Company offers product to adjust sofa seat size
Gary Evans -- Furniture Today, October 28, 2002
High Point — Ever had a customer who complain that a sofa was too short for her legs? Or too wide?
Jim Williams has an answer, and it attracted attention at market.
He has invented a mechanism that slides the seat out of, and into, a sofa to the desired comfort of whomever is seated. The seat, made through Williams' company, Extended Comfort, extends by two-inch increments to a total of 12 inches on a 36-inch frame.
"I call it stationary with function," he said, adding that you a sofa with the mechanism looks the same as one that doesn't.
At market, Extended Comfort partnered with Berne Furniture and was showed in the Berne space.
Williams didn't disclose the cost of the mechanism, but said the high-end Berne sofa equipped with the product would retail for about $1,899, and with double mechanisms for $2,199.
Double mechanisms — one at each end of a sofa — allow divided seats to adjust to two different comfort levels, he said. The single mechanism arrangements appears to be preferred, especially by women users who curl their feet under them while seated.
"Right now we're doing it with Berne, but we're looking at other companies as well," Williams said, adding that "some very large companies have been trying to buy us out."
He said the mechanism surpasses industry standards for wearability, and that there are virtually no safety hazards.
The product is shown on the company's Web site at www.extendedcomfort.com.
