The Secret(lab) to success – how two pro players created a gaming chair empire
In conversation with Secretlab co-founder and CEO Ian Ang about the incredible success of its gaming chair business
Secretlab has seen an incredible trajectory in its nearly 12 years of operation. Started as a passion project by two professional gamers in Singapore, it has grown to be a billion-dollar company and the authority in gaming chairs and desks. Through the global pandemic, it saw a huge rise in demand by those looking to kit out their home office, and since then, it has refined its offering and brought in new solutions to bolster its range.
Today, Secretlab still has a very select line of products, but is about to launch what could be its boldest move yet. The Atlas is a chair aimed directly at the home office market, for users who want the comfort of a gaming chair, in a smaller, more manageable form. I sat down with co-founder and CEO Ian Ang in his Singapore headquarters to discuss the gaming roots, product development and aesthetic evolution of the company he and Alaric Choo have built
One thing that struck me about the Secretlab team was how many of them come from a serious gaming background, and having that passion in the team must impact the way they work. Ang explains that it’s especially important that his product developers and engineers are using their products. “We need to know what the users want, and I guess it's a loop as well, because if we start out as a gaming company, of course, more gamers will join.”
But Secretlab doesn’t just appeal to gamers these days, and while Ang admits they have tried to broaden the audience, it has mostly happened naturally. “I guess if the chairs are good enough for gamers to sit for 16 hours a day, then it should be good enough for an office user who uses it less so, says Ang. “Especially when the pandemic came around, and people were looking for a good chair to work from home.”
Gaming remains the company’s core audience, though, and Ang knows how important it is to keep that in mind. “They are the people that we understand the best,” he adds. “I think a lot of companies forget that and get too greedy.” In many ways, it was Secretlab’s true gaming credentials that gave it wider appeal.
Growing with its audience
While some Secretlab chairs do have a louder gaming look, part of their charm has been that they are often more reserved in styling than the competition, making them more suited to use outside of a gaming environment. This hasn’t just come from the audience’s tastes. “Part of it is our own taste as well,” says Ang. “It's been 11 years. All of us are millennials. So, as we grew up, it probably contributed.”
Success for Secretlab has often come, not from saying yes to things, but from saying no. While there is always a temptation to chase new markets, its slim product line is a purposeful choice and one that has allowed the company to stay focused. “There's only so much attention we have in the company, especially amongst the management team,” says Ang. “We've got to spend it purposefully.”
For the company to enter a new area, it has to believe it can do things better than what’s currently on offer, not just copy what is currently in the market. So Secretlab focuses on the areas it has expertise in, innovating and leading the sector rather than branching out into areas it doesn’t – but that doesn’t mean everything is off the cards. “There are other categories that we are actively thinking about,” says Ang. We'll always start by looking at the market, and then we see if there's a problem that we can solve.”
Most of Secretlab’s sales are still made direct to the customer, via its website, rather than via a retailer. Something Ang says allows them to not only keep costs down but also maintain that direct feedback with their users. “Any time somebody complains about a chair or has an issue, it goes directly to one of the desks [here],” says Ang. “That feedback goes directly to us, and we feel very responsible for it.”
Since the early days, Secretlab has had partnerships with big brands in the gaming space, providing special edition chairs, chair covers and desk toppers. “At the start, this was more of a passion thing,” says Ang. “A lot of these brands are ones that we grew up with.” One of the biggest was the Game of Thrones partnership that came at the height of the show’s success. Today, the list includes DC, Harry Potter, and luxury car brands such as McLaren and Lamborghini.
“We try to find more meaningful crossovers,” says Ang. It helps that our product is of good quality.” The team goes the extra mile in creating each piece, pulling in staff who are fans of the brand to help direct the project, from the product design to the marketing.
The office chair
So is the new Atlas office chair a departure for Secretlab or a natural progression for a brand with more than 10 years in furniture design? “This is our take on what we think the modern task chair should be, based on our understanding of ergonomics. And we've had 10 years to learn,” says Ang. Pulling in research it has worked on with prestigious universities around the world, and from its own advisory board, it was well placed to have an opinion on the market.
The premise is that a chair should provide not only support for a focused position, but also for you to rest in between – something gaming chairs are especially good at. “Many so-called ergonomic task chairs don't account for the rest part, says Ang. “When users stop sitting upright, they're going to end up sitting very wrongly because your chair is meant to accommodate them sitting upright. It's fitting a square peg in a round hole.”
Keeping to that signature Secretlab style rather than a traditional mesh design is also likely to appeal to existing users, or maybe those who want something to fit a more lifestyle feel. “Something that we hear quite often is that people love Secretlab as a brand, but the chairs don't fit in their office or workspace,” says Ang. “So we are hoping that this will fill the gap better.”
“There's another potential use case,” says Ang. “In my house, I have a gaming area, and then I have a small office area to free myself from the gaming distractions. So some users, now they're older millennials, might go for something like this.”
With the Atlas, Secretlab wants to create a chair for 2026, something modern. After all, even its flagship chair is now four years old, and the NanoGen edition, which launched two years ago, keeps to the same design. “We wanted to see Secretlab at the forefront of modern setups,” says Ang. “You have brands that have been around for like decades, and some of their most popular products might be from the eighties.”
To achieve this, it has created a new modern silhouette with a gently curved back – something that gave the designers looking to cover it with a single piece of fabric a real headache. They then introduced a new colour – the Dune model, which is a sandy beige – and colour-matched the parts on the upgraded Plus model for a more premium look.
It wasn’t a short process, though. The Atlas has been in the works now for four years. “We try not to rush the products too much,” says Ang. “That's also the beauty of having a founder-led company. We can choose what we think is right for the user and right for the company in the long run."
A material strategy
The two main fabrics used for the Atlas mirror that of the current Titan Evo – a softweave and a leatherette, in this case, the new NanoGen that delivers a real leather alternative. Though Secretlab has previously offered a premium Nappa leather option for its flagship chair, this hasn’t been carried forward here.
“The NanoGen leather we developed is just so superior, and the maintenance is so easy compared to genuine leather, says Ang. “We're not saying completely no to [leather]. It's more that if we go for a non-leatherette, there have to be actual benefits, and it has to be better.”
Leathers are associated with premium products, but also with an older, conservative audience, which is maybe not in keeping with this modern interpretation of an office chair. “With the NanoGen, performance-wise, the softness and the smoothness should be pretty similar. But the Nappa leather would be more expensive and more difficult to maintain,” says Ang.
A choice of chairs
Some might be surprised that the Atlas isn’t significantly cheaper than the Titan Evo. In fact, the starting price is within one hundred dollars/pounds of the Titan. According to Ang, that’s because it’s not designed to be a budget option. “When it comes to Atlas versus the Titan Evo, it's honestly more of a personal preference. But, if you talk about the Titan Evo versus the previous Titan or the previous Omega, it's a superior chair,” says Ang.
The budget market isn’t an area Secretlab is keen to enter, having carved its niche as a premium chair manufacturer. “A common question we get asked is, 'Will we make a mass market chair or desk?' Like a $200 or $300 chair,” says Ang. “We're just not set up that way. When you make a chair at that price point, there is honestly very little innovation. It's more about looking at your current chair and then seeing what you can strip down or make cheaper. We could do it, but that's not what the team's strengths are, and of course, from a branding perspective, we wouldn’t want to be positioned this way.”
The premium market has allowed Secretlab’s designers the freedom to come up with new, innovative ideas. Something that a budget product wouldn’t allow. “The Atlas backrest design would have been out of the window if we were a budget brand, because to modify the manufacturing and the base materials requires the cost per unit to go up,” says Ang. “And the engineering required to get it done, you have to invest in that as well.”
It’s difficult to know what Secretlab will look like in another 10 years, but if the Atlas is the success it has the potential to be, the trajectory is only upwards. While there continues to be a solid market for premium home gaming chairs and desks, and no sign of the remote or hybrid working policies reversing on a global scale, Secretlab is in safe hands.
