Posture Keeper

Shirley Tan had built and sold a successful e-commerce business to TheKnot, but by 2010 her career-long relationship with her computer had exacted a physical toll. Chronic back pain forced her to consider leaving business entirely—a heartbreaking prospect for someone who lived for entrepreneurship. At a chiropractor's office, she received simple advice: stop leaning forward. That night, watching her son throw out his old North Face backpack, inspiration struck. "I wondered what would happen if I had something that held me back on my chair and solved the leaning forward behavior." She tore the backpack apart, attached the straps to her chair, and tried it for two weeks. The results were immediate: radiating pain subsided, chest tightness vanished, and she regained full range of motion.

For years, Shirley sat on the idea, unsure if others would want a "strapped" posture device. The turning point came in early 2017 when Kevin Harrington, an original Shark Tank investor, encouraged her to pursue it after seeing her prototype video. "He thought my posture corrector/trainer was a great product and that I should pursue it." Armed with validation, Shirley began hunting for manufacturers and obsessing over product design. She was a self-described "worry wart" who refused to launch until every detail was perfect. This meant 10 months of iteration, two trips to China, and throwing out two complete versions. She brought in her cousin Macy, her husband, and close friends as testers. "At first, they were like 'what is this thing?'. But after I explained what was the problem I was trying to solve, they just nod in agreement."

Shirley planned to validate demand through Kickstarter before scaling to Shopify and Amazon. She invested heavily in research—taking two Udemy courses on crowdfunding, listening to podcasts like Crowdcrux and CrowfundingUncut, and studying YouTube tutorials. She initially hired a marketing agency to manage the Kickstarter launch but quickly realized misalignment on deliverables and expectations. The partnership stalled for three weeks until consultants like Declan Dunn helped her refocus. Her strategy emphasized demonstrability: the product speaks for itself when people see or try it, so media outreach and personal networks became her primary channels.

Shirley's greatest asset was her 30+ years of business experience across silk flowers, personalization, mail order catalogs, and e-commerce—she understood market positioning, supply chains, and consumer psychology. Her approach to pricing was methodical: she studied competitor products and applied the "law of substitution" to find her price ceiling. What didn't work was hiring the first marketing agency without vetting alignment first. "I should have listened to my gut that it wasn't going to work out," she reflected. She also wished she'd built an email list earlier. Her biggest unresolved concern: would shipping costs eat into margins since Posture Keeper was physically larger than competitors? "Right now, it's more important to get it on the consumers hands, so, as long as we're not upside down on each transaction, I'm good with that."

As of February 2019, Posture Keeper was preparing for its Kickstarter launch. Shirley had filed for a patent, assembled a small core team (herself, cousin Macy, and contractors), and invested significant personal capital into product perfection and market research. Her business model was direct-to-consumer—Kickstarter first, then Shopify and Amazon—allowing her to gather customer feedback and iterate. Despite being non-technical and managing a micro-team, Shirley's entrepreneurial pedigree and relentless focus on product-market fit positioned her to succeed where others with shiny marketing might fail.