When Lindsey Swing proposed a business concept of creating an improved and more attractive rolling walking aid for her Opportunity Recognition class two years ago, the reactions from many of her fellow business classmates were discouraging.
“Nobody really wanted to work on it because it wasn’t a green business, and it wasn’t a fun thing that would interest people my age,” Swing, a University senior, said. “But, I wasn’t discouraged and found some people who were really interested in it.”
Swing’s perseverance paid off.
Last spring, her capstone group won the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship Venture Quest competition, and today, she and her sister, Sydney, are in the process of making Lindsey’s business plan a reality through the creation of Swing Mobility Aids, LLC, a startup company that both sisters have funded on their own.
Although Sydney did not wish to disclose the amount of money used to start up the company, she said the company’s concept was inspired by a New York Times article that Lindsey, the company’s CEO and CFO, read in June 2009, which noted that nearly 47,000 elderly Americans visit the emergency room due to falls in conjunction with walkers and canes. 
“One of the main issues with other designs that we’re addressing is the fact that a lot of people lacked hand, wrist or upper body strength to support themselves on something that you actually have to hold on to, so with our design you can steer it with your elbows,” Sydney, a University postbaccalaureate linguistics major, said. Sydney also serves as Swing Mobility Aids’ director for forward planning.
The company’s most updated model, the Great American Explorer, weighs only 23 pounds and is unlike any other that could be found in a typical hospital, drugstore or medical supplies retailer. The shiny, polished aluminum walker comes in three sizes, which is meant to cater to an individual’s height or age. Sydney said the walker is composed of locally-assembled high-quality bike, scooter and wheelchair parts that are able to navigate through rough, uneven terrain, such as gravel roads and thick grass. Sydney also noted that certain portions of the walker, including the seat, handlebar clamps and lower frame, can be customized based upon a customer’s request and is provided in a range of four to seven different colors.
“We think we have a product that will revolutionize the mobility aid industry,” Sydney said. “We don’t feel like businesses and designers who are already in the industry are really paying attention to our philosophy of form and function in improving quality of life. The design itself makes our product unique because not a lot of people are really designing for the mobility needs that are really out there.”
Sydney said the Swing Mobility Aids’ rolling walker will cost $1,150 in comparison to others that range in price from $9 to $1,953. She said there are only two other walkers of similar structure and design that are currently available to people who have mobility needs but noted that both companies lack the sleek appearance and quality parts that the company’s walkers provide to customers. In addition, Sydney said one of the companies charges nearly $400 more for their walkers, while the other company offers a cheaper, yet mass-produced rolling walker.
“The value proposition is very compelling,” Dick Sloan, the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship’s undergraduate coordinator for innovation and entrepreneurship, said. “If you can improve people’s lives by giving them more mobility with a device that is better than what is available, then that’s a pretty good story.”
Sloan said the company’s appeal toward a younger demographic, such as returning veterans and young children, makes the product’s success “promising.”
“We would like to see people thinking differently about the kind of people who use walkers,” Sydney said. “A young veteran … who has come back from the war and has to have mobility assistance for several years or the rest of his life doesn’t want to walk around in his grandma’s walker. He wants something that look a little more like a shiny new bike or motorcycle that he’s not quite so ashamed to be in.”
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