Q&A With Hoveround's Tom Kruse

When you turn onto Whitfield Industrial Way in Sarasota, Fla., you're turning into Hoveround territory. In an unassuming industrial park, Hoveround Corp., homegrown by Founder and President Tom Kruse, spans several buildings and a process that begins with raw steel and ends with customer delivery of its well-known power wheelchairs. “I like control,” Kruse states simply.

Since breaking with tradition to sell its products direct to consumers, the company has occupied what some would call an enviable, and others objectionable, position in the HME industry. There is no question that its national television advertising remains controversial. Many beneficiaries say that Hoveround has bettered their lives; many manufacturers and providers view the company as an arch-foe.

Recently, Kruse spoke with HomeCare about his company's background and its integrated business model, along with his thoughts on the industry, its future and Hoveround's place in it.

HC: How did you come up with the idea for Hoveround?

Kruse: I saw a need for a product.

The fact of the matter was that power chairs were getting bigger and bigger. They were really manual chairs with motors on them, and to accommodate the motors and the batteries, they got to be bigger and bigger chairs.

At that time, there were 500,000 older people living in mobile homes in Florida. They couldn't get down the hallway and into the bathroom in a power chair. They couldn't get down the hallway and into the bathroom in a manual chair. And retirement centers were complaining that their residents were complaining that the chairs were dangerous, big. People couldn't turn around in the elevator; there were accidents with people getting hit by chairs, etc.

So I came up with the idea that if I could build a small, super-maneuverable chair that could turn on itself, and was round, which made a lot more sense than square, that it would be a niche market. I thought it would be a very cool, small Florida market for mobile homes and retirement centers.

That was my first invention and first patent. I built the first prototype in my garage and took it to the nursing home and retirement center administrators, and that's how it all started.

HC: Was there much product differentiation at that point?

Kruse: I felt, obviously, there was. Now someone else may say differently, but we were really the first small maneuverable chair. That was our claim to fame coming out.