These Homegrown Baby Carriages are Literally Uplifting

For new moms and dads, a quick trip to the nearest baby supply store is emblematic of the child rearing experience, and the greatest challenge that accompanies it: budgeting. Foreign brands abound, draining your bank account with items that are almost exclusively imported from God-knows-where. Does a simple baby carrier really need to cost EGP 2,000? Yet it’s only now that we’ve started finding homegrown options that are of a high enough quality, and it all starts with ‘Huga’.

Before he launched Huga, 31-year-old father and pharmacist Sherif Allam faced this issue himself. Carrying his two-year-old son, Hassan, around for most of the day left him feeling broke, both in his wallet and in his spine. During his travels abroad, Allam found a new model of baby carrier which rested on his shoulders. It was love at first sight. “Conventional carriers were such a hassle,” Allam tells #CairoScene. “They would bend my back forwards or backwards, whereas this one straightens it.”

After returning to Cairo, Allam was determined to bring this product into the local market, even if he had to make it himself. He named his new brand after the Scandinavian concept of ‘hygge’, which means cosy, comfortable conviviality. “It’s a new concept that gives your baby the best ‘you’,” Allam says. “You both feel safe, comfortable, and close to one another.”

He created his own version by outsourcing each segment of his design to multiple workshops: one for fabrics, one for metal support, one for shoulder handles. It was an arduous process, but the end result is one with a potential to simplify Egyptian parents’ lives in the long run. In the end, it’s all about the comfort of hygge - whether it’s for your back, your wallet, or your relationship with your child.