Canapes ready to play

A sofa designed to make cabins and routes in the living room: the dream! Hours of fun in perspective for any kid. And good news: the object of desire actually exists.

A sofa whose modules can be dismantled to serve as a game for children: the idea, terribly playful and clever, is not new. Indeed, such products already existed in the United States, in particular, but not in Canada, as discovered by a group of students looking for a study project as part of their master's in administration at the 'Concordia University.

One of the teammates had just given birth to her first child. In brainstorming, the team naturally adopted this concept which has everything to please families, says one of the members, Carlos Suarez, himself the father of two boys aged 8 and 4.

What was supposed to be a school project finally turned out to have a marketing potential that it would have been a shame not to exploit. In fact, after the team surveyed interest on social media, the concept snowballed with parents.

Eight days before presenting our project in class, we decided to go ahead and push the prototype further.

Carlos Suárez

Comfortable without being precious, the Go Coconut sofa is made to be taken apart and to be jumped on to your heart's content. As you would expect, the velvet covers are removable and washable. The Coconut, as it has been named, is a game in itself and an invitation to explore the extent of one's creativity.

Made of four foam modules — two plates which are compartmentalized for the seat, and two trapezoids which serve as backrests — the piece of furniture camouflages well, at first glance, its superpower which is to transform into a crowd of other objects: a raft, a spaceship, footbridges, a castle, an igloo... It can also be used as a large bed (queen), if necessary, and can be transformed into two single-seaters.

Go Coconut has teamed up with a Laval company to manufacture its furniture and aims to produce it with local materials. The Certi-PUR foam, which makes up the modules (without screws and without metal), is Canadian. “The only things we haven’t been able to source locally, so far, are fabrics. We would like to eventually be able to fix it, ”says the spokesperson for this company born last fall.

> Visit the Go Coconut website