A Fort Worth entrepreneur wants to change the way you sit.
Traditional seating – be it office chairs or car seats – doesn’t allow the body proper posture, says Donna Jackson, director of product development at NuBax, a company she founded in 1999.
“When you stand up, you stack yourself up on the next proximal joint, so it’s really hard to slump because you’re firm on your foundation,” Jackson said. But when sitting in a chair without suitable support, she said, the body slumps, reducing blood flow and leading to muscle fatigue.
That simple but uncomfortable seating situation, in many ways, motivated Jackson to find a way to bring correct posture into the way people drive, fly or work.
The Fort Worth-based, seven-employee company developed products as a result of that motivation that are already featured in medical furniture, private airplane seating and the full-line of automobiles built by British carmaker Lotus.
Now Jackson is working hard to expand her company’s reach, hoping to create individual demand for the product in addition to commercial contracts.
Turning pain into financial gain
After working as an ambulatory prosthetist – designing moving appendages such as legs and hands – at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas, Jackson moved to California in 1986 to do maxillofacial prosthetics, which focuses on cosmetic features such as a nose or eyes.
It was while living in California that Jackson met Joe, a friend who raced in the Baja 1000 – an auto race from San Diego across the Southern United States desert and into Mexico.
After races, Joe was simply “beaten up” from being bounced around the cabin of his Toyota, Jackson said. Intrigued, she borrowed his car seat and rearranged the foam using knowledge from previous research she had done in bicycle seating.
Changing the way Joe sat – tilting the pelvis forward to straighten the back – allowed him the fluidity to move with the bumps in the road, rather than against, and resulted in a more enjoyable post-race atmosphere.
Jackson had an idea.
“There are a lot of ways to try to make the body sit up straight,” she said, “but most seats, whether they’re in your car, your airline seat or your office seat, they use mechanical devices to try to buttress up the body.
“What we realized is that we had come into a place that would take the asymmetry of the body in a very simple way, by changing the foam and letting the body sit up naturally by itself without using mechanical devices.”
After moving back to Fort Worth and patenting the idea with the U.S. Patent Office, Jackson pitched the idea to college friends for funding.
“I had some good support and some close friends who were willing to fund the first part of the project,” she said, “and they became my first shareholders – seven friends of mine.”
A patented product, a company name – derived from “new backs” – and $50,000 was everything Jackson needed to turn her design into a viable business.
Pounding the pavement
The hardest part about Jackson’s job is persuading companies to invest in an unproven, unknown product, she said. In order to entice companies to bite, Jackson and company travel, demonstrating the difference between chairs with and without NuBax products.
Fort Worth-based commercial furniture manufacturer Charles Alan incorporates the NuBax design into its products for the health care market, said CEO Margaret Sevadjian, including recliners, tandem seating and lounge chairs.
“This has tremendous value,” Sevadjian said of the system. “I wish I could have had a NuBax seat years ago just because of the changes it makes in your spinal column and rotation of the pelvis.”
Customers feel the difference too, she said, adding “they understand what’s going on with their bodies.”
In addition to Lotus and Charles Alan, Jackson said her products are also integrated in furniture by Bretford and Sky Creations, and in seating distributed by Landmark Aviation.
The cost of a chair using a NuBax product is between 5 percent and 15 percent more than seating without the system, but Jackson said the medical benefits outweigh that increase.
Studies the company performed in conjunction with Dr. Steven Brock, an internist at the Medical Clinic of North Texas, show a 17 percent increase in venous blood flow, Jackson said, resulting in increased oxygenation to the brain and reduced muscle fatigue.
Those medical benefits and added comfort, Jackon said, equate to a simple and effective solution to improper posture.
“We can make skyscrapers now that stack right on up to the heavens,” she said, “and the body is really the same way: if you get the foundation absolutely right, it can sit up by itself and enjoys doing it without effort.”
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