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Osteopath Turned Furniture Designer Makes a Case for Rethinking Ergonomic Chairs, But Beware

Is this a scam, or an earnest second effort?

By Rain Noe - July 13, 2021

in Furniture Design | Crowdfunding

I just watched this video of Si Freedman, who says he is both an osteopath with 30 years experience and an industrial designer, making what seems to be a reasonable case for rethinking ergonomic chairs:

I liked the bit about using less materials, and solving long-term pain issues with more purposefully-designed seating sounds wonderful. Freedman has started a company called Hesed Design to realize this vision, and is attempting to launch his chair design on IndieGogo.

There's just one problem—or maybe four. About seven years ago Freedman, then using his full first name of Simon, successfully launched a similar design on Kickstarter, to the tune of £340,141 (USD $470,653 today) in pledges. This did not go well for the backers. Many reported never receiving the chairs at all, with no response from Freedman. Of the ones who did receive the chairs, many claimed they were so uncomfortable as to be unusable. Others reported that due to a manufacturing defect, the chairs would collapse, pitching the sitter forwards and onto the floor. Still others reported receiving an e-mail from Freedman warning them not to use the chairs due to said manufacturing defect—with no refund offered.

You can read through the comments yourself here. (Warning: There's nearly 900 comments, many of them pretty angry.)

At press time the IndieGogo campaign, which is under the name "Hesed Design" and doesn't have Freedman's name anywhere on the page, had $29,912 in pledges on a $69,273 goal. I'll be very curious to see how this one turns out.

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Doctor Shields

3 years ago

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So exciting to see Si himself in the comments hahaha

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Si FreedMan

3 years ago

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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

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Charles Flynn

3 years ago

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Stick with Stumpf.

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Si FreedMan

3 years ago

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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

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Gabreil Riley

3 years ago

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Benefits of ergonomic chairs depends on if its a chair that is just labelled "ergonomic" or if it is a real ergonomic chair.When ergonomics became popular manufacturers started calling any chair which they designed for working at a computer as "ergonomic", kind of like calling anything green or environmentally sustainable because they thought about the environment, but didn't really change anything because there was no real research as to what to do.Chairs that are labelled "ergonomic" range from being not ergonomic and actually harmful to somewhat beneficial or better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. For example common ergonomic chairs are mostly designed to look cool and may give you some lower back support and reduce pressure points. In the the case of mesh chairs they also dissipate heat and moisture which can be a source of discomfort. Fun fact, the Aeron chair was designed with mesh because a study had come out prior to it's design showing most discomfort and fidgeting was caused not by pressure points as much as by heat and moisture buildup. Problem is the hard frame causes a host of other problems and their are better solutions.Benefits of a real ergonomic chair include important benefits like helping prevent repetitive strain injuries, sciatica, herniated disks, headaches, reduced blood flow, etc. Real ergonomic chair designs, like the Soma Chairs pictured below, can provide these benefits because they include features clinically proven to do so, plus unexpected benefits like lower heart rate, deeper stress reducing breathing, more blood to the brain and arms, improved digestive organ function, prevent metabolic shutdown syndrome, and more. Here are a couple of examples of chairs that offer those benefits.An additional important insight from 30 years of experience is that to get the highest benefits the person often needs to be trained on how to hold their posture and muscles differently and adjust and use the chair to properly position and stabilize that more healthy posture. In other words you can have the best equipment and still not get optimal benefits if you use it wrong. So a complete ergonomic solution includes behavioral body posture and use training to get the highest amount of benefits. A tool like the Cricket Wearable Sensor is excellent for that. Ergonomic chairs can be made from craftsman router table and easily moulded into different shapes.

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Si FreedMan

3 years ago

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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

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