Anyone who’s spent long hours traveling on a plane will tell you it’s hard to sleep or get comfortable in your chair, Chloe Hill said.
Hill once spent 32 hours on a plane, when her flight from Borneo to Boston had to be rerouted to Singapore for hydraulic issues.
“It was just miserable. Really a tortuous experience,” Hill said. “I kind of wanted something to support my body laying forward. I was resting my head against the seat in front of me or against my folded arms on the tray table.”
When she got home, Hill went for a massage. Inspiration struck when she saw the structure of the massage table and thought it could be reimagined to create a platform for plane passengers to lean against while sitting in their seats.
Hill, who lives in Waltham, and her co-founder Darryl Yang of Newton, are now raising funds to manufacture TruRest, a product they designed to support a plane passenger’s full body as they lean forward against it.
The product bears some resemblance to a small massage table, with a soft pad to support the user’s chest and a separate pad to support the head. The head pad has a hole in the middle for the user’s face. TruRest attaches to a plane tray table and folds out, Hill said. When compacted, it’s about the size of an iPad with a four-inch thickness. Hill said it can be easily customized, with adjustments for the neck position, the angle of the product and more.
Hill and Yang met through their mutual interest in volleyball and arrived at this business idea over a shared frustration with travel. Hill’s background is in arts and education and Yang worked as a programmer for large companies and startups. He did a lot of traveling to client sites and spent a lot of time on planes. When the two met playing in a local volleyball league, Yang said he immediately saw the potential in Hill’s initial idea.
“I traveled a lot and I wish I had something like that when I was traveling,” Yang said.
The pair teamed up in 2013 and went from creating their own prototypes to working with a machinist to take these devices to the next level, Hill said. Then, they hired an industrial designer to develop the product further. The co-founders also put their startup, called Hypnap, through MassChallenge in 2018.
To make sure TruRest was comfortable, they consulted with doctors, physical therapists and chiropractors, Hill said. They also did in-flight testing with over 60 testers.
The company raised $51,800 on Kickstarter for production costs and materials, Hill said. They’re now aiming to raise about $350,000 in additional funds on Indiegogo for the product molds and any additional costs, Yang said. Hill said they’re also speaking with investors and looking into options like foreign crowdfunding campaigns.
In addition to working toward fulfilling these crowdfunding purchases for their product, Hill said they’re also aiming to have extra products to show airlines. She said they’ve met with JetBlue and American Airlines who showed interest, but the main barrier was not having products ready to test.
Beyond travel, TruRest might also have applications in other industries like healthcare, Hill said. It could be used for people who can’t lay down comfortably or need to rest while on the go. Scientists who sit at microscopes for hours at a time or people using heavy virtual reality headsets might also be customers for TruRest, Hill said.
“Basically anybody who is confined to a seated position for a long period of time and has the ergonomic problems with sitting upright for long periods with the neck and back,” Hill said.
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