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 the mystical christ 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.
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.
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!
