Baby Bjorn Baby Sitter Balance

Back in the 1960s, there weren’t many products that made life better and easier for families with small children. During his time as a student, Björn Jakobson regularly babysat for his brother Sten's and his sister-in-law Elsa's children. This close contact with his brother's children opened up a whole new world to him: the world of parents and children. 

In the early 1960s, Björn worked at his uncle’s charcuterie company. He was posted to the US, where he visited a number of butchers to learn about the charcuterie business.  And while he was in the US, Björn saw a baby sitter, a product that was then not yet available in either Sweden or the rest of Europe. He took one home with him for his nephew, Nisse, Sten and Elsa’s fifth and youngest child. Elsa is said to have commented that there was no way she would consider putting her son in “one of those things”. But when Nisse was allowed to try it out, he loved it! 

Björn started his company, Firma Björn Jakobson, in 1961 in partnership with Elsa. At the time, he was still working part-time at the charcuterie company. Elsa answered the phone and wrote letters while Björn biked around, trying to find someone who could bend the metal rods that formed the framework of the baby sitter. Finally, at Gnosjö Konstsmide, Björn found someone who could do what he wanted, and so began BabyBjörn’s partnership with the craftsmen of the Swedish province of Småland. Ever since then, much of the company’s operations have been based in the town of Lanna, in the Småland municipality of Värnamo.

Production began. Björn and his sister-in-law, Elsa, had no money, so they borrowed a portable typewriter and, according to Björn, he has Elsa to thank for much of the company’s development. 

Björn’s visits to department stores and baby carriage retailers were yielding no results. No one believed in the baby sitter. Sales were, in other words, non-existent until Björn and Elsa had an idea: they would ask doctors to examine the baby sitter and then present their findings. The doctors’ comments were extremely positive, which resulted in articles being published in a number of newspapers.

In 1963, Dagens Nyheter, a Swedish broadsheet daily, wrote that the baby sitter was available from the NK department store in Stockholm. Björn went to NK, told them about the newspaper article, and they promptly bought two baby sitters. Then Björn sent his mother to the store to buy one. The same thing happened again. NK bought two baby sitters – and so on. One year later, in July 1964, NK bought around 300 baby sitters.

The baby sitter was a huge hit, sales-wise, in Sweden and the rest of Europe. And by the early 1980s, in the US as well!