The latest vision in seating
By REUBEN SCHWARZ - The Dominion Post | Monday, 26 February 2007
A Kiwi-made ergonomic chair for typists, IT workers and gaming enthusiasts is garnering interest at home and abroad.
The chair, and surrounding workstation, are built by Petone design firm Vision, which is in the process of setting up a production line to churn out 500 chairs each month for the Australasian market. It should be in New Zealand shops before Christmas, selling for between $2500 and $3000. In comparison, La-Z-boy recliners cost about $1500. In the meantime a prototype is on display at the Lower Hutt Gamesman store, where Vision's head of special projects Tom Rynaarts says it has had a "massive response' from shoppers. Vision will build the workstation for the Australian and New Zealand markets, but doesn't have the capacity to meet its expected demand overseas, which in Europe is estimated to be 5000 chairs per month. It is negotiating with manufacturers in Japan, Germany and the United States which would pay a licence fee to build the workstations. "We've already been receiving orders for them," Mr Rynaarts says. Vision is pitching the product at the gaming market and office workers, such as software developers, who spend a lot of time in front of keyboards. In development for the past few months, the product has been given a push by recent Canadian research showing that sitting up straight for long periods isn't good for people's backs, as was previously thought. The research, by Dr Waseem Bashir, suggests the 90-degree angle between back and legs enforced by most ergonomic chairs should be widened to 135 degrees to put less stress on the lower back. This angle mimics what people do naturally when floating in water, weightless in space, or in a La-Z-Boy chair. Mr Rynaarts says the chair is "really, really comfortable. You can sit there for hours on end without being tired." The brochure for the chair says it is "padded with visco-elastic material originally developed by Nasa" for astronauts. Vision says the foam molds around a person's shape and weight, eliminating pressure points. The eight-employee company builds ergonomic furniture and made-to-order storage and shelving for clients such as NZ Post. The workstation was patented internationally by Vision.
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