Invention 109

Inventive Office Seating

2008-07-01T17:07:00.000-07:00

Who needs another chair? This idea is the convergence of a couple of ideas we had collected from over a decade of office furniture experience.

When it come to occasional or task seating, which is just about any chair that you won't be sitting in all day, a stool is a perfectly versatile concept. We think you shouldn't be sitting all day anyway, it's bad for you, especially your back.

With that in mind we put an inflatable exercise type ball in the center construction to provide an resilient and dynamic seating experience with the subtle up and down, side to side motion we are always advocating in seating.

We also added a lift and click top that takes up several inches of height adjustment- something lacking in most task chairs.

The other benefits include things that make great sense in practice that might not be immediately apparent. If these seats are collected around a conference area the don't obstruct the view as much and fully backed chairs and they don't ever get mis-aligned, because they are perfectly round. They don't encourage slouching or long-haul meetings where people can recline to near sleep.

Small enough to tuck under a desk, the stools excel at the impromptu meetings where people huddle around someone's monitor at the side of their desk, and when you're alone they make an excellent ottoman.

The Ab Ray, the most versatile ab exercise invention

2008-07-01T14:55:00.000-07:00

offers the benefits of motion, stability, and support in one package

The Ab Ray is designed with the simple idea that the positive benefits of various ab-rocker, ab- assistance, and the instability of exercise balls could be combined into one elegant device. Each of these individual devices helps to produce better exercise results, why not put them all together?

It's padded for comfort and keeps the spine of the floor for general comfort. It has a convex bottom surface to create a slightly unstable wiggle similar to the "bender ball" or a traditional larger fit-ball.

When you sit down on and do crunches you get two simultaneous benefits:

The Ab Ray helps those with undeveloped abs to use some of their body weight to help the rock upward comfortably.
The Ab Ray has a contoured bump in the middle that lets the user hyper-extend backwards, providing a better workout on the downward motion, which is better for most people starting ab exercises.

The device can also be flipped over for oblique training and even more hyper-extension for crunches or leg lifts.

And like everything we develop we like the simple, elegant design: single piece construction, fits in a drawer or under the bed, no parts, pumps, tools and is virtually unbreakable.

As seen on TV

2008-06-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

The Ab-Ray, the next generation abdominal exerciser, made it television recently and garnered some positive feedback. Jordan Pine of the SciMark Report was kind enough to give it a good review.

Product (D7) Score: 5 out of 7*
Commercial Rating: Good**
Comments: I never underestimate the power of a product with “ab” in the name. Still, the price point on this item is about $10 too high for short-form DRTV, and the market being targeted is the minority of DRTV buyers. That’s why most fitness products are done as infomercials. Long-form buyers tend to skew younger and because there’s more time to sell, they aren’t as price sensitive.

The original aired commercial can be seen here.