The Aerial Chair: Case Study

Above Ground Design is a company built on one product called the Aerial Chair. Craig Hines brought the idea of the chair into action by using inheritance money he got. The chair was a design that he personally developed and manufactured in a small shop in Montana. He originally developed the Aerial Chair out of curiosity, and for his own personal use. Craig was passionate about his product and desperately hoped for it to be a market success. In fact, he was an architecture student in Montana State University until he dropped out of school and ended up in South Africa sewing hang gliding planes where the idea of the chair first came to his mind. After going back to the states, Craig started taking lessons in order to get a commercial pilot's license. During that time, Craig started thinking about making the first step towards designing the chair and translating his dream and ambitious into an actual product. Basic drawings for the chair were made on a napkin and Craig based his design on the hang gliding planes that he used to do while working in South Africa and then the design was modified to fit the chair. Craig started designing the prototype of the chair and he kept changing his design until he reached the comfortability stage he was seeking. When Craig started making the chair he came out with two designs of the Aerial Chair. Both designs were almost the same except that one of them was lighter and easy to carry, this design was called Superlight. Craig admires the outdoor sports and for that reason he was trying to design a chair for backpackers and mountain hikers, a foldable and easy-to-carry chair so he came up with the design of the Superlight Chair. Both chairs had several sizes and a variety of colors.

It was important for Craig to manufacture the chair with high quality which forced the price of the Aerial Chair to be higher than the competitors' prices. According to the case Craig had two main competitors that were making a chair similar to Craig's design those competitors were SKY Chair and the AirChair. Craig settled on a price of $149 for the original model and $169 for the superlight model, those were the retail prices. After checking one of the competitor's website (www.skychair .com) it has been realized that this company is charging $130 for their most expensive chair. This led to one of Craig's problems which will be discussed later in the paper. Craig wanted to see how people would react to the prototype of his chair so after making 30 chairs Craig rented a booth in the mall and displayed the chairs he designed in order to promote for his product. This promotion attracted some of the media and led to some publications in some magazines such as popular mechanics and Motor Boating. Although some magazines had some positive ads about the Aerial Chair; yet, the chair has not gained broad acceptance in the marketplace and it was not considered as a commercial success even after years of promotion.