“FIRST OF ITS KIND”

A tradition of innovation at RECARO

The seats of the RECARO brand have always been the first of their kind—whether it’s in motorsports, on the road, or in the air. From the first RECARO sports seat in 1965, which revolutionized automotive seating, to lightweight and flexible aircraft seats, to the first children’s seat that grows with the child, the brand’s products have repeatedly set new standards. The RECARO gaming seat now continues this tradition.

For the first time, there is an established seating expert active as a supplier for the gaming and eSports scene with RECARO. What initially began in 2016 as a cooperative innovation project between the RECARO Group and startup founders from the gaming scene quickly developed into a new business field for the brand: the team realized how close they were in many aspects and how well gaming and RECARO go together. Even in the fields where the brand had been active until that point, it was all about performance and intensity, enjoying the competition, innovative technologies, and finding the best solution for each particular application. Users who are always on the lookout for optimization and who seek the best equipment for this purpose have therefore always been familiar with RECARO. For example, in motorsports, where the toughest stresses are placed on the driver and the materials. Here, the seat, as the largest contact surface between man and machine, gives the driver direct feedback in every thousandth of a second; at the same time, the ideal fit protects and supports the driver in such a way that they can concentrate fully on the competition, even in endurance races.

In gaming, too, you have a matter of mere milliseconds to make the right reaction—this is critical for determining victory or defeat. Like motorsports, eSports is a competitive sport where the equipment is crucial—maximum performance can only be achieved with the right equipment. Racers and gamers alike benefit from the perfect seating position that supports and relieves the body in such a way that enables them to perform at their best over long periods of time without fatigue and fully concentrate on the race or the game.

The RECARO team, consisting of startup founders and active gamers, recognized these crucial parallels. The first prototypes and tests in the community ultimately underpinned the decision to enter the gaming and eSports market as a provider of premium seats. This was the birth of RECARO eGaming: the young team launched a unique project at the end of 2016, initially under the name “Fortify.” With the involvement of the gaming community, the concept for a seat was created that was developed from scratch, whose design, adjustment options, and ergonomics are geared specifically to gaming and eSports. For perfect ergonomics and performance, the know-how of seat experts and designers from the RECARO Group was also incorporated. In this way, they managed to reach an important milestone as early as mid-2017: a prototype was equipped with special sensor technology to determine the ideal seating position for different types of players. From the findings, the team developed a beta version of the RECARO gaming seat, which was used to gather further feedback from the community at Gamescom 2018. After evaluating and taking into account the feedback and findings, another milestone is now coming up in 2019: the launch of the RECARO gaming seat.

Ergonomics tailored to your needs, optimal function and clear design are not only found in the RECARO motorsport seats or in the RECARO Gaming Seat. Innovations like these have a long tradition at RECARO . The brand lives and breathes performance in a wide variety of areas: RECARO has been developing seats for the automotive industry since 1963, aircraft seats were added in the early 1970s, and children's seats followed at the end of the 1990s. Thebrand also offers 24/7 seatsfor the highestdemands for continuous use in control and monitoring rooms.