Ohm Health’s breathing lamp has just launched for preorders. (Photos courtesy Ohm Health)
After a few years in the making, a local health startup has just launched its first product.
Richmond-based Ohm Health recently began taking preorders for its “breathing lamp,” which is meant to help customers practice intentional breathing and measure biomarkers like heart rate and perspiration.
Ohm Health was founded by James McGoff, who previously co-founded Henrico packaging company TemperPack Technologies.
After leaving Temperpack last year, McGoff sought to channel his interest in the health benefits of people being able to control their breath and hit on the idea for the lamp.
The small glass table lamp allows customers to practice breathing in rhythm with the hum and glow of the light and gauges how their nervous system is doing through an optional free mobile app.
The lamp is available for preorder through the company’s website for $249. That price is limited to the first 2,000 preorders, after which the price will increase to $350.
The lamp company has received just over 500 preorders as of Dec. 18.
Ohm’s olive-shaped lamp is topped by a small, riverstone rock with built-in sensors.
When a user picks up the rock, it begins to purr, and the lamp, through both an illuminating and de-illuminating animation on its glass surface and a speaker hidden inside, coaches the user through a slow breathing exercise of around six breaths per minute, which McGoff said is designed to help lower stress and calm the nervous system.
The lamp glows blue when a user reaches a calm, parasympathetic state.
No app or subscription is required to use the lamp for accessibility, but if users want some stats, the stone’s sensors measure things like the user’s heart rate, how sweaty or dry the user’s hands are and other biomarkers. These stats are accessible through an optional, free mobile app.
Ohm partner John Briney told BizSense the company is trying to rack up its preorder numbers ahead of a fuller launch next year.
James McGoff (left) and John Briney
“Right now, we’re offering at a slight discount for anyone who is an early adopter,” Briney said. “We’re targeting trying to get about 5,000 preorders ahead of when we can be in-market, but we’re concurrently working with our production team to move forward with the production while we garner those preorders.”
He said that since July, the company has been full steam ahead on production. McGoff and others traveled to China in August to watch and help as 200 preproduction units of the lamp were built.
The company has since brought those lamps back to the U.S. and has been using them for final testing and marketing, including getting them in the hands of social media personalities to showcase and review (including McGoff’s sister, who has a career and life advice YouTube channel, AdviceWithErin).
Ohm plans to begin full-scale production of the lamps in March, and will likely place an order for between 5,000 and 10,000 units, Briney said. Ohm will continue to manufacture its lamps at a production facility in Shenzhen, China.
He added that the company is targeting the middle of next year for delivery on the lamp preorders.
The Ohm team recently showed the lamp off at the Eudemonia Summit, a three-day wellness and longevity conference in Palm Beach, Florida, where around 750 people tried the lamp to what Briney called overwhelmingly good feedback.
“Aside from the biofeedback aspect of it and how it generates a unique breathing pattern for whoever’s holding the stone, I think the biggest thing that we’ve seen (people like) is that it’s a screen-free device. You don’t have to use an app with it,” Briney said. “You just pick up the stone, you do the breathing exercise, put the stone back and you’re on your way.”
Briney said the Ohm team believes that the feedback on the lamps has “proved our proof of concept,” and they feel it is the right time to launch to the public for preorder.
And with the first 500-some preorders in hand, Briney has seen orders come in from across the U.S., as well as a sizable amount of people requesting international shipping, which is not yet offered but under consideration.
Users of the lamp can hold the stone to guide them through breathing exercises.
McGoff told BizSense in July that the company was nearing completion of its early-stage capital raise, bringing the total raised from investors thus far to about $1.9 million.
Ohm raised around $700,000 of that total last year, and will officially close on the rest of it at the end of the year, Briney said.
Briney added that the company will open a new capital round at the beginning of 2026 for a higher, undisclosed dollar amount. Those funds would go toward growing Ohm’s headcount to help take the product to market, as well as aiding manufacturing costs.
McGoff previously spent almost a decade at TemperPack, working alongside co-founders Charles Vincent and Brian Powers and exponentially growing the insulated packaging business to around 700 employees and several locations and manufacturing facilities.
He left TemperPack in April of last year, before incorporating Ohm and bringing in Briney, who was previously TemperPack’s head of brand.
Ohm Health now has a team of four, including McGoff, Briney and one Connecticut-based employee, as well as Jay Wiles, a Greenville, South Carolina-based athletic performance psychologist recently brought in to work with the team.
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