Golden Technologies Brand Guidelines: The Lift Chair Maker That Started in a Garage

Robert Golden Sr. and Fred Kiwak, 1985.

Golden Technologies began in 1985 in a one-car garage in northeastern Pennsylvania. Its founders were Robert Golden Sr. and Fred Kiwak, and the product from the first day was the power lift chair: a motorised armchair that reclines and also rises to bring the person sitting in it up toward standing.

The location comes in two versions. The company’s website today says the garage was in Pittston. HomeCare magazine in April 2014 and the British trade magazine THIIS in September 2019 both said West Pittston. The two are neighbouring communities in the Greater Pittston area, so the difference is small, but the sources do not agree. All of them agree on 1985.

The company frames the start in regional terms. It calls its history “a story that defines the American dream,” and places the garage in a small town “where families worked hard to survive as the Pennsylvania coal mining era was ending.” Golden and Kiwak, it says, worked with craftsmen from the region to design and build lift chairs made to withstand years of use. It also says the founders brought more than 100 years of combined experience in manufacturing and retail furniture.

The business soon became a family operation, the company says, employing members of both the Golden and Kiwak families. Robert Golden’s son Richard, known in the trade press as Rich, was among the first employees and was named chief executive in 1991. THIIS reported in 2019 that Robert Golden Sr. had retired from day-to-day activities and that Kiwak remained involved as vice president of research and development. The company’s website in 2026 lists Rich Golden as president and CEO, and Fred Kiwak as “Founding Father & VP of R&D.” It describes the company as family-owned and operated.

From lift chairs to the Buzzaround.

Golden’s range sits in two divisions, a split it uses in its own trade announcements: power lift recliners on one side, mobility on the other. Its website sorts the catalogue into lift recliners, mobility scooters, power wheelchairs and hi-low beds.

The recliners are where the company’s named technology lives. MaxiComfort is its patented positioning system, and the PR766 Relaxer, according to a company announcement carried by HomeCare in April 2022, was “the original MaxiComfort chair.” In May 2018 HomeCare reported the launch of the PR514 MaxiComfort with Twilight cradle technology, unveiled that March at Medtrade Spring in Las Vegas and released first to the company’s Flagship retailers. That report described a patent-pending three-motor mechanism; in 2019 Rich Golden told THIIS the chair had a patented five-motor mechanism. A 2021 announcement described a “Comfort Zone” system of up to five adjustable positioning zones and saying Golden offered “the only five-zone luxury power lift recliners in the world.” That is the company’s claim, not an independent finding.

Chairs are identified by PR codes alongside names such as Relaxer and Comforter. At Medtrade in Dallas in March 2023, HomeCare reported, the company planned to show new chairs including the open-arm PR504 and a Comforter version, the PR545, with Twilight fitted as standard.

The mobility side has a different voice. Its scooter family is the Buzzaround, joined by the BuzzAbout power wheelchair, and the company leans into the pun: its trade announcements invite retailers to “see what the buzz is all about.” The 2023 Dallas announcement listed the Buzzaround LT, which it called the smallest and lightest in the series, the heavy-duty Buzzaround XLSHD and the Golden Eagle GR595 scooter with vibrant red shrouds. It also named two folding power wheelchairs, the Cricket and the Stride. THIIS also recorded the Buzzaround LX, in three-wheel and four-wheel models, in 2019, and a 2021 announcement named the GB120 Buzzaround CarryOn folding scooter.

Showrooms and trade halls.

Wheelchairs, walkers and scooters have their own route to market. Writing in 1991, the journalist Joseph Shapiro noted that, unlike virtually every other product, wheelchairs were not sold directly to users but marketed through occupational and physical therapists and medical supply dealers. Today’s makers still describe much the same route: Platinum Equity said in 2024 that Sunrise Medical sells through homecare dealers and distributors, and Invacare’s 2024 announcement named home medical equipment providers alongside retail and online channels.

Catalogues in this trade deal in frames, seats and options. The International Directory of Company Histories described one popular Sunrise chair of the early 1990s as made in one-inch steps of back height, seat depth and seat width. Colour sits on the same order form: Sunrise Medical’s 2025 frame palette gave its shades names of their own, such as Midnight Blue and Turbo Green.

Trade fairs are the category’s public stage. Rehacare, which German Wikipedia says began in 1977 and has been run by Messe Düsseldorf since 1999, shows aids including mobility products to users and relatives as well as to specialists; its organisers list the next edition for September 2027. Medtrade, in the United States, is a trade conference for medical supplies, according to English Wikipedia.

The people in the pictures matter too. Shapiro wrote that Quickie’s brochures showed its chairs in use by active people, at the office and elsewhere, and Sunrise Medical’s American website today quotes named wheelchair users in their own words on work and travel. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made, with the company’s own claims marked as such.

“Build it right the first time.”

The company’s site sets out a pledge for each of its leaders: “Build it right the first time” for Robert Golden Sr., “Do the right thing. Live by the Golden Rule” for Rich Golden, and “Take care of the customer first. Sort out the details later” for Fred Kiwak. The first, it says, hangs on a banner above the manufacturing floor in Old Forge. It also gives its home town a joke title, “Pizza and Lift Chair Capital of the World.”

The record on manufacturing is specific about the chairs. HomeCare reported in 2018 that they were hand-crafted in Old Forge, quoting Rich Golden: “Golden chairs are made by Americans.” In April 2014 the same magazine and Mobility Management reported a new distribution warehouse of nearly 100,000 square feet in Laflin, Pennsylvania, freeing the old Old Forge distribution building for an added 50,000 square feet of manufacturing space. The 2014 report placed mobility operations in Kingston, Pennsylvania, and a 2022 report described a new distribution centre of more than 170,000 square feet. The made-in-America language in these reports refers to the lift chairs; the reports do not say where scooters and wheelchairs are built. The company says it provides jobs for nearly 500 Americans.

Size claims come from the company or its announcements. Its website calls it the world’s leading manufacturer of power lift recliners, power wheelchairs and mobility scooters, and the 2014 HomeCare item called it the world’s largest maker of power lift and recline chairs. Its sales run through retailers, thousands of them across the United States by its count, with a top tier it calls Flagship retailers. Abroad, Rich Golden told THIIS in 2019 that the company preferred one distributor in each country, and it made its first appearance at the Rehacare trade fair in Düsseldorf that September as part of a European push.

For a design guide, Golden Technologies shows how a family firm can make a garage, a town and a spoken promise do the work of a brand book. Compare Pride Mobility, also based in northeastern Pennsylvania, at Duryea, and also a seller of lift recliners, and Stannah, a British family firm that makes stairlifts. For this guide we use a bronze, a walnut and a cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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