Small Business Member Spotlight: QOR360

QOR360 has set out to change how the world sits – including kids.

“Sitting is the new smoking” is an often-heard mantra espoused by epidemiologists, human resource professionals and others concerned with the overall health of our world’s desk-bound peoples. QOR360’s mission is to help ameliorate this sitting disease by bringing active sitting into the workplace, home and school – with a design that is effective, attractive, and affordable.

Active sitting is the converse of static sitting which is a motionless position that deskbound people assume for hours at a time. Active sitting happens when your chair seat is unstable thereby automatically, almost magically, causing you to adjust your posture moment to moment. Our particular method of active sitting helps activate and gently engage core muscles. The continued use of these muscles helps strengthen them. With your core stronger, your back is more effortlessly held in a neural posture, avoiding strain. It leads to improved posture, less pain and better overall health.

Yes, we are a for profit company which manufactures and sells adult active sitting chairs, but more importantly, we are a company that recognizes that proper sitting must begin at an early age – ergo we invented the ButtOn chair for kids. It’s compostable, assembled in Vermont mainly from Vermont products, and very affordable. Using about $7.00 in materials, you can make it yourself using our free downloadable templates and files. Educators can also avail themselves of free S.T.E.M. lesson plans .

The ButtOn Chair is aimed at classrooms, to keep fidgety children fidgeting. It looks like a basic wooden stool, but its button-shaped seat is resting on a lacrosse ball centered below.The chairs are in Matt Chandler’s Fifth Grade Class at Edmunds Middle School in Burlington; Applied Science Teacher Phil Young’s students are building them at Essex Middle School; and Stephanie Jones, Guidance Counselor, at the Westford School received parts for one hundred button chairs from her husband, Lucas, who made them at  Tree House in South Burlington.

The ButtOn chairs are taking off internationally – there have been almost 2,000 file downloads from all over the world; a Taiwanese High School uses them as a case study in their entrepreneurial class; an Australian High School is building them in their shop; and we’re in discussions with a South African organization on a partnership arrangement.

We have to sit. It’s required by the 21st century. QOR360 is about making active sitting so cheap anybody can afford it. The goal of the ButtOn chair is to get kids moving and introduce them to the fact that they don’t have to sit slumped all day.

We’re not trying to make a better chair. We’re trying to change the idea of what a chair is.