Sam Durgin

Product Design Leader

Sam DurginWhen I was in high school I watched my youth group leader, Jerry Voll, make a chair for a child with special needs. What started as a neighborly gesture developed into a family of products and a company that became Rifton Equipment.

Over the years I have appreciated working with Jerry and many others at Rifton who design our products. I enjoy the team work involved and working with therapists to meet the needs of children and adults with disabilities.

The latest design I have been working on is the Rifton Activity Chair. Check it out if you haven’t seen it!

I feel very blessed to be living at the Platte Clove community along with my wife Becky, and our six children. On the side I operate a hydroponic green house and maintain our blueberry patches.

News Announcing the Rifton Wave September 19, 2016 by Sam Durgin
A young girl with special needs smiling in a pink bath chair while her caregiver helps her with this activity of daily living
Hygiene and health go together. When we make bathing easier we have healthier clients. So we’ve always been interested in how we can improve our bath chair, and we have been collecting product design ideas for a long time. We’re happy to announce the launch of our all-new Wave system, a thoroughly reimagined bath system to make bathing or showering better—for the client and for the...
Stories Third Time Lucky November 26, 2013 by Sam Durgin
The cover of the book, Third Time Lucky by Michael George about a parents of a child with disabilities
It was in June 2009 that I first met Mike George. I was attending a MOVE International Trainers conference in Bakersfield, California, and Mike had flown all the way from New Brunswick to attend. There, he told me about his son Ben who had Cytomegalovirus (CMV) with resulting severe and multiple disabilities. Mike had met resistance from local therapists when trying to get the MOVE Curriculum adopted in...
News Designing the Rifton Activity Chair March 13, 2012 by Sam Durgin
disabilitydesignproducttools_feature
We have been making chairs for children with disabilities since the1970’s. Our first production models, though unique at the time, were primitive – plywood boxy frames covered with slots and knobs for adjustment. Over the years, as therapists’ input and suggestions flowed in, we continued tinkering and modifying the basic idea. Then about ten years ago we introduced the Rifton Seating...
News Announcing the New Small Size Activity Chair July 20, 2011 by Sam Durgin
A young boy in his small Rifton Activity Chair gets spoon fed by a woman using the device as a feeding chair.
The small Rifton Activity Chair is finally here. The success of the medium and large Rifton Activity Chairs prompted many requests for the chair to be sized for the smallest users. But it is not only a small Rifton Activity Chair. We considered the positioning needs within Early Intervention and designed something to match–a group of accessories we’re calling the “mini kit.” When...
News Announcing the Large Rifton Activity Chair March 21, 2011 by Sam Durgin
Medium (R850) hi/lo base Rifton Activity chair.
This week in our Catskill NY facility we are starting production of the large Rifton Activity Chair. It has taken us three years to get to this point. We began with two years of research and design, introduced the medium Rifton Activity Chair last spring, and spent the past 12 months designing and tooling hundreds of plastic molds to make the larger model. But it was worth it, because the chair was...