Portable standing desk business in Superior gets Kickstarter boost

Three friends originally from Superior, Wisconsin are getting financial support for their plan to mass produce a portable standing desk manufactured in the region.

Standing desks have gained popularity buoyed by a raft of studies showing that sitting all day could be bad for your health. But the designers of the "StandStand" claim they are the first to produce a standing desk that you can bring anywhere with you.

Initially, StandStand makers aimed to raise just $15,000 through Kickstarter, an online crowdfunding platform. But early adopters in the tech world helped push that number way past the goal. The Kickstarter campaign has raised about $120,000 from more than 1,800 backers.

Founder Luke Leafgren, who now lives in the Boston area, said his job as a dean at Harvard University requires him to work often in public areas like libraries or cafes. But he still found himself spending most of the day sitting.

"I wanted to be able to stand in all these spots," Leagrean said. "I just couldn't find anything that was practical and portable."

Leafgren reached out to his childhood friend, Paul Peterson, who manages Rob's Custom Cabinetry in Superior and they started sending prototypes back and forth. Over the summer, Leafgren went to Superior for one week to work in the shop.

"I'd go into the shop where Paul works, and every day I would make some improvements, and go home at night and have some ideas about a challenge I ran into that day or how the design could be better," Leafgren said.

What they came up with is a simple design consisting of three panels that slide into one another. It comes in three different designs for people of different heights, all of which weigh less than two pounds.

"The birch plywood we've chosen is the same plywood used in the aircraft industry for manufacturing airplanes," Peterson said. "Both the strength of the material itself along with the way those pieces interlock together creates an enormously strong base."

With the success of the Kickstarter campaign, the small business, said their website is set to start taking more orders. Leafgren's wife Lindsay Noll from Superior is also part of the business.

"It has surpassed our goals and has really allowed us to focus on planning for how to launch this as a viable product that has a potential to impact the local economy and bring some jobs into the area," Peterson said.

He said if the product sells at the same pace for a year, they'll be able to add eight or nine jobs to the Superior business.

The number of Americans employed in manufacturing fell from 17.6 million in 1998 to about 11.5 million in 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But those numbers have since been rising steadily, with the most recent figures putting manufacturing employment at 12.1 million.

But advanced manufacturing is undergoing a "renaissance" in the United States, according to venture capitalist Michael Gorman, managing director at Split Rock Partners.

"What's happening is that with the advent of more and more sophisticated numerically controlled machines and computerized manufacturing is that American manufacturing is becoming more competitive," Gorman said.

New technical tools, and even fundraising tools like Kickstarter, Gorman said, allow American entrepreneurs to more effectively compete with products from places like China, which keep prices low largely through low labor costs.

"A lot of people who are mobile with their laptops are focused on productivity," Gorman said. "The interesting nexus here is both productivity and health."

Leafgren said working with people he grew up with and manufacturing the product in Superior are the main reasons he wanted to start the business.

The StandStand team plan to start sending out pre-orders in December.