In 1991, Dave Hintzman and Matthew Kosh rented a 3,000 square-foot office space, furnished it with a desk, a file cabinet and a few sawhorses, and called their new venture “Hintzman & Kosh.”
“We saw this need for unique products,” Hintzman says in a film produced for the company’s milestone birthday. “We had an empty space, a vision and a concept.”
Today, the company they founded is known as Bodypoint, and its seating & positioning products are sought out by clinicians and complex rehab providers seeking innovative solutions for their clients.
The Seattle-based business celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and now sells its products internationally. Bodypoint’s first products were hip belts, shoulder harnesses and seating systems, but the manufacturer now specializes in a large range of seating & positioning products.
Kosh says, “We were looking to solve problems which no one had tackled yet, or to do it in a way which added features that were being demanded by the wheelchair users.”
Among Bodypoint’s most buzzed-about products, for instance, is Hip Grip, a dynamic pelvic stabilization device “to help the wheelchair user maintain pelvic stability while allowing functional pelvic movements.” Hintzman indicated that dynamic seating – including the use of new materials that encourage and allow functional movement – is among the vistas with great potential.
“What’s really important to me about our future,” Hintzman says, “is the possibilities that we have to be able to communicate to people around the world the standards of practice that we’re learning so much about today, as well as to learn from others around the world and collaborate with them in developing our products and in promoting the use of positioning equipment for people with disabilities.”
To view Bodypoint’s anniversary film, visit youtube.com/user/BodypointInc
