[img]905|left|Roger Lin||no_popup[/img]Roger Lin’s daughter was only 3 years old when he noticed that she was positioned uncomfortably at a drawing table, a mundane scene that arrested his attention and sparked him into launching a life-changing venture.
Because of his intellectual background, the core problem was obvious to Mr. Lin: The little furniture was unsuitable for her.
But that is not really where his amazing story starts.
It began decades ago, innocently and traditionally, and it was culminating on this lovely morning in the showroom of his newest business in an industrial park in Torrance.
To prove that he purchases what he preaches, this imaginative entrepreneur was comfortably — the operative term — seated on a crushingly soft black leather couch, where he and his visitor probably could have parked for hours.
The flame for the present adventure originally was lit 30-some years ago, in the earliest days of 30-something Mr. Lin’s childhood.
“I come from a family very big on education,” said Mr. Lin, who emigrated as a youth with his parents from Taiwan.
“My parents put a great deal of effort into my own education. I have repeatedly had it instilled in me that education is important.
“Nowadays, you always try to give your children a leg up concerning competition. One of the things I thought of as a parent was, if I can help her focus, for long periods of time, without getting tired or fidgety, I would.”
Mr. Lin’s epiphianic moment for his now-4 ½-year-old daughter occurred a year and a half ago.
Planning a Busy, Successful Future
“When she turned 3 and was about to go into pre-school,” said this closely watching visionary dad, “I decided enough was enough. She would soon be starting kindergarten, and then thinking about a career.”
Around this time, he calculated that his daughter would be investing a whopping 10,000 hours of her life the coming years to studying.
Time for a pragmatic decision.
“We decided we might as well get something for her that would help her posture,” Mr. Lin said. “Never in my mind did I think I could find something like that that also meets the growth factor.”
And here is where the Lin saga became quickly airborne as he sought to encourage a healthful home study environment.
He began a worldwide search for child furniture, shaped so that it would accommodate his daughter, hopefully in an overtly active rather than passive manner.
He visited scores of children’s furniture stores. Never did he come near to finding imaginatively configured furniture made with growing children, not just tykes, in mind.
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A girl samples unique furniture.
Combing the internet for an American solution to his South Bay need, he turned off his computer emptyhanded.
Until he resumed his search abroad.
Because his parents had embedded in him not only the crucialness of becoming educated, they also armed him with tools vital for an education. Mr. Lin was a persevering researcher. He would not be denied. He was convinced the answer lay somewhere across the planet.
His refusal to wilt led him to research papers by experts on ergonomics who had discovered an unusual line of furniture — on an Australian website — in an 85-year-old German craftsman company known as moll Funktionsmobel GmbH.
Furniture’s Message: Adaptability
You don’t have to speak the language for the key quality, “functions,” to leap from the screen.
“I loved it as soon as I saw it,” said the intrepid explorer. “The photos were very convincing, and the fact the furniture was made in Germany gave me a lot of confidence. I know that German cars and German engineering have historic reputations for soundness. In my mind, I couldn’t go wrong.
“After I found what I wanted, I was looking for a distributor in the U.S. Furniture of this calibre should be available in our country. Much to my chagrin, I could not find it anywhere. No place in the U.S. carried this line of furniture.”
Moving boldly, unwilling to let go of his find just because of a minor inconvenience, Mr. Lin contacted the German manufacturer directly. I said, ‘Look, I want to buy this for my daughter. We are based in the U.S.A. What can you do to get this here?’
“Literally, it took four months by the time I told them my intention and they got the furniture to me.
“On the first day, I sampled everything. I fell in love.”
Two of the underlying lessons of Mr. Lin’s international quest are undiscourageable persistence and patience.
Six months passed from the germination of his idea until the triumphant afternoon he assembled the desk and chair in his daughter’s room.
“That is a long time to wait,” he said, but now with a satisfied chuckle.
Since Mr. Lin’s main business is as an importer of seafood, and given his entrepreneurial background, he knew how to navigate through tricky international importation waters.
Probing a little deeper into his thinking process, how, more precisely, did he link education with posture?
“One day,” he said, “I saw my daughter leaning over a desk I had bought for her. As she was painting, her head was turned in an uncomfortable way, and her feet were dangling.
“That was when it hit me that there was something I could do for her,” and so the seed was sown for his 8-month-old business in the South Bay, Posture in Style (postureinstyle.com).
Mr. Lin was no innocent lamb when he challenged the world to find the child-accommodating furniture he was confident existed somewhere in some country.
Armed with an MBA from USC and certified by a Harvard Business School program for fast-tracked executives, he has sparkled in commerce as Chief Operating Officer of a seafood company ranked among the 100 largest private businesses in Los Angeles as well as one of the fastest expanding ones. Responsible earlier for short- and long-term company strategies and for establishing and growing a national sales network, the versatile Mr. Lin also is actively involved with the world’s largest chef organization.
Since founding Posture in Style last winter and becoming the distributor of an exclusive line of German-made ergonomic furniture, here is what his company offers:
Children’s furniture, eminently adjustable, shaped to promote proper posture that grows with the youngster, from pre-school to high school.
The stylish designs feature tiltable desktops with safety-centric rounded corners and edges, plus adjustable heights for both the desks and accompanying chairs.
Mr. Lin created his second business because he reasoned that he and his wife were not alone in their thinking.
“After seeing the furniture first-hand, it seemed to me there was an opportunity here,” he said. “In my mind, there had to be other parents in the U.S. who were looking for this kind of furniture.
“With my know-how of the importation process, and having done this already on a larger scale, I could facilitate this for people in the U.S.
“I contacted the German distributor. I said, ‘I love your furniture, but your marketing is really poor. You have no presence in the U.S., and I can help you with that.’
“They said ‘yes,’ and here we are,” Mr. Lin said jubilantly. “That is the story.”
