We built a seat shaped for how kids actually sit, not how they're told to.
Ikaria Design Company is a small, family-run business in Columbia, Missouri.
We design and build handmade, movement-first furniture for people whose bodies have never cooperated with the standard 90-degrees-at-hip-and-knee setup. If you sit cross-legged at your desk, take calls on the floor, or grew up being told to settle down and pay attention, you've found your people.
The Fidget Seat came from recognizing that the same restless energy we design for in adults starts a lot earlier than adulthood. Kids who need to move to focus have always needed a chair that gets it. We just finally built one.
Ikaria Design Company is a certified B Corp, which means we're held to rigorous standards for social and environmental performance. Everything we make is handcrafted in Columbia, Missouri, by a small team that takes that work seriously.
Being small means we don't move as fast as a big manufacturer, and lead times reflect that. What it also means is that every chair that leaves our workshop was made with real attention by people who care about whether it actually works. We think that trade-off is worth it, and we're grateful for customers who do too.
Meet the Team
Pack Matthews
Founder & Designer
As a father, a grandfather, and an elementary school educator, Pack has had a front-row seat to the way kids actually learn, which looks a lot less like quiet compliance and a lot more like constant motion.
He works out of Columbia alongside his daughter Hannah, and Ikaria remains what it has always been: small, handmade, and genuinely committed to building things that help people work better in their own bodies.
More about Pack
The kids who rock their chairs, tap their feet, and have a hard time staying in their seats have always been the ones he gravitates to. He understands something about them that the classroom isn't quite designed to accommodate: that movement isn't the obstacle to focus, but the path to it.
Pack founded Ikaria Design Company in Columbia, Missouri, around that same idea, applied first to adults. His most well-known invention, the Soul Seat® (the original cross-legged office chair), gives grown-ups permission to sit the way their bodies actually want to, and challenges every received assumption about what ergonomics is supposed to look like. The Soul Seat found its audience in people who had always sensed that conventional seating wasn't built for them, and who were relieved to finally have an alternative.
The Fidget Seat grew out of that same impulse, aimed at a younger audience: the kids Pack spent years watching in classrooms, the ones who were made to feel like their energy was a problem to be managed rather than a signal worth listening to.
He works out of Columbia alongside his daughter Hannah, and Ikaria remains what it has always been: small, handmade, and genuinely committed to building things that help people work better in their own bodies.
Hannah Halwel
Chief Operating Officer
As a mother, Hannah knows what it looks like when a child needs to move in order to focus: the task that takes three times as long as it should, the redirections, the seemingly endless energy.
Watching her daughter navigate that experience made the Fidget Seat feel personal in a way that went well beyond her role at Ikaria. She wanted it to exist, for her daughter and for every family asking the same questions.
More about Hannah
As COO of Ikaria Design Company, Hannah leads customer support, marketing, and sales, which in a company this size means she's the person on the other end of your email. She brings nearly two decades of customer-facing experience to that work, and a genuine belief that how a company treats its customers (especially when something goes wrong) says more about its values than any number of sales, awards, or recognition could.
In 2023, Hannah led Ikaria through the B Corp certification process, which involved demonstrating the company's commitment to social and environmental accountability across every part of how it operates. It was a thorough, sometimes demanding undertaking, and she's proud of what it reflects about the way Ikaria chooses to use business as a force for good.
She works alongside her father, Pack, in Columbia, Missouri, where the team is small by design, the furniture is made by hand, and the mission has stayed consistent since the beginning: to build furniture that helps folks stay well upstream of the impact our sedentary workstyles have on our bodies.
We design & build in Columbia, Missouri
Address: 501 Fay Street, Suite 102, Columbia, Missouri, 65201
Email: hello@ikariadesign.com
Phone: +1 (573) 238-8008
Customer Support Hours: Mon - Thur, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm