There was once a company that engineered a very good sensor . This sensor measured whether you were sitting up straight in your chair or slouching. If you slouched it sent a small vibration and reminded you. The market need that they targeted was that people needed to sit straight for their back and this would be the device that would remind you to sit up straight.
The sensor looked good.
The sensor worked well.
It was small and attractive
Battery lasted a very long time.
There was a phone app associated with it.
The app worked well.
The sensor was designed with the customer in mind.
The sensor did what it was supposed to do.
The Bluetooth on the sensor communicated well with the phone.
Almost everything that is recommended for a wearable device was implemented on their device. It was available at a reasonable cost. It was first in the market.
The device is called Lumo. Their website is: https://support.lumobodytech.com/hc/en-us
The amazon reviews were excellent and there are more than 2500 reviews. See here
HOWEVER….
It is not available now and what you see on their website is:
Seismic has acquired the assets of Lumo Bodytech, Inc. For more details, please see the announcement.
Please be advised that on June 29, 2018, Lumo Bodytech, Inc. (the “Company” or “Lumo”) entered into an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors (“Assignment”) and appointed Lumo (assignment for the benefit of creditors), LLC as assignee (“Assignee”) The Assignee is a California limited liability company and is not affiliated with the Company. As a result of the Assignment, Lumo has discontinued operations and is no longer promoting, manufacturing, or selling any products. Neither orders from ‘www.lumobodytech.com’ nor the Lumo app are being accepted or fulfilled, including any pre-orders which have not yet been charged, shipped or fulfilled. Warranty and software support are no longer available for Lumo’s products nor for any Lumo products which may be purchased or acquired following the Assignment. Customer’s will be able to access the Company’s app for the next nine months. Basic user information can be found on the Company’s FAQ website page at https://support.lumobodytech.com. Note that any Lumo products purchased at retail locations can only be returned or exchanged solely based on the retailer’s return policy. If you require additional information, please see information on the Assignee’s website at http://www.proofofclaims.com/LumoBodytech
Why?
Why – when a company did almost everything right with its products – did they die?
Competition?
Apple sells a sensor that looks and behaves similar and there is generic product on the market too. There are many others in the market now and it is become an important field with many other companies…
There may be several other reasons but more things Lumo did right:
Good media publicity : Techcrunch article here
Kickstarter campaign: Validated the market need and got backers to support them
They raised funding of more than $25 million
This was created by 3 Stanford graduates – Engineer, Entrepreneur & Physician.
We do not know the answer for their demise but from a user and digital health perspective, we are very careful in which companies we work with and the technology we implement. It is difficult for a company like us to implement technology that disappears after some time since healthcare and drug development takes time. We hope that the technology that we use and validate will remain and we will be able to implement it in our studies.