Cineak CEO: Our Seating is More Customizable than Theirs

The home theater industry enjoys many high-end furniture vendors that offer customizable seating options.

But Cineak says its furniture is more customizable than its competitors’.

“The others say you can customize, but it’s like picking different leathers,” says Cineak founder Alvin Hellemans.

Sure, you can pick your own furniture fabrics, but Cineak goes the extra mile. For instance, says Hellemans, “We can match the wood on chairs to the wood on [theater] columns. We can match the stitches to the design of the carpet.”

And it’s not just the cosmetics that Cineak tackles. Consider a household in which the husband is six-foot-one and the wife is five-foot-two.

“It’s just not happening,” Hellemans says. Cineak can ensure that both family members are comfortable without the chairs looking silly being side-by-side.

In addition to the customization, Cineak offers chairs with a contemporary, European flavor -- something that seems to be missing among top motorized chair manufacturers.

In fact, that’s why Cineak was founded, according to Hellemans. As an integrator, Hellemans had a client in Europe looking for seating that suited a more modern environment. Cineak's contemporary models were on display at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) last week.



Cineak seats have dual motorization mechanisms that are made of steel.

“There’s one motor for the foot rest and one for the back rest,” Hellemans says. “That is fairly unusual.”

Also unusual are the remote-control options for the seats. They can be operated via IR or contact closure.

Why would you need such control?

An all-off scene can put the chairs back into their upright positions. You can also program memory settings – just like you can do with fancy cars.

One more thought? “You can have a graphical interface,” suggests Hellemans. “You could have a picture of the chair, so you can have visuals for the up/down commands.”