costly to recycle them, which means they still end up in landfills.

Our solution: minimise recycling needs by maximising lifespan through design, designing for easy recycling and working with socially responsible recyclers. It really is the only way we can close the circle.