We don’t enter a lot of competitions.
Not because we don’t believe in what we build. We do, deeply. But because design awards have always felt like something that happens to other people. Products with bigger budgets. Bigger teams. Glossier photography.
So when the European Product Design Award judges selected the Simple Vans Modular Bed System as a 2026 winner, I won’t pretend I wasn’t chuffed. But the award isn’t really about us. It’s about the problem we set out to solve five years ago, and the fact that a panel of independent judges agreed it was worth solving.
Back in 2020, I was sitting in my garage with a DIY CNC machine, designing furniture and wondering whether anyone would actually buy it. There was no big team. No polished setup. Just a belief that van furniture could be simpler, lighter, and more accessible than what was out there.
That belief turned into the bed system.
Vanlife has a price problem. Factory-built campervans start at €55,000. Professional conversions in France start at around €8,000, and that is for a very basic interior. For a lot of people, that simply is not realistic. So they try to build it themselves. Then they discover they do not have the tools, the skills, the space, or the time. The van ends up half-finished.
That is the problem we built the bed system to fix.
Not just a cheaper bed. A fundamentally different approach.
Flat-pack. CNC precision-cut. Lightweight, locally sourced poplar plywood. An L-Slider mechanism that stays secure while driving and opens in seconds when you are parked. Assembly in under 3 hours, even for someone who rates their DIY skills at 4 out of 10. Our customers told us that. We listened.
The result is not just a bed. It is the foundation that makes a van conversion feel achievable for people who genuinely thought it was not for them.
Since launch, we have delivered more than 3,000 beds across 19 European countries. In five years, we have gone through four iterations, each one simpler to build, lighter, and stronger than the last. Today, we are the largest manufacturer in the DIY campervan furniture space in France, as verified by our wholesale network.
That is why this award means something.
It validates what we have believed from the start. Good design is not about adding complexity. It is about removing it. Engineering and accessibility are not opposites. And one of the most interesting design challenges is not making something expensive look beautiful. It is making something affordable work brilliantly.
I am proud of how far we have come. From a garage and a homemade CNC setup in 2020 to this.
And yes, we are already thinking about version five.
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