Two young people created a chair that helps people with disabilities to stand up

Might
4, 2021

7 min learn

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Alejandra Ortiz and Javier Mejía are two younger folks beneath the age of 30 who met in the midst of the Industrial Design diploma on the Tecnológico de Monterrey. By likelihood of destiny, they agreed on a topic that may change their lives and now they run an organization centered on creating groups for folks with disabilities.

A path that began from the underside with the place, the instruments and even a borrowed desk, to not point out the cash, at present it’s a distinctive design workplace in Mexico.

When you’ve the need, the expertise and even the fang, a easy challenge can turn out to be an organization. Alejandra and Javier took a course that was about designing a product for somebody with a incapacity. The Tec de Monterrey and the DIF assigned them to an individual, every with a special analysis. The crew of those younger entrepreneurs had an individual with quadriplegia because of a bike accident. The goal was to design one thing that may assist them enhance their high quality of life in any space or every day exercise.

The method of making

In an arduous job of interviews to search out out what the particular person wanted and needed, they started their analysis to know all the prevailing gadgets as much as that second, to have the ability to stand or stroll. Thus they got here to the standing chairs (which assist to maintain the particular person upright on the decrease extremities). These have a excessive price for being imported, probably the most “accessible” Alejandra tells us in an unique interview for Entrepreneur en Español, is 120 thousand pesos plus delivery and taxes.

On this manner Alejandra and Javier realized the necessity to have the sort of tools in Mexico, as a result of the vast majority of folks with disabilities within the nation have many difficulties to pay for them.

In response to knowledge from the Nationwide Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), Mexico has a inhabitants of greater than 6 million folks with disabilities.

With the intention to make the preliminary prototype, the younger folks needed to make investments from their pockets and even borrow cash as a result of ultimately neither the educational establishment nor the DIF sponsored them because it was initially going to be. Nevertheless, Alejandra and Javier already had a dedication and determined to go to the tip. They even gained the award for the perfect challenge at Tec de Monterrey.

From faculty to entrepreneurship

After ending the coed challenge, each the inner media of the college and different communication media made them recognized. So folks began searching for them and even the director of the establishment got here to take errands. Javier admits that they didn’t know the impression they had been going to have or how many individuals wanted such a product.

On this manner they realized that they had been forming an organization and that it may work. After commencement they’d their first match shopper. “The identical challenge led us to the best folks,” displays Alejandra.

^{Picture: Courtesy: Puro Diseño Mexicano}

In 2016 they entered the Nationwide Design Award and gained in three classes; Greatest Medical Tools Design, Idea Design and Product Design. In that version they had been acknowledged with an financial prize of fifty thousand pesos, which helped them to begin financing and selling the challenge.

Though in Puro Diseño Mexicano they are few, they’ve alliances with blacksmiths and have the workshop to regulate particulars of the merchandise. As well as, of their entrepreneurship course of they needed to be taught to steadiness the workload: whereas Javier focuses on manufacturing, Alejandra takes care of administrative points.

The 2 pillars: accessibility and customization

The younger folks defined to Entrepreneur en Español , that from the start they had been very clear about what they needed to attain: make the sort of machine obtainable to extra folks and that or not it’s manufactured right here in Mexico utilizing native merchandise and abilities. Along with selling honest commerce.

“ They promote them as in the event that they had been family home equipment. Merchandise made in collection that aren’t designed for the wants of every consumer ”, Alejandra feedback concerning the tools that almost all of them promote should not customized.

“As incapacity is so numerous, it is extremely tough for a chair to suit all folks even when they’ve the identical analysis .” For that cause, all its chairs are custom-made with the wants of every shopper in thoughts, “none is identical as one other”, within the phrases of the entrepreneur.

As for the costs to the general public, they’re removed from a tool purchased overseas. The most affordable chair to face up (as a result of it’s handbook) is round 27 thousand pesos, alternatively, the one with the very best price (as a result of it’s completely electrical) prices roughly 55 thousand pesos. That very same sort of chair in one other a part of the world is price greater than 300 thousand pesos.

^{Picture: Courtesy: Puro Diseño Mexicano}

Though they began with the standing chair and it has had a number of modifications to adapt to totally different diagnoses, now additionally they manufacture different kinds of chairs, not solely to have the ability to get up. For instance, electrical chairs, lively (for every day use), youngsters, equipment for postural management of youngsters and train bikes. Normally they’re merchandise to hold out actions that you just can not with a “regular” chair. Along with rehabilitation tools with digital actuality.

With natural progress, they already make shipments to your complete Mexican Republic from their web site and plan to develop their market to Latin America. They’re nonetheless on their technique to make society extra equitable by serving to folks each day from their workshop and even naming the chairs with the surnames of their purchasers. Though it’s a enterprise, younger folks typically think about that the retribution is extra emotional.

“Incapacity will not be a bodily limitation, it’s a social truth and, by producing these instruments to make them obtainable to folks, we assist scale back segregation and promote the development of extra plural and inclusive communities”, Alejandra Ortiz founding father of Puro Diseño Mexican.