InMovement
A startup inside Life Fitness built original workplace products and the system required to move them through prototypes, patents, global manufacturing, and market.
Product development / 2014–2019InMovement operated with startup ambition inside Life Fitness, which was owned by Brunswick. The opportunity was to create a new category around movement in the workplace. The reality included multiple organizations, priorities, approval layers, and channels.
Product leadership meant seeing the whole system: customer insight, industrial design, engineering, IP, sourcing, manufacturing, channel development, commercialization, and the internal coalition required to keep all of it moving.
The deepest innovation lived in the original product portfolio. The team built a showroom and innovation lab where ideas could be drawn, modeled, mocked up, tested, challenged, refined, and made real.
Walking meetings offered movement and conversation, but depended on weather, location, and access to information. We explored how that experience could move indoors, accommodate multiple people, and provide lightweight access to shared data while the conversation continued.
Open offices and sit-to-stand desks changed how people worked, but the furniture remained surprisingly rigid. We designed a mobile workstation for teams that hotel, gather spontaneously, and reconfigure their environment around the work.
Some people think better when they can move. Move supported conventional seating at a high conference table, then rotated into a more active posture for quick huddles, presentations, and sharing a laptop or tablet.
Nine issued US patents document the breadth of the product effort. Justin is named on three utility patents and four design patents. The other two reflect adjacent team invention within the same portfolio.
Converging treadmill workstation
Utility / Justin named 02US 9,918,550 B1Mobile workstation
Utility / Justin named 03US 10,016,652 B1Converging treadmill workstation
Utility / Justin named 04US 10,045,611 B1Table apparatuses
Utility / Portfolio team 05US D769,381 SConvergent treadmill desk
Design / Justin named 06US D769,989 SConvergent treadmill desk
Design / Justin named 07US D817,651 SStool
Design / Portfolio team 08US D805,065 SMobile workstation
Design / Justin named 09US D770,576 SConvergent treadmill desk
Design / Justin namedDT2 desktop workstation
DT2 was the fast-follower story in the portfolio. Its value was execution speed: identify the opportunity, define the experience, develop the mechanism, source the product, and get it into customers’ hands in nine months.
The product was the visible part
Created a dedicated showroom and lab for customer learning, concept development, and rapid physical experimentation.
Justin led the addition and development of new manufacturing partners in China.
Expanded beyond traditional fitness channels through commercial furniture dealers.
Aligned a startup team, Life Fitness functions, Brunswick stakeholders, external designers, suppliers, and channel partners.
InMovement pursued B2B and B2C at the same time, without the sustained distribution investment required to make both work. Life Fitness and Brunswick ultimately chose not to keep funding that path. The portfolio was acquired and continued as a smaller independent business.
The durable wins are substantial: original products taken from sketches to market, three utility and four design patents naming Justin, a fast-follower product shipped in nine months, new manufacturing relationships in China, a commercial-furniture channel, and a repeatable system for turning ambiguity into physical products.