Join Us in The Alignment Business
Custom Dining Table Flow Desk in its new home in Texas!
One of the most rewarding aspects of running your own business is the community that grows up around you that didn’t exist before. It’s been a very satisfying way to learn about the world! For example, because of a recent request from a customer in Texas, we and our local artisans are learning about the Shou Sugi Ban technique for preserving wood.
Our initial commission for this Texas customer came from her desire to help her young family preserve their mastery of sitting. (You can read more about the Reverse Hero’s Journey back to sitting mastery, a story arc that our customer base has helped us discover, in a previous blog post.) She commissioned us to expand our Flow Desk design to function as their dining room table, and now she wants the same floor sitting for meals on her deck. To preserve the wood for outdoor use, she requested the Shou Sugi Ban technique. We’ve already had a lot of fun learning and experimenting, and we’ll be eager to share the finished product.
With this customer request, I’m reminded once again that we’re in the alignment business as much as we’re in the furniture or design space. On one level, what we’re about is designing and producing products that our customers use to maintain healthy spines, keeping their vertebrae all lined up in dynamic alignment with the rest of their skeleton. The use of our products helps their fascia play a supporting role rather than hindering where their muscles want the skeleton to go. Along with keeping the roles of fascia, muscle, and bone in proper alignment, both in space and through time, our customers have told us that this also helps them keep their other values of focus, productivity, and mood management aligned as well.
Our customers are looking for solutions that will help them stay well upstream of chronic issues, extending their health span. As we continue to grow as a design/manufacturing enterprise, we learn again and again about all of the upstream decisions there are to be discovered as we seek to maintain other sorts of alignment.
Keeping our customers’ values of sustainability and care for each other and the planet in alignment with the nitty gritty of manufacturing is an ongoing conversation and learning experience.
Every start-up founder goes through a series of realignments when customers and the market educate them about what their business is really about. Early on, we realized that there was an enormous cultural and community component to how we sit. We learned that folks didn’t know they had permission to sit weird until they saw our products. We also learned that our products and our customers using them in public were giving other neurodivergent folks like us the permission to fidget to focus.
We’re also proud to say that our value stack has kept us well within the current trend of right-to-repair policies. The design and production of the Soul Seat takes the long view. Soul Seats are essential tools that can rehabilitate your body so well, you may return to the floor full-time. And if that happens, your Soul Seat tool is of heirloom quality for the next creative sitter to make the same journey.
Interested in your own Flow Desk Dining Table? We’d love to hear from you! Email us at hello@Ikariadesign.com.