Si FreedMan

Industrial Designer, HESED
London, UK

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  • "Hey Gabreil,I totally agree with your comments re-ergonomic chairs.  I also think that Soma Chairs are pretty good chairs.  Chris Zdenek the CEo makes great points about the somewhat false labelling of 'ergonomic' that's applied to so many chairs in the same way a lot of companies also label products environmental without really taking it to heart, purely for their commercial interest.  Thumbs up to your post!Best wishes,Si"
    on: Osteopath Turned Furniture Designer Makes a Case for Rethinking Ergonomic Chairs, But Beware
  • "Hey Rain,I just wrote a long, long comment and then it left the screen!  I'll re-write in a bit, but my wife is pretty pissed off as I was supposed to be having dinner...I'll catch up with it later.Best wishes,Si Freedman"
    on: Osteopath Turned Furniture Designer Makes a Case for Rethinking Ergonomic Chairs, But Beware
  • "Hey Rain, It's Si Freedman here.  Thanks noticing us and if you don't mind I'll clear up a few things.As you said I was indeed an osteopath for 30 years.  I graduated from the British School of Osteopathy in 1991, went on to do an MSc in Health promotion and taught and practiced for many years.  My work as an osteopath coincided with the increase in duration people were staring at screens all day and the increase in patients with problems due to sitting set me on a long and arduous path.  When I said way back in 2010 that we're not meant to sit people thought I was nuts!With my background as an osteopath I'd already noted that that a lot of folks have leg length differences and so uneven pelvises and so the way conventional chairs are based on horizontals was causing the problem.  I worked up prototypes myself and in 2011 won Intenational Inventor of the year at the Word Invention Show in London.  Then came funding then Kickstarter, then more funding.Trying to get a radical breakthrough innovation of the ground is not for the faint hearted!Not being a businessman at the time I took on advisors and investors.  We went to China...Oh boy...Anyhow, as you say despite getting some chairs out, they were less than perfect and in fact had a design/manufacturing issue that caused them to break.When I disagreed with many decisions of the investors that effected the KS backers I was kicked out and legally gagged.  I was pretty heartbroken.  I'd also lost pretty much everything and had rebuild my life.One thing that kept me going was that I knew I was right about sitting and I needed to pay back a debt of faith the KS guys put in me.So yes there are a lot of nasty comments on KS, but also a lot of nuce support and I've given some updates and hopefully will get to a point soon where I can give them something back even if that's only a discount amounting to what they lost.  Don't forget that wasn't my company anymore and I lost 100s of thousands of my own money.  Pretty much everything in fact.So this time around I worked on the project alone.  No investors no experts.  Yes, I refer to myself as an Industrial Designer as that is what I am.The new chair is a different story.  We made the tooling and moulds first! From those120 that we sold shipped to customers globally.  They work and people 'love' them.  One is at the Design Museum in London being considered for their permanent collection.So I'm raising funds and orders on Indie so we can produce in volume and set up a factory assembly line.  It's going really well with almost 50% of target raised in 8 hrs.If you want to see it as a scam then there's little I can do about that, but you can take it from me that I'm sure there are much easier ways to make money!I hope that clarifies things.Best wishes,Si Freedman"
    on: Osteopath Turned Furniture Designer Makes a Case for Rethinking Ergonomic Chairs, But Beware
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