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NEW ZEALAND SPINAL TRUST 16<br />
“A Game Changer”<br />
Mike Brown explains the story behind the LapStacker<br />
Mike Brown with the LapStacker. He says the aim of Adaptdefy is to create more game changing products for people with mobility concerns.<br />
Mike Brown is an ideas man. The 43-year-old<br />
from Christchurch, who sustained an SCI in<br />
2012, started Adaptdefy in 2020, a media and<br />
product development company on a mission<br />
to increase freedom for wheelchair users and<br />
the adaptive community.<br />
We caught up with the former NZST Spinal Trust<br />
Marketing and Community Manager to talk about the<br />
LapStacker and what it means to have ACC backing it.<br />
—Mike Brown<br />
The aim of Adaptdefy is to<br />
create more game changing<br />
products for people with<br />
mobility concerns.<br />
For the uninitiated, what is the LapStacker?<br />
The LapStacker is the world’s first retractable system for<br />
wheelchairs. Essentially if you want to carry something<br />
on your lap as a wheelchair user, it’s often difficult to do<br />
so without the item falling off. You are pushing the<br />
wheelchair with your hands and you can’t hold onto<br />
something because your hands are occupied.<br />
The LapStacker is a self-locking, strap system that you<br />
can pull up from your side and you latch the metal buckle<br />
over the item you wish to carry, and it locks it down onto<br />
your lap. It’s great because you no longer have to worry<br />
about things falling off your lap.<br />
How did you come up with the idea?<br />
Like most ideas, the LapStacker was borne out of a need<br />
that I had. To put it simply, I was sick of dropping things<br />
and feeling frustrated and slow and embarrassed. We<br />
were renovating our house and I was carrying an<br />
assortment of tools and an open-top toolbox. The tools all<br />
fell off my lap as I was coming out of the garage and into<br />
the house. They went everywhere. I thought to myself,<br />
this just sucks. So, I thought how can I stop this from<br />
happening, and that’s where it started.
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