The Sittingwell Back Support Cushion Story

Sometimes the solution you end up with isn’t remotely where you started.

That was definitely the case with the Sittingwell® Cushion.

When we first started looking at the problem, we had no intention of designing a back support cushion. We were going to make a sofa.

Thankfully, perhaps, our bank balance had other ideas.

We’ve both been complementary healthcare therapists since 2001 and, over the years, we started noticing the same conversation coming up with people experiencing back problems.

Their sofa wasn’t helping.

Some people were relatively comfortable while they were up and moving around, but would sit down to relax in the evening and their back would begin to ache.

Others already knew their sofa wasn’t particularly good for them, and aggrivated their back pain, but weren’t really sure what to do about it.

Whilst there’s a lot of information and legislation relating to ergonomics within workplaces, or how to set up a home office, when it comes to the place we go to relax at the end of the day, the guidance isn’t there and most of us give comparatively little thought to whether that piece of furniture actually fits us or supports our body well.

So we decided to investigate.

There was also a bigger problem: sofas have to accommodate an enormous range of people.

Someone who is 5ft 2 and someone who is 6ft 2 can be sitting on exactly the same seat depth, with the back cushion in exactly the same position.

It’s hardly surprising that the same sofa doesn’t fit them both equally well.

That led to our next bright idea.

We’ll design a sofa.

Whilst we had an idea of the adjustments we’d make, there was just one fairly significant problem, doing that was well beyond our budget. So we started looking for another way to solve the problem.

And, as it turned out, the solution we eventually created had some advantages we hadn’t originally considered.

Instead of trying to make one sofa that worked for everybody, what if we developed a support that could help adapt the sofa someone already owned?

The more we explored the idea, the more advantages it began to have over our original sofa plan.

Buying a new sofa is a significant expense, particularly if the sofa you already own is perfectly good apart from the fact that it doesn’t suit your body particularly well.

A cushion offered a much more accessible way of adapting what was already there. 

It can also help solve some of the practical problems that come with furniture being designed to one set of dimensions when the people using it aren’t.

Two partners of very different heights can be using the same sofa but need completely different support. With a movable back support, one person can use it while the other doesn’t, or position it differently to suit themselves.

A sofa that is otherwise perfectly good may simply be too deep for the person sitting on it.

And sometimes a relatively small change can give an existing sofa or armchair a new lease of life rather than replacing it altogether.

The Sittingwell® Cushion can also move with you.

From the sofa to an armchair, from one room to another, or come with you when you’re going away and have absolutely no idea whether the supposedly “comfortable seating area” in your holiday accommodation will actually be comfortable.

That flexibility wasn’t part of our original sofa plan, but it has become one of the things we really value about what we created.

There was still one more problem to solve.

That stuck with us.

Your home is your home. We didn’t see why looking after your back should mean having something strapped to your sofa that looked as though it belonged in an office or clinic.

So from quite early on, one of our requirements was that whatever we created had to provide proper support without looking like a piece of medical equipment.

Ideally, you shouldn’t even know it was there, which is how the idea of putting the support inside an ordinary-looking scatter cushion came about.

Having an idea and knowing how on earth to manufacture it are, unsurprisingly, two very different things.

It took a lot of prototypes, experimentation and refinement to get there. Some of which included paper mache, which took us back to school days.  As fun as it was, we needed professional help.

After a disappointing experience with a product design agency and a throw away comment at a netowrking meeting.  We joined forces with a product design and development student from Brunel University, experimenting with the shape, position, density and feel of the internal support.

Eventually we arrived at the patented design that became the Sittingwell® back support cushion.

Something practical enough to use every day, but designed to simply become part of your home.

It started with a problem our clients were experiencing, a sofa we couldn’t afford to make, and a determination to find another solution.

Six years later, what we ended up creating turned out to be far more adaptable than the sofa we’d originally imagined. I mean, you can’t take a 3-seater sofa on holiday with you.

As with any journey we’ve had our ups and downs. During Covid times our manufacturer was no longer able to continue in operation so we had a period of time without being able to supply any cushions. 

Patience, persistence and some would say sheer bloody mindedness we continued our search and ironically found someone around 10 minutes away from where we re-located to.  The best part of this was the feedback from previous customers when we re-launched and the smile we get every time a customer or client lets us know the impact it’s had.

Learn more about the Sittingwell® cushion