We didn't set out to build a cushion company. We set out to sit through a workday without wanting to cry.

Hi, I'm Tom, and Getlayerse started in a spare bedroom in Manchester, on the worst office chair £45 could buy.

When everything moved home, I thought I'd landed on my feet. No commute, no packed train, working in my own space. What nobody warned me about was the chair. Nine, ten, eleven hours a day, plopped down on flat foam that gave up sometime around lunch. It crept up on me slowly. Fine at 9am. Stiff by 1pm. By the end of the day, standing up took a second, that awkward little pause where you're not quite sure your body's going to cooperate.

Then it stopped being an end-of-day thing and became an all-day thing. The pressure right on my tailbone. Constantly shifting in my seat trying to find the one position that didn't hurt. That specific feeling, like sitting on a steel bench pressing straight against the bone. If you know, you know.

I did what everyone does. I told myself I just needed to sit up straighter. I looked at the £800 ergonomic chairs and closed the tab. I bought a cheap cushion off a marketplace that flattened out within a fortnight. I tried the donut one, and quietly hated how it looked, half convinced a colleague on a video call would think I'd got piles.

The thing that got me wasn't even the pain. It was the maths. I was 34, and my back was already worse than my dad's. I read that nearly a million people in this country are off work because of back and neck problems, and I could suddenly see exactly how you get there, one ignored ache at a time.

So I got obsessive. I tried every format I could get my hands on, memory foam, inflatable, cut-out, gel. Gel was the closest, but the ones I found had their own problems: some went rock-hard, especially left in a cold car overnight (very on-brand for a British winter). Some were like sitting on a brick. Most looked like medical equipment.

What I actually wanted didn't exist: something that took the shape of me instead of forcing me to sit on top of it. Firm where you need support, giving way exactly where it hurts. Something that didn't bottom out after a month. Something that stayed workable when it's cold. And, genuinely important to me, something that just looked like a nice cushion, not like a confession.

That "something" became Getlayerse.

The name is the whole idea, really. Your comfort isn't one thing, it's layers. A gel layer that moulds to you and lifts the pressure off your tailbone. Support underneath that holds its shape drive after drive, day after day. We got it wrong plenty of times. Too soft, too firm, too hot, slid around. We kept going until the first time I sat down at my desk and felt relief the second I landed, not "maybe after a while," but straight away.

I'm not going to insult you with a miracle claim. A cushion won't rebuild your posture or undo years of sitting, anyone who tells you that is having you on. What it does is take the pressure off so you can get through your day, your drive, your dinner, while you sort the rest out. For me that was the difference between dreading sitting down and just... getting on with it.

If your chair is slowly doing you in, at the desk, behind the wheel, at the kitchen table, I built this because I was exactly where you are. And I'd love for it to give you the same quiet relief it gave me.

Tom, Getlayerse ·