Crafting Pilates equipment keeps company robust

LONGMONT – Vic Hart, the owner of Hart Wood Products, a manufacturer of specialty furniture, has a unique insight into the market for his products.

Hart has been a Pilates devotee for more than a decade. He combined that expertise with his extensive background in furniture making to create a robust business.

Today, Hart Wood Products is expanding to meet the high demand for its groundbreaking line of Pilates equipment.

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“Boulder is a real hotbed of Pilates, as is Austin, New York City and much of California,” Hart observed. “Professional athletes are starting to use it, and insurance companies are starting to use it for rehab.”

To help improve its operations, Hart Wood Products will be moving in July from its current location in Boulder to a new 28,456-square-foot building in Longmont. Hart purchased the building at 1400 Kansas Ave., first built in 1979, in March for $1,375,000.

“We’ve been in as many as three building as one time in Boulder,” Hart said. “Consolidation is one of our primary goals. The other is enlarging the facility so that we can add more manufacturing equipment. We’re definitely looking forward to more physical space so that we can improve our processes.”

Hart first came to Boulder in the early 1970s. He worked as a craftsman with jobs ranging from constructing office furniture for a Boulder company to building high-end speakers in Carbondale. Around the time he started practicing Pilates, he had the opportunity to learn to make the equipment and subsequently started a one-man woodworking shop to build it.

Pilates was first created during World War I by Joseph Pilates, a German national who originally was trained as a nurse. Inspired during his internment in England to help rehabilitate injured soldiers, Pilates started developing exercises that could be practiced within the confines of a controlled environment, such as a hospital bed. He later refined the method by teaching it to dancers with the New York City Ballet, including George Balanchine, and to Martha Graham.

“Who knows why it has captured the popular imagination? In the 1970s, it started getting outside of the dance world and into the general fitness arena where its momentum really took over. It’s very popular, especially with women, and it’s still growing,” Hart said.

Pilates originally modified an old hospital bed to create a piece of equipment he called the reformer, an apparatus that is still manufactured by Hart Wood Products. The company’s 40 employees use traditional woodworking and other trades to build 10 fundamental pieces of Pilates equipment including reformers, chairs, barrels and versatile Cadillac convertibles, otherwise known as the “rack,” which is a table top with straps and levers attached. Hart also manufactures hundreds of associated accessories such as pads, pillow and dowels used as bars.

Although the company takes occasional orders for custom-built equipment, its primary customer is Peak Pilates, a Boulder-based company that fosters the Pilates method across the country by selling equipment as well as providing extensive education programs and training. In fact, business is so good that Hart hasn’t needed to advertise once in more than 10 years of being in business.

Although the move will help the company streamline, creating the equipment remains a complex art.
“It’s very similar to furniture manufacturing,” Hart said. “It requires woodworking just like furniture. It needs upholstery, as does seating in the furniture world, and also metal fabrication and metal finishing. We really try to maintain that furniture aesthetic in our approach to manufacturing.”

Hart’s woodworking background has served him well. The frames of his products are made from durable, premium woods and are crafted as carefully as fine furniture.

“I think the wood is aesthetically more attractive,” Hart said. “It’s more traditional. It’s also a market dominated by women so I think they appreciate the soft, warm quality of the wood as opposed to the cold nature of gym equipment.”

In creating his products, Hart also has kept to the traditions behind the Pilates movement and Joseph Pilates’ original studio. While the popularity of Pilates has led many recreational centers and gymnasiums to offer mat classes, a true Pilates practice requires the equipment manufactured by craftsmen like Hart.

“One of the challenging things about Pilates is that it requires a lot of supervision,” Hart explained. “It’s based on very precise movements, and the precision of the movements is very important. You’re trying to access certain muscles so you don’t want a stronger muscle cheating for you. The equipment helps maintain that positioning.”

That doesn’t mean that the equipment hasn’t evolved over time. Combining technological innovation with a deep respect for the method, Hart uses classic designs combined with new manufacturing techniques to create advanced versions that are as practical as they are visually striking.

“We’ve made a lot of improvements to the designs but the basic functionality of the equipment still follows Joseph Pilates’ guidelines,” Hart said. “Modern equipment and ideas have added to it but the basic idea is still the same.”