Ready to Buy Church Chairs? 5 Important Considerations

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How Does the Church Chair Sit?

Nothing will be used more in your church than your church chairs. If you have not noticed, when people come to church, they do like to sit much of the time. Therefore it is critical that the chairs your church decides upon provide a high level of comfort to your attendees for an extended length of time. One of the ways to be more assured the seats you are considering will accomplish this is to expose your sample church chairs to an extensive period of testing. Have different staff members and church leaders sit on a sample for a couple of hours at a time, perhaps at their work desk, or in their living room watching television, or at other environments. We see too many churches use the 60 second rear end test in making a decision on which church chairs they will be purchasing. But worship services do not last just 60 seconds. They are lengthy and it is reasonable to try out the chairs you are considering for a similar time period. To make sure your new chairs will be comfortable over an extended period of time, try them out for an extended period of time.

Who Made the Church Chair?

Obviously someone has to make the chairs that you are considering for your church. Try to find out who that really is. There are many domestic chair dealers and distributors who have nothing to do with actually producing/manufacturing of worship seating. Rather, factories in China and elsewhere contact them and ask them to sell their chairs. The factories are trying to move their chairs so they allow the chair dealers and distributors to “private label” those chairs in any way they would like. The domestic dealers and distributors will then market those church chairs in such a way as to give the impression they are actually producing the chairs when in actuality they are just purchasing them and reselling them. So how does your church discover if they are working with an actual domestic-based manufacturer of church chairs or a reseller for an independent foreign factory? Our recommendation is to ask questions such as these: “Who actually owns the tooling that made these church chairs?” “Who do the molds belong to?” “Can you provide a copy of the quality control process?” “How long have you been making this same chair?” “Can you provide the names of some church customers who purchased this same chair at that time?” If answers to these questions and others seem evasive and forced, chances are the church chairs you are considering are actually produced by an intentionally hidden entity.

Is there a Simple and Complete Warranty Certificate?

One church chair importer we know of refuses to even provide a warranty certificate. Hopefully that will be enough in itself for any church to move on to other suppliers who will provide a warranty certificate. But even when your church is provided such a certificate, there is addition scrutiny necessary. Chair warranties can be written in such a way to place a huge onus on the church, so much so that they become essentially unenforceable. We suggest churches ask for actual examples of problems churches experienced with the chairs they are considering and how those issues were resolved. Providing chairs is the easy part of the process; standing behind the chairs that have been provided is the more difficult part of the process. Make sure the warranty for the chairs you are considering has some teeth to it!

What does the Church Chair Cost?

This is certainly one consideration that churches do not be reminded of to ask about. In most cases, it is the first question asked. As a result, church chair suppliers have produced lines of chairs that compete to be the lowest-priced church chair model on the market today. But just as there are big differences between automobile models such as a Honda Accord and a Honda Civic and a Yugo, there are huge differences in church chair models. With car models though there is an intuitive recognition that while a Yugo will cost far less it will not remotely possess the quality of a Honda Accord. It is important for churches to understand that the under $30.00 church chair that carries such an attractive price point will also have its quality reduced significantly in order for that selling price to be achieved.

What Church Chair Works Best in your Unique Space?

All worship chairs are not the same when it comes to function and usability. For example, if your worship space requires you to take up your chairs each week and store them so that space can be used for other purposes, then there are some chairs that will facilitate that better than others. If your storage space to store your worship seating when stacked is very limited, then again there are some chairs that will be more appropriate for you to consider. This is why true manufacturers of chairs for churches will have multiple lines of seating with various options and attributes. A “one size fits all” church chair supplier does not exist though sellers will do their best to convince you their chair does just that.

Conclusion:

Working through these five important considerations during your church chair purchasing process will certainly increase the chances that your chair purchase will be the best one for your church!