The HÅG Capisco is a classic ergonomic task chair designed more than 30 years ago for the Norwegian company HÅG by industrial designer, Peter Opsvik. It definitely doesn’t look like any other chair you’ve seen; it almost looks like something alien. When I first saw it at a trade show in Europe some years ago, I asked myself if it’s different simply for the sake of being different, or if there’s something more going on here. There’s a story.


Part of the story has to do with HÅG and a Swedish company named Flokk. Headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Flokk has a history of merger and acquisition. Not the nasty kind of M&A history where the acquiring company buys a company, strips it to make it look more profitable than it really is, and then sells it at a big profit. No, Flokk has bought and held companies, investing to help them grow – both through organic growth and through allowing them to leverage one another’s strengths where synergies exist.
Until 2019 almost all of Flokk’s acquisitions were of Scandinavian companies, but then on the cusp of the great pandemic shutdown, Flokk USA acquired 9to5 Seating and its manufacturing facility in Hawthorne, CA.
True to the strategy of leveraging synergies when they exist, an obvious synergy exists between HÅG and 9to5 Seating – they each operate in a similar market space, but on different continents. Placing the HÅG Capisco with 9to5 Seating for distribution in North America was a no brainer.
And that’s where this officeinsight story begins. Well at least it began in the 9to5 showroom at NeoCon 2021, where it was introducing a new, lighter-weight, plastic version of HÅG Capisco, called HÅG Capisco Puls.
When Su Pak, Director of Marketing at 9to5 Seating asked me to do a product review of Capisco I was pleased to agree. Among other things, it would give me a chance to answer that question I had asked myself when I first saw the chair.

The specific chair I’m reviewing is a fully upholstered 8106 CY29. I received it at my office, unassembled, in a very well-made corrugated box. The assembly was extremely simple. I consider myself a chair-guy, so I figured out how to assemble it without looking at (or for) instructions, but for those who know enough to know what they don’t know, there is an assembly instruction video in the “Media Galley,” here.
On the same page as the assembly instructions, there’s a short video of Peter Opsvik talking about the inspiration for the design of the chair – which turns out to be the posture of equestrians when in the saddle. Given the shape of the seat perhaps that’s obvious. But he goes on to say that while he wanted the chair to encourage that perfect equestrian posture, he thinks sitting in any posture too long is not perfect. So while the shape may look like a saddle and while he thinks the equestrian posture is good, his true intent was to make the chair easily and comfortably accommodate, perhaps even encourage, many postures.

After the quick assembly I rolled the new chair up to my desk and tested it out. I knew that really understanding how to best use the chair would take some time, but as with any new “toy,” I was anxious to give it a test run longer than the usual 15 seconds you get in a showroom.
Here’s where my behavior was like that of most users of new chairs – I didn’t bother trying to read-up on how to adjust it. But my initial assessment was positive. The seat is firm but comfortable, adjustment of the backrest height is so simple, no instructions are required. There’s a round black plastic control (see detail photo) designed to let your thumb and index finger grasp and pull it, which releases the back lock and lets you set the height at any spot in its range that gives you the best lumbar support.
The forward lever on the left side (front facing) releases the forward & back seat depth adjustment and locks when release anywhere along its range. The aft lever on the left side is for seat height, pretty much the same way we’re very accustomed to adjusting seat height. On the right side (front facing) is a tilt lock. The seat and back tilt in unison and there’s knob underneath the seat to adjust the tilt tension.
In my showroom tour Ms. Pak demonstrated several of the postures the chair accommodates, including the one with the backrest in front of you rather than behind. Over the weeks of my test, I’ve tried all the positions shown in the illustrations included here and it’s true that the design of the chair makes it a snap to change from one to another. But over the long haul of a workday, I found myself sitting equestrian style most of the time. I try to remember to sit and stand, but unless I set the timer, I pretty much sit. But when I do stand the chair seems to automatically roll out of the way and at its full height position it makes a nice perch.

One benefit of the seat shape is that there is no pressure on your hamstrings (biceps femoris, longus) including when you’re seated sideways or backwards. Speaking of sitting backwards, if you have a big belly like some people we know, you probably won’t sit backwards much – lumbar support is for lumbars not big bellies! But when you do sit backwards, the funky armrests align perfectly with your elbows, and the position is completely free of thigh pressure. I found that adjusting my desktop height so that my elbows rested on the arms in a straight line to the desktop created a very comfortable position for keyboarding.


So now to answer my original question: HÅG Capisco looks a bit alien, but there are very good reasons for every alien-looking aspect of its design. And as soon as you start thinking of it as derived from an equestrian (not western-style) saddle, and experience the intuitive way the back and its arms automatically support you in multiple positions it doesn’t seem alien anymore.