'Our first warehouse was my home': ErgoTune founders started off building their tables and chairs from scratch

Ever wondered what CEOs and founders are like? Are they all work and no play? Do they have a nurturing or intimidating personality? In Employee No. 1, catch a glimpse of what it is like being a homegrown boss under 40. Take an inside look into their day, how they run their successful companies, and learn what it takes to be employee number one.


With working from home becoming more common, standing desks and ergonomic chairs have become popular fixtures in many homes. And if you've looked into furnishing your home office, you'd probably have come across homegrown brands ErgoTune and EverDesk+.

But what you might not know is that the multi-million dollar brands had a humble start.

Before they came up with their award-winning designs, founders Joshua Chan, Lye Yi Hao and Tan Jun Kiat, all 31, went through months of trial and error, building samples from scratch in their homes, they tell AsiaOne. 

Their aim? To create high-quality ergonomic furniture that come with a wallet-friendly price tag.

The birth of a start-up

Besides being business partners, the trio are also close friends, having first met over a decade ago while they were still studying in Singapore Polytechnic.

"I didn't like Joshua at first, he was a noisy guy in lecture," Yi Hao says jokingly while the rest of the men let out a hearty chortle.

Despite their differences, the three of them became firm friends and kept in contact throughout the years even after their paths diverged.

As they neared their final years in university they realised that they all had been bitten by the start-up bug and shared a common passion of wanting to start a business.

"Even now, start-ups are a sexy thing to do. Going into entrepreneurship, being your own boss and not having to report to people," Yi Hao adds.

However, they were clueless on what field they should go into — that was until Yi Hao had a bad experience while trying to procure himself a standing desk.

He had been sourcing for one for his study and apart from the "horrible" customer service, he couldn't find anything that suited his needs as the existing players were geared towards selling to corporate clients. 

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It wasn't a wallet-friendly affair either — Yi Hao reveals that the quote he received for just one desk was around $2,000 to $3,000.

But some good did come out of the experience, and that was the inspiration for the trio to start their own ergonomic furniture brand.

So, armed with their background in business and technology — Joshua has a degree in information systems while Yi Hao and Jun Kiat have degrees in business — the three men bravely embarked on their start-up journey in 2017.

Creating the perfect ergonomic table and chair

From the start, the men realised that there was a gap in the market for affordable yet high-quality ergonomic furniture.

"Back then, when we started, when you look at ergonomic office chairs in the market, there's only your very high end $2,000, $3,000 chairs versus your very low end $100 chair," Joshua explains.

"And when you look at the features that they have, they are very broadly different. So what we are trying to target here is that middle ground where we make ergonomic affordable for a lot of people."

However, since all of the men were new to the ergonomic furniture scene, they had to learn everything on the job.

They started out sourcing for materials overseas from suppliers in places like China, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam and had these shipped all the way to their "first warehouse".

"Our first warehouse was my home," Joshua said with chuckle as he described how at one point, his house was filled with table frames and tops.

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Then, came the actual hard work — putting together the furniture from scratch.

"When we first installed our tables, it was the first time I held a drill — I am not ashamed to say that," Joshua tells us with a grin while the others wheezed with laughter in the background.

Unsurprisingly, creating the perfect adjustable ergonomic chairs and tables meant plenty of trial and error, even up till the point when they had their first customer.

In fact, when they received their very first order, the actual physical product wasn't even ready yet and they were still in the midst of trying out samples.

The trio share that they eventually offered a generous discount in exchange for the customer to wait a couple months for his order. Thankfully, he agreed.

"You won't forget your first customer. The first customer that validates whatever that you're doing," Joshua adds with a grateful smile.  

The pandemic was one of their proudest moments

Throughout their start-up journey, the men are proud to say that they've had a number of milestones to celebrate.

But ironically enough, one of their most memorable ones was the circuit breaker period when Singapore went into a lockdown of sorts.

Businesses across all industries scrambled to adapt to the new restrictions and regulations. However, ErgoTune and EverDesk+ were scrambling for different reasons — the sudden overwhelming demand for ergonomic chairs and tables.

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"It was the first time in our lives that we had a queue outside our showroom," Joshua tells us with a laugh.

He also explains that back then, the team only comprised of seven members and no one had a dedicated role.

"Everybody was a salesperson. Everybody was trying to get our products to customers. It was a very frantic moment of trying to help them to get their chairs before there was a lockdown," Joshua recalls.

"We came in at 9am, stayed till 4am. We pulled all the stocks from the warehouse back to our showroom because we didn't know the warehouse would shut down or not and we were selling chairs off the pallets."

Growing the team and even being acquired

In the early stages, it was just Jun Kiat, Joshua and Yi Hao running the show and wearing all the hats.

But soon, they realised that their small three-man team wasn't sufficient enough to handle the growing company.

"We started realising that there are certain gaps in the business that the three of us are not very good at," Jun Kiat shares.

"We kind of realised if we spend too much time working in the business, we don't really have time to work on the business," adds Joshua.

So, they decided to expand and hired their very first employee in 2018.

Life wasn't easy for their first hire either — when we asked the men what duties the employee had, they bluntly told us that he had to do "everything".

The company has since grown to around 30 employees.

It's undoubtedly no mean feat for the trio to manage a team, especially since it's the first time that any of them have done so, but they say that they've been taking it in their stride and learning along the way.

"Our mission as leaders is to create a place where people can feel like the work they do matters, and that's what makes it satisfying," says Yi Hao.

And it seems like all that hard work and passion has paid off since the company has recently been acquired by e-commerce start-up Una Brands.

It's a pretty significant milestone too, considering that the undisclosed eight-figure all-cash transaction is the largest for Una Brands thus far, and is also one of the largest for a direct-to-consumer brand in Singapore.

While the men are still involved in running the two brands, Una Brands' expertise will help them "get to the next level", they say, pointing to the Australian, US and European markets as their next frontier of growth. 

Unsurprisingly, the men tell us they were thrilled at the acquisition, but at the same time, they confess that it was an emotional transition. 

As Jun Kiat puts it, "It's time for our child to graduate from kindergarten and go up to the university level." 

melissateo@asiaone.com

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