imovr
Ten months ago, Bellevue, WA-based iMovR, an early player in the “office fitness” trend of standing and treadmill desks, was sitting (okay, standing) pretty. A whopping 70% of the company’s sales now came from enterprise corporate customers, particularly nearby tech giants such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon, who had responded to research about the damage of sedentary behavior by providing their employees with the opportunity to stand up or walk while working at snazzy adjustable-height desks.
The co-founders of iMovR boasted dozens of venture-backed startups on their resumes, ranging from aviation electronics to digital marketing applications, before getting into the business of battling what Dr. James Levine at the Mayo Clinic famously coined the “sitting disease” in 2013. The ex-Silicon Valley types believed they could target America’s millions of desk-bound office workers, while bringing together the worlds of furniture design, fitness equipment, and, ultimately, high-tech “smart” electronics and software.
Then, Covid-19 hit. While the company recognized the seriousness of the pandemic early on —most of its materials were made in America, but they did partner with a factory near Wuhan, China, and the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the U.S. was announced by the state of Washington on January 21 —the rapid shift for U.S. offices was a shock.
“All of a sudden, our revenue dropped like a stone,” says Ron Wiener, CEO of iMovR. As offices rapidly shut their physical doors and workers retreated to their homes, it was unclear what would happen next. “There was an absolute lull,” he says. “We were preparing to close down completely.”
Then, a couple of weeks later, the floodgates opened. “Suddenly, it seemed like every Google, Microsoft and Amazon employee was rushing in to place orders at our single in-person showroom before we closed it to the public during the lockdown,” says Wiener. “Google even gave their employees a coupon code so they could order standing and treadmill desks for their home offices.”
As the rest of 2020 unfolded and the new work-at-home trend showed staying power, iMovR monthly sales quadrupled. Remote workers across the country quickly realized they needed to improve their home office ergonomics—pronto. “For the first three months of the pandemic, every employee in the company was working every waking hour, seven days a week,” says Wiener. “We couldn’t keep up with our customer service and order processing—we tripled our staff in two months.”
iMovR
Disrupting An Old-School Industry
For iMovR, industry disruption has been the name of the game from the start. For the better part of a century, the office furniture industry has been based out of factories in Grand Rapids, Michigan, led by popular brands such as Herman Miller and Steelcase.
“It’s a very rural area, where companies are used to doing things a certain way,” says Wiener. In fact, 98% of office furniture continues to be manufactured with high pressure laminate (HPL), as it has for decades. This involves gluing thin sheets of inflexible laminate to particle board panels, with a slab of medium-density fibreboard wood at the core. The resulting sharp-edged product not only requires extensive inventory stocked in large warehouses, as well as months of production and installation for large office spaces, but is inappropriate for healthcare and hospital settings because harsh cleaners dry out the glue and gather bacteria.
On the other hand, iMovR, which also manufactures in Grand Rapids, uses 3D lamination to make most of its desks (it also offers high-end solid wood options), a process previously used mostly in healthcare manufacturing. Laminate is applied at a high temperature, using strong vacuum pressure, to bond the laminate to the wood core at the molecular level. Because a single film of laminate can be wrapped entirely around the top and sides of the wood in a single operation, there is no need to separately glue PVC strips to tabletop edges. The wood can be contoured for ergonomic edging, and the desks can also be manufactured on-demand to 1/5000ths of an inch precision and shipped within a week.
“Customers can completely customize a desk design online and as soon as their credit card clears, a robot in Grand Rapids starts to fabricate their desk,” says Wiener, adding that iMovR desks arrive mostly pre-assembled and can be put together in minutes. “There is a dramatic reduction in capital consumption for inventory.”
In addition, iMovR’s long-term vision is all about drawing from the founders’ Silicon Valley roots and adding smart technologies such as IoT to their “active office workstations.” The company has developed a portfolio of patented presence sensors that can attach to any workstation and unobtrusively measure whether the user is sitting, standing or walking at their desk. The data can then be shared to popular wearable devices: Users can see how they're performing against their own goals for reducing their time sitting, and corporate wellness platforms can measure how well employees are doing against health and productivity metrics.
“We have been building Bluetooth into our desks for the past three years, for the first connection to user smartphones,” says Wiener. “We’re adding it to our office treadmills, monitor arms, standing mats and other workstation components over the next year, and now we’re working on a second generation app to integrate all these devices and data feeds.”
Continued Tailwinds Drive Success
When state government lockdowns began in March, Wiener says iMovR worried that its Michigan-based production facilities would have to close their doors, even as demand began to boom. Then, a lucky break: Washington governor Jay Inslee issued an executive order that manufacturers servicing essential industries could deputize other businesses in their supply chain to remain open.
“We serve hospitals and other essential businesses, so for 48 hours we scrambled, sending emails out to our factories letting them know that according to our governor, they must stay open and supply us with orders,” says Wiener. “They were so thankful because it allowed them to keep their lights on.”
Leading Michigan-based competitors in the office furniture space, such as Steelcase and Herman Miller, however, did not have that luxury, since Michigan did not have the same lockdown-related clause. According to Wiener, these billion-dollar brands also did not have the nimble, on-demand production necessary to quickly pivot to the work-at-home market. Both Steelcase and Herman Miller reported steep losses and double-digit sales declines in the three months ending in May.
“All of a sudden, the factories we share see us as the very attractive girls at the dance,” says Wiener. “We’re now one of their fastest-growing customers, rather than the pipsqueak upstart.”
Wiener doesn’t see iMovR’s business slowing down anytime soon: “It’s hard to get to a doctor, no one’s going to the gym and, in many areas, it’s getting colder,” he says. People are investing in standing and treadmill desks, especially as they see the possibility of working remotely even after the pandemic.
“You no longer have to convince your boss that you need an investment in your home office setup, since they’re at home as well,” he says. “No one is questioning it anymore.”
