Motion Composites Brand Guidelines: Quebec’s Carbon-Fibre Wheelchair Maker

Two graduates and an idea about carbon fibre.

Motion Composites is a wheelchair maker based in Saint-Roch-de-l’Achigan, a town in Quebec’s Lanaudière region north of Montreal. On its careers page the company says it was started by Éric Simoneau and David Gingras after they graduated from university, “one with expertise in business and the other in composite materials,” and that their question was why ultralight wheelchairs could not be made from carbon fibre. Simoneau is still its president and chief executive; the company’s management page calls him a co-founder.

The company dates its first product to 2008, when it says it unveiled the Helio C1, its first lightweight carbon-fibre wheelchair, which it describes as the lightest adjustable folding chair on the market at the time. A run of models followed, by the company’s own timeline: the carbon-fibre Helio Kids for children in 2010, the aluminium Helio A7 in 2012, the first Veloce and a second-generation carbon chair, the Helio C2, in 2013, a heavy-duty Helio C2 HD in 2014 and a standard folding chair, the Move, in 2015. The rigid-framed Apex followed, and was named the most innovative product at the Canadian Seating and Mobility Conference in 2016, the company says.

Each step was framed in terms of weight. The company says the Helio C2 was 2.2 kilograms lighter than the C1, that the Helio C2 HD was built for users of up to 159 kilograms while weighing only 176 grams more than the standard C2, and that the Veloce was the first folding chair to be treated as a rigid wheelchair by Ontario’s Assistive Devices Program, the provincial funding scheme. These are the company’s descriptions of its own chairs.

The company now sells rigid, folding and paediatric wheelchairs, the NXT range of cushions and back supports, and Newton parts and accessories, and says its chairs are distributed in more than 30 countries. Its management page says that in 2019 Simoneau led the acquisition of Dynamic Health Care Solutions to widen the range.

Two Red Dots and a run of trade awards.

Motion Composites’ reputation rests on light frames and on design recognition from outside the wheelchair trade. In June 2019 Mobility Management, the American trade magazine for the seating and mobility business, reported that the carbon-fibre Veloce folding chair had won a Red Dot award for design, the company’s second after the rigid carbon-fibre Apex won one in 2017. The magazine dated the Veloce award to 2018 and said that version of the Veloce had been launched that year as the company’s most technically advanced folding model; the company’s own timeline lists the second Red Dot under 2019, for “the original elements of design of the VELOCE.”

Mobility Management quoted Simoneau saying that the company had been “laser-focused on developing best-in-class wheelchairs which are not only very light and durable, but also incorporate unique design elements,” and described the Veloce’s unibody frame with a symmetrical cross-brace, integrated impact guards and bubble levels for setting it up.

The company lists a string of other honours on its website. It says it received a Génie Innovation award from the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec, the province’s engineering order, in 2009 and again in 2018; that attendees of the Canadian Seating and Mobility Conference voted its chairs the most innovative product in 2010, 2013, 2014 and 2016; that the Apex received an HMEB New Product award in 2016; and that the Veloce won a Mobility Management award in the ultralight manual wheelchair category in 2019. In 2024 it says it was certified as an Elite Employer in Lanaudière.

The website’s own language talks of wheelchairs that “nourish a sense of freedom,” of “the world’s lightest—and coolest—carbon fiber wheelchairs,” and sets the idea of reduced mobility against what it calls the reality of increased mobility once someone has a good chair.

Design and documentation.

Wheelchair and seating makers sell to several audiences at once: the people who ride their chairs, the therapists and seating specialists who measure and prescribe them, and the dealers and funders who supply them. Their catalogues and websites tend to show all three sides together — people using chairs at home, at work, outdoors and in sport, next to plain product views and pages of measurements and options.

The product picture is often a clean side profile on a white or pale ground, which lets the frame line, wheel camber and seat angle read clearly. Close-ups follow the materials: welded aluminium and titanium tubes, carbon-fibre weave, castors, push rims and folding mechanisms. Some makers name their models after the frame material or the sport, and offer made-to-measure versions built to a rider’s own dimensions.

Sport is a large part of the visual language. Court chairs for wheelchair basketball, tennis and rugby, with steeply cambered wheels and rear anti-tip castors, appear alongside racing chairs and handbikes. An International Paralympic Committee feature from April 2013 noted that, beyond size rules, basketball-chair designers face few restrictions, and that recent advances had come mostly in materials and welding. Makers often show their chairs with Paralympic athletes and club teams, and some sponsor sports associations.

The trade meets at fairs. REHACARE in Düsseldorf describes itself as a trade fair for rehabilitation, prevention, inclusion and care, with its next edition set for September 2027; in the United States, Medtrade serves the home medical equipment trade. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it and where it says its chairs are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Quebec headquarters, a New York assembly line.

On where its chairs are made, Motion Composites describes itself as a company that specialises “in creating and manufacturing” ultralight folding and rigid wheelchairs. Its management page also says its vice-president for Asian operations, who came from the bicycle industry, built manufacturing partnerships in Asia for the company.

In June 2025 the company opened an assembly facility in Plattsburgh, New York, Mobility Management reported, to supply “U.S.-assembled wheelchairs to the American market.” The magazine said the site would start with selected models and ramp up gradually, and quoted the company saying that every chair assembled there is built to the same standards as at its Canadian headquarters. It described Motion Composites as Quebec-based, making rigid and folding ultralight chairs with carbon-fibre and aluminium frames in the Apex, Helio and Veloce lines.

The name invites confusion. Motion, formerly Motion Specialties, is a separate Canadian mobility-equipment provider with offices across the western and central provinces, which Numotion acquired in 2025, Mobility Management reported; it is not the Quebec wheelchair maker.

For a design guide, Motion Composites shows a maker that leads with materials and awards: carbon fibre, light frames and two Red Dots. Compare TiLite, another maker of ultralight manual chairs, and Sunrise Medical. For this guide we use carbon grey, graphite and a lake blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Motion Composites’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.