No More Imitations: Secretlab Takes a Hard Line Against Those Who Copy Its Iconic Gaming Chairs

Secretlab

Secretlab has recently unveiled its latest creation, which this time caters not to gamers, but to professionals and productivity: Atlas. For this reason, the colleagues at PC Gamer were directly invited to the company's lab in Singapore to try out the seat and had the opportunity to chat with the CEO.

To give an idea of the type of company we are talking about, Secretlab is a furniture manufacturer, albeit specifically for gamers. The company was founded only 10 years ago by Ang and Alaric Choo, both self-described "semi-professional gamers". It was from this background that the need for a high-quality chair arose, in a sector that saw traditional office chairs as the established standard.

The company came to prominence with the Omega, the first gaming chair – theoretically – developed by eSports athletes for professionals and gamers. This was followed by the Titan and Titan Evo, currently the high-end offering. Subsequently, the furniture line expanded to include desks, providing a solid foundation for a complete setup.

Naturally, success has brought not only advantages but also challenges to face: first among them, poor-quality imitations. This is a topic that the company has particularly cared about for various reasons over the past five years.

"I would say I’m quite a passionate and proud person," Ang explained to PC Gamer. "So, obviously, when you create something and then people start to make imitations and things like that... And I mean, we’ve been on this journey for 10 years. At the beginning we were small. Sure, we just did what we thought was nice and valid. And we didn’t even think we would become as big as we are today. We didn’t think people would copy us and things of that nature. So, for about the past five years, we’ve realized that we should be proud of the work we create. We should patent it. We should protect it."

Ang clarified that it’s not simply about being compensated for one’s work, but about valuing the care and commitment that each product receives as a legacy. According to the CEO, the company is not just looking for profit, but the real goal is to deliver to customers a valid product, to the point where they would use it themselves first.

Certainly, Ridley from PC Gamer confessed that Secretlab chairs are not the only ones in the offices, but we want to believe that the reason lies simply in style: the company’s chairs have an automotive-inspired design, not quite in line with what one would expect to find in a high executive's office.

In any case, Ang's speech aligns perfectly with the reason why the company does not yet employ AI in its production process. The co-founder explained that currently, AI is not capable of replacing designers and engineers. The limit lies within creativity: Secretlab aspires to propose completely new and innovative products, solutions that offer a real step forward for each generation compared to the previous one, while AI can only rely on what already exists.

In this regard, Ang explained that the company has invested $2 million to create from scratch a production line for a synthetic leather conceptualized by engineers that was not available on the market. "If we wanted to focus all on easy profit, we could do something. We could take something that is already ready and sell it. But that would not highlight the strengths of Secretlab. We have outstanding designers and engineers, we should let them do their best work," Ang emphasized.

"If we were owned by external investors, you could be sure that AI would be foisted on us somehow. Even today, we could probably integrate some form of artificial intelligence. But whether it is truly beneficial or something marginal that would only be used by 0.1% of users is another question. We, of course, have thought about it from the product perspective, but at this time we do not believe it is applicable."

In conclusion, Secretlab is currently one of the few companies that views AI with interest, yet also with a healthy dose of skepticism. After all, according to the CEO, the company fundamentally relies on research, innovation, and the development of previously unseen solutions — a capability still denied to AI: artificial intelligence cannot invent.

All of this is done in concert among designers, engineers, and a team of specialists who work to combine ideas with the current medical and scientific knowledge. An approach that, according to Ang, for the moment inevitably requires the involvement of human beings.