It's a chair. It's exercise equipment. It's both! It's Stow Fitness!

The Greek philosopher Plato is credited as the inspiration of the English language proverb “necessity is the mother of invention.”
 
For Jason Burt, the Spring Lake inventor behind Stow Fitness, it is not so much about necessity but rather personal frustration.
 
Fitness enthusiasts, Burt and his wife were expecting child number three and were living in a four bedroom house. The extra bedroom was used as a fitness room. With the arrival of their daughter, the fitness room became a bedroom and the exercise equipment was relegated to the basement. “No one wanted to work out in the basement,” Burt says.
 
So the exercise equipment moved upstairs, and the yoga balls, benches and weights became fixtures in the T.V. room, where you could work out and watch shows or listen to music. “But that always bugged me,” Burt says, recalling having to step over and around the equipment.
 
To fix that ‘bug,’ Burt decided to do something about it and invented Stow Fitness: a high quality living room recliner chair, with built-in fitness equipment. Think Transformers, the heroic autobots that can quickly change from a car to a giant robot. But in this case, the living room recliner simply transforms into fitness equipment and then back into a chair when the workout is done.
 
Stow Fitness is Burt’s first invention. The idea had been incubating for about six years, with serious product development work in the last two years.
 
To take the final step with his invention, Burt has just launched an ambitious Kickstarter campaign, with the hopes of raising $100,000 that will allow for a some final engineering and pay for tooling.
 
Burt says several markets exist for these chairs, including residential and commercial use, such as the hotel market, where room space is at a premium.
 
The Kickstarter campaign features great savings on the chairs, which are expected to retail at $1,599, with reward levels beginning at $999 that include the chair. (There are also multiple lower levels of support for Stow Fitness).
 
To learn more about Stow Fitness, you can follow their Kickstarter Campaign here, or visit their website here and Facebook page here. All Stow Fitness products are made in the U.S.A.
 
Writer: John Rumery, Innovation and Jobs News Editor