Deserving a standing ovation

STANDING (INN)OVATION: Martin Keen, founder of Focal Upright Furniture, has debuted a line of standing workstations. The company made $1 million in sales in its first year, but is on pace for more in year two. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL PERSSON
STANDING (INN)OVATION: Martin Keen, founder of Focal Upright Furniture, has debuted a line of standing workstations. The company made $1 million in sales in its first year, but is on pace for more in year two. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL PERSSON

Martin Keen, Focal Upright Furniture founder, has captured the public’s imagination for an unconventional product by solving a personal design dilemma once before. Today, he runs a company that makes office workstations that allow workers to stand, a feature that has been touted for its productivity and health benefits.
But his knack for creative problem solving was first on display a decade ago, when the avid sailboat racer was frustrated with his preferred footwear – sandals. They left his toes exposed to stubs and scrapes from topside hardware, he said.
So from the studio in his Jamestown barn, Keen designed a sandal with a rubber toe guard that he could not only wear on the water, but in numerous other outdoor pursuits.
Keen Footwear, the company formed from that invention, would go on to do $20 million in sales in its second year and is now at $300 million in annual sales.
The Keen sandal entered the market in 2003 at a time the public was revealing a previously unknown demand for unconventional, partially open footwear.
Although very different in design, construction and market, Keen sandals entered the market around the same time as the bright plastic clogs known as Crocs were creating an open-footwear fashion fad.
After six years making sandals Keen, a natural inventor and tinkerer, began looking for a new challenge.
In 2010, he sold his interest in Keen Footwear to his partner and set his sights on a new market he had no experience in: office furniture.
Before Keen Footwear, while he was running a design studio serving the shoe industry, Keen had been playing around with office workstations out of personal frustration with the traditional chair and desk setup.
“I haven’t had major back issues but didn’t feel creative sitting,” Keen said. “I bought an architect’s table and made a stool out of an old tractor seat I bought at an antique store, but I still felt hunched over.”
So Keen tipped the tractor-seat stool forward until he was roughly half sitting on it and half leaning forward into the drafting desk.
Almost immediately, the new setup energized him and made him feel more creative. As it turns out, Keen wasn’t the only person with second thoughts about whether sitting at a desk is the best way to work.
Studies have suggested that, along with the general drawbacks of being sedentary, sitting down could have detrimental effects on posture, metabolism and circulation.
That’s encouraged people to try a whole range of alternative work setups, including standing desks and treadmill desks.
Keen’s desk splits the difference between sitting in a chair and standing unaided.
Once he left the footwear business, Keen set about turning his workstation prototypes into a product and founded Focal Upright Furniture.
The Focal workstation, which includes an adjustable drafting-style desk and an adjustable stool mounted on an angled base platform, debuted at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York in the spring of 2012.
Keen has moved the operation out of his barn to leased a space in the Portsmouth Business Park and grown the company to 11 employees.
Focal’s Locus Workstations, which retail for just under $2,000, are assembled in Portsmouth. The lifting mechanisms come from Germany, the plastic pieces from China and wooden pieces from North Carolina.
In its first year, Focal made $1 million in sales, but is on pace for $5 million at the end of year two, Keen said. Overall, Focal has sold about 800 workstations.
Although working upright is becoming more popular, the vast majority of office workers still sit at their desks.
Keen said getting offices to embrace his leaning desks doesn’t need to happen all at once. Usually it just takes one person in an office and then others follow.
“These companies tend to allow a reasonable amount of flexibility, so it is important to get that one person, that champion in the office who is interested in something new and then it spreads from there,” Keen said. “Being that one person who is upright when the others are sitting can be tough. But once you try it you get it and you don’t want to sit at a regular desk.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
Focal Upright Furniture LLC
Owner: Martin Keen
Type of Business: Furniture maker
Location: 207 High Point Ave., Suite 6, Portsmouth
Employees: 11
Year Established: 2012
Annual Sales: $1 million

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