After I finished my study in KAIST last year, I had to decide my next career like all the colleague students. I could take a rest for a while or have a break to continue my study again. There were plenty of ways I could choose, I believe. Nothing was easy to decide… and one of them was obviously becoming the indie game developer for few years. It could be good opportunity actually- after all my journey in office life.
Well.. as a result, I decided to join Stokke in Shanghai, China. To be honest, it was quite big decision for me living in Korea. Stokke is the company selling baby products which means I needed to change my career from the game developer to software engineer, and of course I had to move to Shanghai where I’ve never lived before abroad. It was tough decision indeed.. however, I saw lots of opportunities here, so I decided to join Stokke. Now I’m living in Shanghai, and the start member of Tech Lab of Stokke in China.
Stokke is a company well-known as Trip Trapp, its premium strollers and high chairs with other baby products such as baby carriers or home furniture for baby. Its heritage comes from Norway, and Stokke is the one of companies representing Scandinavian design delicately in the world.
… “Founded on the west coast of Norway, over eighty years ago, Stokke® began life as a manufacturer of high quality Scandinavian furniture. Since launching the revolutionary Tripp Trapp® chair in 1972, we have evolved into a company that focuses exclusively on premium design for children. Today, we are recognized for timeless Scandinavian design that brings you and your child closer.” … from “A History of Innovation” of about Stokke in stoke.com
There are already a lot of IoT products out there even for baby products in the market. So, it might be natural Stokke decided to have its own R&D center at this moment. Especially in Shanghai, it’s very easy to find experienced co-operative partners and suppliers for our products. Shanghai is the one of biggest well-developed industrial cities which have an excellent IT and financial infrastructure for co-operations. We don’t have only partners here but also plenty of potential customers who are already very used to using IoT products.
I‘m in charge of designing and developing software here. All the IoT products need its own specific firmware embedded inside MCU of microcontroller board, and it also needs an application to control itself. I develop and manage all the software by myself for our project, and try to find the best hardware and platform for us. Luckily, we have lots of partners who can help us to develop and support our project in Shanghai already, so it’s very fascinating to be a software engineer here focusing into more creative stuff.
Our mission here is researching and developing creative and challenging products for baby to make people closer to their adorable babies. I believe our team can make better world while our products keep its natural characters based on Scandinavian design. For Stokke, it’s very important to keep this indeed, and to be honest, I’m surprised that we have lots of benefits when we have nature friendly and human-centered design for baby product in daily life. It’s not only good for parents but also your babies.
I hope one day we get a design award in Baby Tech which is the biggest contest in baby industry of CES Las Vegas.
Stokke® Designed to be closer | Tripp Trapp® Xplory® Flexi Bath®
Seungwook Chi 