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SALT LAKE CITY — Anyone who has spent a day pushing a small child around in a stroller knows that it can take a painful toll on your back. The issue is compounded for tall parents because most strollers have handles that are too low to comfortably hold. And while some strollers offer adjustable handles, it’s still rare that they’re high enough for those who are taller than the average height.
A corresponding problem is that most adjustable stroller handles pivot on a hinge, meaning the higher you raise it, the closer it pulls you toward the back of the stroller. The legroom is greatly reduced and it becomes difficult for a parent not to kick the wheels as they walk.
A group of local dads have tackled this problem head-on, creating lightweight aluminum handle extenders that attach to existing strollers with industrial-grade Velcro straps. Launched on Kickstarter in May, the stroller-enhancing invention is the brainchild of an entrepreneur named Matt Stephens.
“As I’ve grown older and taller, it’s become more and more apparent to me how much strollers are not designed for taller moms or dads,” Stephens said.
After some research, Stephens discovered there aren’t many handle extension options currently on the market. And the few products he found were too bulky and expensive to be practical. So Stephens partnered with his brother-in-law, an industrial designer, to create a simple and affordable solution.
Stephens initially toyed with the idea of naming the product “Back Savers.” Then one day, his wife mentioned that she’d seen a daddy longlegs spider in their house, and the name seemed perfect for the handle extenders.
Stephens assembled a team to help develop and market his new product. After fine-tuning their prototypes, they lined up the manufacturing in China. The Daddy Longlegs Kickstarter campaign has a goal of $12,000. If they reach that goal, all of the funds will go to an initial purchase order. Stephens anticipates that manufacturing will begin in late June or early July. The first deliveries would be in September.
“If we meet our funding goal, the bigger takeaway for us would be the public validation of the product,” Stephens said. “We want to talk to distributors about putting Daddy Longlegs on the shelves of places like Babies R Us, Buy Buy Baby, and Target, and those conversations are much easier when you have a successful track record.”
In the meantime, the Daddy Longlegs team is trying to win one tall, lanky parent at a time.
“We're a group of dads that are sick of looking like buffoons while pushing a stroller,” they said on their Kickstarter page. And with a little luck, they can help some of their fellow parents avoid the same fate.
