Hi everyone I've made a Discord for further discussions: discord.gg/4DWvahY94U. I'm also more likely to respond there as TH-cam comments aren't always the most ideal places for conversation. Thank you!
As a father of three teenagers and an avid home office user myself, I totally see your point. There's been a lot of breaking and replacing over the years... Add to that my recurrent back problems (I'm 6'3") and a proper office chair really makes a lot of sense!
Yes I actually started thinking about this topic when I started to have back and wrist pain last year. Turns out - it was mostly because i didn't have my seat adjusted properly. I have a leap chair at work, but I had it too low, not far back enough, and arms not at the right places. After I got it adjusted, the pain has significantly decreased. But as I type this, I'm currently sitting in a very uncomfortable Ikea chair at home, which I think I really need to replace soon.
The spinning chair at 1:48 is a Steelcase Leap chair, the most comfortable chair I've ever sat in. It was my desk chair at work for eight years, and it held up well in addition to being very ergonomic and very comfortable. It originally retailed for about $900, but it's totally worth it.
one fun point you might have missed is they are so expensive because people are willing to pay that much. While each process does add to the cost they would only do it if they could sell it. If companies would pay $10,000 for a chair then chair manufacturers would find $10,000 of features and upgrades to add. It's always fun to investigate 1) what people are willing to pay and 2) the marketing around convincing people to pay more. Maybe one day some company will invest some new tech or process that they can market in a way to charge even more for a chair.
Yes this is a good point. Really a lot of products are worth what they're worth because people are willing to pay for it. But in general, the issue I face is - I sometimes deal with clients who always want to cheapen out on the products in their projects. And I'm trying to convince them that there is intrinsic value in investing in a more expensive product - and it's not just all hype and market inflation. Thus I decided to not touch on that point in this video. But - it definitely is still one of the driving factors of cost.
also good points! Though I don't think it's all smoke and mirrors. Like one cost you outlined is ergonomics research. That has a cost and there is a clear benefit. But that benefit might not have been widely agree on once upon a time. The first chair to have "ergonomics research" probably needed really good marketing to convince people ti was worth paying for. Maybe today since it's more widely accepted you don't need to market it as hard. But if you came up with some new chair tech that made sitting a lot better / heather / whatever you would have to do the extra marketing to show people it was worth what ever the extra cost was. And the bigger the extra cost the better you would have to convince people. talking with cheap clients is always hard. but I wish you the best of luck!
All excellent points both of you. I just want to add that corporations, and IMO, especially government offices don't mind paying more than premium if they think they can write it off or if the contract is with some executive's relative. Of course, I can't prove my hypothesis, but I can tell you that I've seen offices pay WAY above the market price for office items. I'm not talking $10 above; I'm talking paying $100 for an item, when you can get it for $20 item on Amazon.ca. And don't forget the services they pay for, which can be hundreds of dollars when you can do it for almost nothing, like re-routing network connections. Reckless and outrageous spending.
Thing is, these chairs are mostly bought by companies, and budget is always on their mind. If they could get away with 50$, or even 200$ chairs, they would buy those. But a 50-200$ chair will need replacement more often, and servicing them so often is out of the question because it's simply not worth the money for parts and labor to do it. All while keeping your employees(including the ones that decided to buy them) miserable on crappy chairs that always break. If you go by the average life expectancy of these chairs, which is common to be around 10 years, it's really not that expensive. It's just that people have a hard time putting a cost into long-term perspective. (I'm talking about the "western" lifestyle, where some people pay 5$ on coffee each day) If you actually go and try them out, you will see it's not just marketing and hype, they do scale with price. Yes they are expensive, but they are not overhyped. No you don't need to buy one and can live a perfectly healthy life without one, but what would you rather use for 10 years? A great ergonomic chair, or 5 mediocre ones? What about after 10 years, would any of those 5 chairs still be fixable and usable in any way?
OMG! I ran into this video again after over a year! Saw this in December 2017 and finally pulled the trigger on a leather Steelcase Leap. I spent almost $2k on it; but worth every penny. I've been using it for a year now (I work from home) and I long for it when I actually go in to my office on days I have meetings. The standard company chairs aren't anything like the leap. THANK YOU for this video!!!!
Years ago I bought a Scandinavian RH 24x7 task chair. It cost the equivalent in today's money of 1700 USD even with a discount. It's 15 years old has been used each day for most of that and nothing has needed to be replaced yet. All original arms, casters & upholstery and still very comfortable. The cost /year of this comfort was very modest. Cheap chairs are a false economy. The missus had multiple cheap chairs over the years until I persuaded her to get an Ergohuman Plus which she loves & has greatly reduced her back problems. I'm not suggesting you need to spend 1500 USD on a chair but over 700USD is reasonable if you actually plan on working long hours.
My favorite chair: Marcus from IKEA, designed by Henrik Preutz, it comes with a 10 year guarantee and costs only around $150,- After 12 years sitting on my first Marcus, for an estimated 12,000 hours, I now have my second Marcus. The first one is still OK, but the head rest is looking a bit worn. The best bit is the mesh on the chair-back so you don't stick to it in hot weather. (Most Europeans DON'T have aircon.).
I can tell you from experience the Herman Miller Aeron Chair needs a major update. It is the standard chair at my office and the hard plastic frame on the left and right sides needs some kind of cushion because they are exposed and encroach on the actual seating area. Also the arms do not have the ability to tilt down at the front and they tend to collide with the underside of a desk so I tend to lower them out of the way even though I cannot use them at all at that point. P.S. I design things in an engineering firm for a living so I am a bit picky about this sort of thing. That said I cannot understate how important it is to get a decent chair that is credibly rated for 6-8+ hours of use even it is to used for 3-4 hours. The reason I say this is when you think about it most people spend an extended period of time throughout the day. We sit in the office, we sit in our cars or buses or trains when we go anywhere, and we also for the most part sit at home when we are doing things like paying the bills or watching TH-cam etc.
Another thing, for example the Aeron comes with a 12 year warranty. For 12 years if something breaks you call the dealer, they send someone ( in my area that would be me) to assess the issue, order parts, and repair the chair.
I went through a period where I basically had a perpetual cheapo Office Depot chair. I paid for the 3-year extended warranty each time my $150 chair broke after 1-2 years, so I was essentially only paying $15-30 a year after the initial purchase. This was a pretty good racket, but also extremely wasteful in the grand scheme of things. Cue my father ranting about how in his day you could buy an all steel fan that, while relatively expensive compared to what you can buy today, would last you a lifetime.
It's the same with bicycles. Years ago I decided to cycle commute, and got a cheap bike at Wal-Mart. The pedal snapped off about three weeks in, and I wound up replacing it with a second-hand bike I picked up for like $100. What I didn't know is that bike retailed for anywhere from 4-5 times that. The bike has held up for eleven years with a few parts replaced. Tired, wheels, brakes. Frame is solid as a rock and I've probably spent less than the retail price of the bike. Quality products don't always cost a lot, and expensive things can also be junk. But some quality items are worth every single penny. Choose wisely
I got a RH400 chair. They are about £1400 now. The mechanism is still original and works. Some of the plastic trim snapped off, but because its cosmetic, I couldn’t be bothered to replace it. Its on the 3rd seat pad. 2nd set of arm pads. 2nd lumbar adjust bulb. The chair is 18 years old now. When a bit wears out, I just buy a replacement. Not sure I will ever replace the chair in its entirety, just replace bits that wear out. I have pulled multiple deadlines, working 16hrs a day in it, without feeling anything negative in my body. What is weird is that it never feels comfortable in a conventional sense, in that your muscles never relax off fully, it keeps moving and your body has to make small adjustments to accommodate. In normal cheap chairs, I have about 2hours before I get some sort of twinge in my body, or a dead leg, stiff neck etc.
I have some lumbar issues and while a “low quality” 60€ chair might be ok for fork for most people, I cannot spend more than two hours before my back aches. In my previous job we had a very good office chairs that allowed me to adapt a lot of things, what I loved the most was that allowed certain lumbar support configuration, never had a back issue related to work in this chair, the price was 600€. But the best, most comfortable chair I sat, designed to adapt perfectly and have people sit during long periods of time, was one that cost 2000€. Maybe the price was a bit inflated cause it was part of a public contract and bidders usually inflate a bit the prices for the equipment, but god, it was like sitting in a cloud that makes you forget about any back problem you had.
I have an old Kinnarps chair that a company threw out because they bought now chairs from the same company. Even though you can tell it has been used a lot (it is over 10 years old) it is still the comfiest chair I've ever sat in.
5:30 “…to toilet partitions in a public bathroom” That leads me to ask: why are toilet partitions in public bathrooms in the US designed with gaps between the door frame and the door (and an opening showing the occupant’s feet) but in the UK the toilet partitions form fully concealed compartments. (A few British people on TH-cam have commented on this difference.)
It’s is mostly for safety reasons - so if someone collapses or is in trouble. It’s easier for staff/others to help. We have a place at our work that treat people with addiction problems and often we have clients who overdose on drugs and pass out in the restroom stall - having gaps (while less private) usually helps us notice people in trouble easier. In newer buildings though - we prefer to design fully partitioned rooms similar to Europe with an “assist button” people can press if they need help. Some staff still prefer the stalls with gaps though because they say some people don’t know to ask for help.
@@ARTiculations Thanks! That’s interesting - there really _is_ a reason. (I thought it was just half-baked design or cost-cutting.) Thanks _so_ much for answering! (Do a video on it. ☺️)
I spent an equivalent of $40 on a cheapo office chair that is now older than any other piece of my setup and still stands strong. Yes the cushion is flat but I just got a cheap cushion pillow and it's like new.
Design costs really go down per chair in mass marketed chairs, there's a sweet spot where more expensive chairs aren't more durable or comfortable - they just can't sell as many, so they cost more.
I bought a Steelcase Leap V2 for about £250 second-hand about 5 years ago. Despite the fact that I sit in it for maybe 50+ hours a week, sometimes considerably more, it is in the exact same condition it was when I bought it. There isn't a mark on it and it's just a comfy as that day too. It isn't the most comfortable of chairs to sit in, it's pretty hard and the leather is cold but over the long term it keeps you from serious pain/injury. I sometimes sit in cheapy chairs with fluffy pillows/rests and think how much nicer it would be but I only need to think back to the 5 or more other cheapy chairs I've bought that degraded to basically sitting on a hard MDF board, stained, ripped, broken wheels and awful long term comfort in weeks/months. Steelcase is a work of art and worth every penny. There are few things you should seriously invest in but beds, shoes and chairs are top priority. You're pretty much always going to be in one of them and invariably a bad one of any of them could seriously ruin your day.
Sadly, while I sit in a chair in my college dorm room constantly while doing homework, chilling, or playing games, I don't really have hundreds of dollars lying around to buy a good one 😢
For 3d Artists like myself that spend many hours hunched over a desk for drawing on a wacom intuos tablet, if a chair doesn't have forward tilt than the chair is useless, over 90% of the chairs on the market claim that they are ergonomic but in reality their not, they use that term regardless.
I honestly love a good chair. I'm currently turning my bedroom into a home office and I have my eye on a bauhaus style office chair 😍 it's 109 euro but I'm so in love with it I'm ready to pay up 😅 very interesting video! I feel like I've been looking for a channel like yours for forever!
Now with COVID 19 and forced homeoffice, things might have changed a bit. I am working from the kitchen desk from a normal chair. Not an office chair, makes you need to stand up a lot but that happens automatically more at home than in the office.
Aeron has a warranty of 12 years. If you do the math, it's between 83-133 dollars per year depending on if you get the base model or a fully loaded version. You can buy a good chair once, or cheap chairs many times. For me I prefer to buy a quality chair once and know that it will last a long time.
If you do the math, the S&P 500 has been returning about 12% historically if I remember correctly. If you compound $1000 for 12 years and re-invest the dividends, that gives you $1000 x 1.12^12 = $3895.98. You may be lucky and get more, or you may be unlucky and get less, but that's the expected value of an investment of $1000 over 12 years. I've been using a basic IKEA chair at work for about 10 years, 8 hours a day, and it was still perfectly functional when I left my job. I think it was worth about £120 when new (about $160).
@@chesshooligan1282 Good analysis and point of view. The cost of the chair is one paycheck for me at my current job, and I'd rather have it than not. Ultimately, whether it is worth it or not depends on the point of view of the person, the budget, and situation since in example the chair I have at work was paid for by the company but the one I have at home I paid for. For me, it's a go but I agree you can also invest that money and watch it grow.
@@satanicmonkey666 You only live once and you can't eat the money. If the chair makes you happy, I think that's great. We all have some little thing that we like to treat ourselves to.
The additional ergonomic utility of spending $10,000 on a chair vs $210 probably isn't all that much. But the additional prestige that's comes from having your butt cuddled by something stylish and expensive looking is substantial.
This is actually a question I've been contemplating every once in a while, so I was super happy to see you made a video about this! And all this makes a lot of sense. We have some really nice, butt-breathable, adjustable office chairs at work, and they definitely make the work day a lot easier to sit though. Oddly, though, my favorite desk chair that I've owned was actually also the cheapest - I used the Ikea Snille chair for three years in college (had to give it away when I graduated, ;_; ), it cost like $20-25, and it was perfectly suited to my needs.
Yeah sometimes a cheaper chair ends up working out. Usually college students don't actually use the chair in their dorm very much - since you are mostly in class, at the library, out around campus and such. And perhaps the Snille chair happened to also be suitable for your body and preferences. So definitely - it's not always necessary to spend a lot - especially for a lightly used piece of furniture.
I really like this video and it gave me a new eye on why some things seem so expensive but one thing you can work on in your videos is to lean how to focus on your cinematic shots. I understand if you wanted to fade into the shot but then keep it focused and if it didn't turn out as wanted then reshoot it.( as i sit in a few year old IKEA chair that i got from my cheap mom so who knows how much it costed). Again really liked the video i even liked it :)
Well, our company uses that "piece of art" and the mesh is pretty solid(yet flexible) and has tendency to grind off your pants as you wiggle while sitting on it. You can spot the fine dust in color of your most used pants piling up on the mechanism beneath.
Mostly, they cost a lot because big corporations have purchasing rules that make buying an overpriced chair from a pre approved vendor easier than shopping for a good deal.
I'm extremely overweight and spend 12+ hours a day in my office chair at my computer (mixture of work and play) and went through so many broken cheap office chairs and back pains over the years before getting a Steelcase Leap something like 15 years ago. My back pain completely vanished, and the chair is still working great (the leather is peeling and it doesn't look the best anymore but it has no functional defects, merely aesthetic). Despite spending about 1200 on it I've saved money in the long run vs buying a new 200 dollar chair every other year, even ignoring the ergonomic benefits.
2:01 4 years, $35m but still can't get parts tolerances to prevent rattling and unwanted play between connected parts. It drives me absolute bonkers a $1,000 chair just doesn't feel "solid" and every adjustable piece doesn't fit perfectly together causing it to wiggle or rattle.
One of the unfortunate things about the ISO standards, as well as others, for example BIFMA standards, is that they cost money to obtain. You can’t just look up an ISO standard online to check if your chair is conform, you have to actually buy a copy of the ISO standard first. I think all standards should be free and open to everyone. OK. Rant finished. Fun anecdote: My colleague was recently in a posh furniture store to buy an office chair. He couldn’t find the right lever to raise the chair’s height and asked a shop assistant for help. She knelt down and groped around under the seat for the right lever, and when she finally found it, the chair seat sprang up and hit her under the chin with such force that it literally knocked her unconscious. She revived a few seconds later, but after the ambulance had taken her to hospital for a checkout (she was OK, no permanent harm) he decided NOT to buy that chair!!
Appreciating this illuminating case for office chairs, Betty (you have great content and style). I'm about to sit in my new Herman Miller Sayl chair - a more economical ($600!) of the fancy chairs - thankfully expensed by my employer for my WFH... phew, damn expensive!, butt my back 'll be happy.
If a chair costs you 50 bucks and you replace it once a year, you spend 500 in 10 years which is still less than 1000 bucks for a chair that you'll get bored of in 5 years.
I have an Aeron and absolutely love it. Wouldn't have any other chair. It looks so cool at your desk when you're not sitting in it. When you are sitting in it, it kind of moves with you as you lean back and forth. There's a reason they're iconic. And now there's really no excuse to get one, you can find them at office furniture liquidators for sub $300. I found one two weeks ago at a Goodwill for $15, took it to an Aeron chair guy here in Austin, he fixed a couple of things and boom, I have a $1100 chair for about $180. It's true that these more expensive chairs hold up. You definitely get what you pay for and they're fixable. Although, we have the Generation chairs by Knoll at my office and they are extremely uncomfortable and feel cheap despite costing about $500 each. I absolutely hate them. Some of the execs got Knoll Life chairs which are designed similarly to the Aeron and are priced about the same.
What kind of science and innovation is there to be made? We had fancy office chairs in the 80s, with all the ergonomic bells and wistles you would never thought you need.
Thank you for your video. I am interior design student right now and I need to do a research on a chair. The info that you share in the video is so helpful. By the chance, can I ask you how do you come up with all the research number and study on Steelcase chair? If you can share, I would be so thankful.
I tried showing this vid to my coworkers because we have quite a few of those Herman Miller mesh chairs amongst others in our work space. They found the whole topic uninteresting sadly 😞
Excellent volume, very good presentation. If only all TH-cam video creators would get mic'd up the way you have done, I wouldn't have to keep casting videos from my old laptop to our TV's, in order to hear them. I just wanted to warn people *** NOTTT *** to buy those cheap plastic covered, faux leather, desk chairs from Staples. They only last about 2 years before the plastic covering begins to flake off in tiny pieces and from that point on, you will have a part time job of vacuuming that crap off your rug about 3 times a week if you have solid rugs that will show black plastic flakes easily. I bought 3 of these chairs from Staples and all of them have had this exact same problem. And there is no way to repair a chair with this problem. I have placed a black shirt around the back of the chair, to try and deter some of these fakes from falling on the rug but that is only marginally useful. WRZ Delaware County, PA metro-Philadelphia
then why a lot of that expensive chair missed headrest? this is the most annoying problem for me as the choice is mostly only ikea markus or gaming chairs.
There is a consensus among researchers ; headrests are not so good for you. Your head need to move freely during long sessions to avoid pain and health conditions. If you use a headrest, i advice to not use it all the time, it will have consequences on a long run. But you should be fine if you use it only for short resting sessions.
in the sense that you pay for not doing due diligence with your buttocks and spine, yes. I'm using a boardroom mesh chair from my fathers old work, so it's not ideal for computer desk use (armrests jut forward too much, seat adjustability isn't right, like theres only one setting for the seat slider/back tilt/chair height that lets you sit properly, and thats with everything at the maximum) but it was probably $1500 when new, and i got it for $0 so i guess i'll just live with it until it literally falls apart
I think the design of chairs are getting even better with improvement in CAD and design. This isn't the ideal example but I have the Aeron Chair mentioned in the video at my workplace but I have a Serta "Big and Tall" executive style chair at my home office and I am more comfortable in the Serta. Why? I think it is because it is overbuilt to support a much larger and heavier person than I and support them well for 6-8 hours a day. The Aeron on the other hand is good but the style, like many trendy things, is put ahead of comfort in some ways and gets in the way sometimes. Keep in mind you still get what you pay for but occasionally style is a factor in that too. The Aeron cost over $900+ in my case and the Serta I bought was $220 on sale or $350 at MSRP. Anyway just some food for thought. Cheers!
Back even just five years ago you used to be able to get a reasonably priced chair that was ergonomic and comfortable. A new chair of the same caliber and possibly even cheaper materials has almost doubled in price I feel. For the price of some of these chairs I might as well buy a lazyboy and install some casters on it. There's no justification for the price of some of these.
When I had a studio in Oslo a graphic designer on the same level donated me his old chair, it looked horrid, weighed a ton, I'd say it was a 1970's design and this was in 1997. That chair lasted me another twenty years, being comfortable with perfect ergonomics that whole time, eventually the welds failed on the steel frame. Now I'm in a crap cheap chair because I'm broke and it's so laughably bad, not just in build quality but for my newly developed back ache as well, dreaming about having a couple of grand to spend on a nice chair again.
I don't know where to get light welding done near Oslo but wish you good luck. That sounds like a chair that would be comfortable for another 20 years with a little repair work.
The arguments stated on this video are valid but irrelevant. Office chairs are expensive because business can pay for them, simple as that. Charge as much as the costumer is willing to pay. Many products across many industries are overpriced, the cost of manufacturing is sometimes orders of magnitude lower than the price at the store, but if a costumer is willing to pay that much why not charge that much. For example the perfume industry, it's obvious that no liquid on earth should cost that much per gallon, but you do not see costumers complaining.
jnvqc I think to some extent you are right, but the biggest factor a business takes into consideration is ergonomics, at least that’s what should matter. Since a business is going to have some many people of different sizes shapes and fitness levels, it’s important to have chairs that can be adjusted to accommodate as many body types as possible. You want employees to be focused and comfortable. If employees are sitting in chairs that are uncomfortable or don’t fit them, they won’t be productive and even worse, you could cause them back pain which could mean days off of work. For a company, decent long lasting office chairs make sense especially if they are to last 10-15 years really doesn’t cost them much in the long run, however cheap chairs getting broken every few months will add up quickly.
In defence of perfume: Some perfume components are actually extremely expensive to produce, for example, rose otto (oil of rose). No machine yet exists that can pick the blossoms, so they must be picked by hand. They have to be processed within hours of picking or they go bad, so processing facilities must be right next to the rose farms. Over 3,000 Kg of blossoms make one single Kg of oil. Not all perfume uses real quality ingredients. Middle priced perfumes are the biggest rip off, where you pay more for celebrity endorsements, but really expensive perfume is often made of really expensive stuff.
We are in 2020 now, but even in 2017 how is designing an ergonomic chair still an issue? Why does every last company have to muddy the waters? Material fees alone, how can I buy a massive leather couch that is top of the line and lasts for a decade for $500 but I can't find a good office chair with lumbar support and a headrest in the same price range? This isn't ground breaking technology, we are talking about chairs here. People have been sitting in them, designing them and refining them since before any of us were born. And now that the pandemic is in full motion, why is this even still a discussion?
Everyone says the steelcase leap and herman miller aeron are great...but- granted, I haven't tried them out- just by looking at them, they look kind of cheap. I mean, look at how thin the seat cushion is on the leap, and how comfortable can a mesh seat really be compared to some nice, thick, high density memory foam like the tempur pedic chair you can find at Staples?
leap seat pan and backrest are shaped to fit your body so they dont need so much cushions to be comfortable. Cheap chairs have flat bottom and back so they need a lot of cushions to conform to your body.
The Aeron chair design is brilliant but the mesh is waaaaay too easily torn for them to charge $1,000 odd dollars. Honestly, I think over half that price is in the brand name. Seriously, my old job had them and while comfortable and breathable we always seemed to have a handful that needed repairs every month, and these were all relatively new too.
we have those mesh chairs at my office. I actually dislike them despite all the wonderful reasons that make them great. I dislike them mainly because when I sit in them the weight of my body pushes down on the mesh while the frame of the chair pushes up under my knee/thigh area. this makes it very uncomfortable and frustrates me everytime I need to use one of them
It’s one of the items I never skimp on, including my mattress and shoes. Office chair and mattress definitely has to be 4 figures, there is such a leap in quality and durability. I noticed if you buy cheap items, you pay just as much in the long run, just inconvenience yourself replacing and throwing stuff away, burden the environment and have to put up with an inferior experience. Just not worth it.
Thanks.... I was shocked when i started researching computer chairs to add to my podcast studio... I thought i was getting scammed by amazon. And i still kinda do but hey it is what it is.
The main reason why it’s so expensive it’s because it’s made in and from countries that have high pay rates. Why you think everything is made in China? It’s because employees gets pay under $4 a hour.
I have a cheap 40 euro chair. It has served me well for almost a year (daily usage). Yes, it's not the best choice - the only adjustable property is the height. Though, it has armrests and it is better than a plain wooden chair. Not going for anything more fancy with my student budget.
I get that, but you'd expect all of that stuff to be standardized by now since in the end it is "only" a chair and little additional original research is needed over the years. So $1000+ for a chair still seems rediculous to me.
Of course, but by now all major brands have probably converged towards the same set of principles that make a chair "good" (i.e. the criteria of the ISO standard). So they're not identical (also due to fashion reasons), but very similar.
Making something non-identical requires you to do things differently, which requires you to test your new thing. Assuming minor differences don't have big consequences can be a fatal mistake.
You would think that after years of research we would have already set standards for a chair's ergonomics, adjustability, as well as durability in terms of material choice, etc...and that would have help manufacturing cheaper and selling at a reasonable price....but no, the price keeps getting higher. On the other hand, you can get a very fine durable mattress with great ergonomics for a very decent price ( which also gathers a lot of scientific research, design improvement, etc...) So i love your videos and the explanation is clearly broken down like usual, but i'm not quite convinced that it explains it all.... I suspect the main reason for that high price is set by the buyer's ability to pay a lot, which usually is a firm....
I still find it funny that you can buy a bus seat, movie theater chair, or airplane seat for around $300 to $500 which last for 10 to 15 years with around the clock use and are completely comfortable to sit in even if they aren't meant to move around but soon as you slap wheels on the bottom suddenly it has a $2000 price tag. don't fall for the rip off. office chairs should never be over $500 no matter what.
If you would spend 50$ per year for 15 years, that is still far less than 1.000$. When you are like me, you don't have money left to spend in furniture after you paied for your loan and bought food.
car chairs need far more testing and experimenting, office chairs require far less as most every material and design has already been tested and most major brands are all owned by the same company. you get get a chair for a car far cheaper and many consider them far more comfortable and even modify them into office chairs
I'm sitting in a mesh chair right now. Very comfortable and keeps me cool, unlike my old chair that I used to find myself sticking to. I've had it for years and it only cost about £60.
Hi everyone I've made a Discord for further discussions: discord.gg/4DWvahY94U. I'm also more likely to respond there as TH-cam comments aren't always the most ideal places for conversation. Thank you!
As a father of three teenagers and an avid home office user myself, I totally see your point. There's been a lot of breaking and replacing over the years... Add to that my recurrent back problems (I'm 6'3") and a proper office chair really makes a lot of sense!
Yes I actually started thinking about this topic when I started to have back and wrist pain last year. Turns out - it was mostly because i didn't have my seat adjusted properly. I have a leap chair at work, but I had it too low, not far back enough, and arms not at the right places. After I got it adjusted, the pain has significantly decreased. But as I type this, I'm currently sitting in a very uncomfortable Ikea chair at home, which I think I really need to replace soon.
@@ARTiculations a!!°AA!
The spinning chair at 1:48 is a Steelcase Leap chair, the most comfortable chair I've ever sat in. It was my desk chair at work for eight years, and it held up well in addition to being very ergonomic and very comfortable. It originally retailed for about $900, but it's totally worth it.
If you can buy one used I would highly recommend also. Buying used chairs is great as they are often still in fantastic condition
"expected misuse" -- my new favourite phrase ;)
Hehe ^_^
one fun point you might have missed is they are so expensive because people are willing to pay that much. While each process does add to the cost they would only do it if they could sell it. If companies would pay $10,000 for a chair then chair manufacturers would find $10,000 of features and upgrades to add. It's always fun to investigate 1) what people are willing to pay and 2) the marketing around convincing people to pay more. Maybe one day some company will invest some new tech or process that they can market in a way to charge even more for a chair.
Yes this is a good point. Really a lot of products are worth what they're worth because people are willing to pay for it. But in general, the issue I face is - I sometimes deal with clients who always want to cheapen out on the products in their projects. And I'm trying to convince them that there is intrinsic value in investing in a more expensive product - and it's not just all hype and market inflation. Thus I decided to not touch on that point in this video. But - it definitely is still one of the driving factors of cost.
also good points! Though I don't think it's all smoke and mirrors. Like one cost you outlined is ergonomics research. That has a cost and there is a clear benefit. But that benefit might not have been widely agree on once upon a time. The first chair to have "ergonomics research" probably needed really good marketing to convince people ti was worth paying for. Maybe today since it's more widely accepted you don't need to market it as hard. But if you came up with some new chair tech that made sitting a lot better / heather / whatever you would have to do the extra marketing to show people it was worth what ever the extra cost was. And the bigger the extra cost the better you would have to convince people.
talking with cheap clients is always hard. but I wish you the best of luck!
All excellent points both of you. I just want to add that corporations, and IMO, especially government offices don't mind paying more than premium if they think they can write it off or if the contract is with some executive's relative. Of course, I can't prove my hypothesis, but I can tell you that I've seen offices pay WAY above the market price for office items. I'm not talking $10 above; I'm talking paying $100 for an item, when you can get it for $20 item on Amazon.ca. And don't forget the services they pay for, which can be hundreds of dollars when you can do it for almost nothing, like re-routing network connections. Reckless and outrageous spending.
So the iPhone X effect.
Thing is, these chairs are mostly bought by companies, and budget is always on their mind. If they could get away with 50$, or even 200$ chairs, they would buy those.
But a 50-200$ chair will need replacement more often, and servicing them so often is out of the question because it's simply not worth the money for parts and labor to do it.
All while keeping your employees(including the ones that decided to buy them) miserable on crappy chairs that always break.
If you go by the average life expectancy of these chairs, which is common to be around 10 years, it's really not that expensive. It's just that people have a hard time putting a cost into long-term perspective. (I'm talking about the "western" lifestyle, where some people pay 5$ on coffee each day)
If you actually go and try them out, you will see it's not just marketing and hype, they do scale with price.
Yes they are expensive, but they are not overhyped. No you don't need to buy one and can live a perfectly healthy life without one, but what would you rather use for 10 years? A great ergonomic chair, or 5 mediocre ones? What about after 10 years, would any of those 5 chairs still be fixable and usable in any way?
OMG! I ran into this video again after over a year! Saw this in December 2017 and finally pulled the trigger on a leather Steelcase Leap. I spent almost $2k on it; but worth every penny. I've been using it for a year now (I work from home) and I long for it when I actually go in to my office on days I have meetings. The standard company chairs aren't anything like the leap. THANK YOU for this video!!!!
Years ago I bought a Scandinavian RH 24x7 task chair. It cost the equivalent in today's money of 1700 USD even with a discount. It's 15 years old has been used each day for most of that and nothing has needed to be replaced yet. All original arms, casters & upholstery and still very comfortable. The cost /year of this comfort was very modest. Cheap chairs are a false economy. The missus had multiple cheap chairs over the years until I persuaded her to get an Ergohuman Plus which she loves & has greatly reduced her back problems. I'm not suggesting you need to spend 1500 USD on a chair but over 700USD is reasonable if you actually plan on working long hours.
I can't even describe how good this video is. Everything you need to know to appreciate your office chair.
My favorite chair: Marcus from IKEA, designed by Henrik Preutz, it comes with a 10 year guarantee and costs only around $150,-
After 12 years sitting on my first Marcus, for an estimated 12,000 hours, I now have my second Marcus. The first one is still OK, but the head rest is looking a bit worn. The best bit is the mesh on the chair-back so you don't stick to it in hot weather. (Most Europeans DON'T have aircon.).
I can tell you from experience the Herman Miller Aeron Chair needs a major update. It is the standard chair at my office and the hard plastic frame on the left and right sides needs some kind of cushion because they are exposed and encroach on the actual seating area. Also the arms do not have the ability to tilt down at the front and they tend to collide with the underside of a desk so I tend to lower them out of the way even though I cannot use them at all at that point.
P.S. I design things in an engineering firm for a living so I am a bit picky about this sort of thing. That said I cannot understate how important it is to get a decent chair that is credibly rated for 6-8+ hours of use even it is to used for 3-4 hours. The reason I say this is when you think about it most people spend an extended period of time throughout the day. We sit in the office, we sit in our cars or buses or trains when we go anywhere, and we also for the most part sit at home when we are doing things like paying the bills or watching TH-cam etc.
What's your favorite chair? Im considering the aeron
Check Motushul x Maratti mission chair.
I have no idea how I got to this side of TH-cam but I’m glad I’m here.
same! I am a bit sad that she hasn't been uploading since 2019 tho.
From Tom Scott's channel obviously! Quality content attracts us, the curious connoisseurs. I'm glad to be here too.
@@DaisyZhangAI will be uploading another design related video very soon! 😊
I do know why I'm here but I'm more wary.
Another thing, for example the Aeron comes with a 12 year warranty. For 12 years if something breaks you call the dealer, they send someone ( in my area that would be me) to assess the issue, order parts, and repair the chair.
I do love your thoughtful explanations (and live-action demonstrations!) of all the factors involved in good design.
found an aeron in an alley in hawthorne, bought new seat pan for 60 on ebay, now i have a 1000 dollar chair for 60.
I don’t believe that a person just threw a Herman out
I went through a period where I basically had a perpetual cheapo Office Depot chair. I paid for the 3-year extended warranty each time my $150 chair broke after 1-2 years, so I was essentially only paying $15-30 a year after the initial purchase. This was a pretty good racket, but also extremely wasteful in the grand scheme of things. Cue my father ranting about how in his day you could buy an all steel fan that, while relatively expensive compared to what you can buy today, would last you a lifetime.
you mean inexpensive...
Capitalism
It's the same with bicycles. Years ago I decided to cycle commute, and got a cheap bike at Wal-Mart. The pedal snapped off about three weeks in, and I wound up replacing it with a second-hand bike I picked up for like $100. What I didn't know is that bike retailed for anywhere from 4-5 times that.
The bike has held up for eleven years with a few parts replaced. Tired, wheels, brakes. Frame is solid as a rock and I've probably spent less than the retail price of the bike.
Quality products don't always cost a lot, and expensive things can also be junk. But some quality items are worth every single penny.
Choose wisely
2:38 I am wondering what occasion results in that pose on an office chai- wait a minute
"*Note: I don't actually know if this is how they test misuse, this is just how I imagined it lol"
That's an imagination right there.
well replace the foot of the chair for wheels and you have your self a office racing chair.
I got a RH400 chair. They are about £1400 now. The mechanism is still original and works. Some of the plastic trim snapped off, but because its cosmetic, I couldn’t be bothered to replace it. Its on the 3rd seat pad. 2nd set of arm pads. 2nd lumbar adjust bulb. The chair is 18 years old now. When a bit wears out, I just buy a replacement. Not sure I will ever replace the chair in its entirety, just replace bits that wear out. I have pulled multiple deadlines, working 16hrs a day in it, without feeling anything negative in my body. What is weird is that it never feels comfortable in a conventional sense, in that your muscles never relax off fully, it keeps moving and your body has to make small adjustments to accommodate. In normal cheap chairs, I have about 2hours before I get some sort of twinge in my body, or a dead leg, stiff neck etc.
I have some lumbar issues and while a “low quality” 60€ chair might be ok for fork for most people, I cannot spend more than two hours before my back aches.
In my previous job we had a very good office chairs that allowed me to adapt a lot of things, what I loved the most was that allowed certain lumbar support configuration, never had a back issue related to work in this chair, the price was 600€.
But the best, most comfortable chair I sat, designed to adapt perfectly and have people sit during long periods of time, was one that cost 2000€. Maybe the price was a bit inflated cause it was part of a public contract and bidders usually inflate a bit the prices for the equipment, but god, it was like sitting in a cloud that makes you forget about any back problem you had.
I have an old Kinnarps chair that a company threw out because they bought now chairs from the same company. Even though you can tell it has been used a lot (it is over 10 years old) it is still the comfiest chair I've ever sat in.
5:30 “…to toilet partitions in a public bathroom”
That leads me to ask: why are toilet partitions in public bathrooms in the US designed with gaps between the door frame and the door (and an opening showing the occupant’s feet) but in the UK the toilet partitions form fully concealed compartments. (A few British people on TH-cam have commented on this difference.)
It’s is mostly for safety reasons - so if someone collapses or is in trouble. It’s easier for staff/others to help. We have a place at our work that treat people with addiction problems and often we have clients who overdose on drugs and pass out in the restroom stall - having gaps (while less private) usually helps us notice people in trouble easier. In newer buildings though - we prefer to design fully partitioned rooms similar to Europe with an “assist button” people can press if they need help. Some staff still prefer the stalls with gaps though because they say some people don’t know to ask for help.
@@ARTiculations Thanks! That’s interesting - there really _is_ a reason. (I thought it was just half-baked design or cost-cutting.) Thanks _so_ much for answering! (Do a video on it. ☺️)
I got a used Aeron chair for 200 around 5 years ago. Not sure how long the previous owner had it but it's still working great!
I spent an equivalent of $40 on a cheapo office chair that is now older than any other piece of my setup and still stands strong. Yes the cushion is flat but I just got a cheap cushion pillow and it's like new.
So basically, spending 399 on a chair isn't so ridiculous after all
pretty much
Design costs really go down per chair in mass marketed chairs, there's a sweet spot where more expensive chairs aren't more durable or comfortable - they just can't sell as many, so they cost more.
I bought a Steelcase Leap V2 for about £250 second-hand about 5 years ago. Despite the fact that I sit in it for maybe 50+ hours a week, sometimes considerably more, it is in the exact same condition it was when I bought it. There isn't a mark on it and it's just a comfy as that day too.
It isn't the most comfortable of chairs to sit in, it's pretty hard and the leather is cold but over the long term it keeps you from serious pain/injury. I sometimes sit in cheapy chairs with fluffy pillows/rests and think how much nicer it would be but I only need to think back to the 5 or more other cheapy chairs I've bought that degraded to basically sitting on a hard MDF board, stained, ripped, broken wheels and awful long term comfort in weeks/months. Steelcase is a work of art and worth every penny.
There are few things you should seriously invest in but beds, shoes and chairs are top priority. You're pretty much always going to be in one of them and invariably a bad one of any of them could seriously ruin your day.
Sadly, while I sit in a chair in my college dorm room constantly while doing homework, chilling, or playing games, I don't really have hundreds of dollars lying around to buy a good one 😢
For 3d Artists like myself that spend many hours hunched over a desk for drawing on a wacom intuos tablet, if a chair doesn't have forward tilt than the chair is useless, over 90% of the chairs on the market claim that they are ergonomic but in reality their not, they use that term regardless.
I honestly love a good chair. I'm currently turning my bedroom into a home office and I have my eye on a bauhaus style office chair 😍 it's 109 euro but I'm so in love with it I'm ready to pay up 😅 very interesting video! I feel like I've been looking for a channel like yours for forever!
My 1996 Aeron chair's mesh finally gave out in 2022 after moderate use, all other parts still work.
Did it tear or something?
@@dylanloo9856 yes holes in the mesh.
@@trainluvr Damn, how about sagging? Did the mesh sag b4 it broke?
@@dylanloo9856 no
Now with COVID 19 and forced homeoffice, things might have changed a bit. I am working from the kitchen desk from a normal chair. Not an office chair, makes you need to stand up a lot but that happens automatically more at home than in the office.
Aeron has a warranty of 12 years. If you do the math, it's between 83-133 dollars per year depending on if you get the base model or a fully loaded version. You can buy a good chair once, or cheap chairs many times. For me I prefer to buy a quality chair once and know that it will last a long time.
I believe the saying is "buy once, cry once".
If you do the math, the S&P 500 has been returning about 12% historically if I remember correctly. If you compound $1000 for 12 years and re-invest the dividends, that gives you $1000 x 1.12^12 = $3895.98. You may be lucky and get more, or you may be unlucky and get less, but that's the expected value of an investment of $1000 over 12 years. I've been using a basic IKEA chair at work for about 10 years, 8 hours a day, and it was still perfectly functional when I left my job. I think it was worth about £120 when new (about $160).
@@chesshooligan1282 Good analysis and point of view. The cost of the chair is one paycheck for me at my current job, and I'd rather have it than not. Ultimately, whether it is worth it or not depends on the point of view of the person, the budget, and situation since in example the chair I have at work was paid for by the company but the one I have at home I paid for. For me, it's a go but I agree you can also invest that money and watch it grow.
@@satanicmonkey666 You only live once and you can't eat the money. If the chair makes you happy, I think that's great. We all have some little thing that we like to treat ourselves to.
The additional ergonomic utility of spending $10,000 on a chair vs $210 probably isn't all that much. But the additional prestige that's comes from having your butt cuddled by something stylish and expensive looking is substantial.
Outstanding video!!! I just got a leap v2 leather. love it.
This is actually a question I've been contemplating every once in a while, so I was super happy to see you made a video about this! And all this makes a lot of sense. We have some really nice, butt-breathable, adjustable office chairs at work, and they definitely make the work day a lot easier to sit though.
Oddly, though, my favorite desk chair that I've owned was actually also the cheapest - I used the Ikea Snille chair for three years in college (had to give it away when I graduated, ;_; ), it cost like $20-25, and it was perfectly suited to my needs.
Yeah sometimes a cheaper chair ends up working out. Usually college students don't actually use the chair in their dorm very much - since you are mostly in class, at the library, out around campus and such. And perhaps the Snille chair happened to also be suitable for your body and preferences. So definitely - it's not always necessary to spend a lot - especially for a lightly used piece of furniture.
I really like this video and it gave me a new eye on why some things seem so expensive but one thing you can work on in your videos is to lean how to focus on your cinematic shots. I understand if you wanted to fade into the shot but then keep it focused and if it didn't turn out as wanted then reshoot it.( as i sit in a few year old IKEA chair that i got from my cheap mom so who knows how much it costed). Again really liked the video i even liked it :)
Well, our company uses that "piece of art" and the mesh is pretty solid(yet flexible) and has tendency to grind off your pants as you wiggle while sitting on it. You can spot the fine dust in color of your most used pants piling up on the mechanism beneath.
Mostly, they cost a lot because big corporations have purchasing rules that make buying an overpriced chair from a pre approved vendor easier than shopping for a good deal.
I'm extremely overweight and spend 12+ hours a day in my office chair at my computer (mixture of work and play) and went through so many broken cheap office chairs and back pains over the years before getting a Steelcase Leap something like 15 years ago. My back pain completely vanished, and the chair is still working great (the leather is peeling and it doesn't look the best anymore but it has no functional defects, merely aesthetic). Despite spending about 1200 on it I've saved money in the long run vs buying a new 200 dollar chair every other year, even ignoring the ergonomic benefits.
watching this while sitting in a chair that feels like a piece of wood and is throwing out my back. lol
Like how the MWE Labs Emperor Chair costs anywhere between 5k$ to 15k$ depending on which features you decide to add to it.
2:01 4 years, $35m but still can't get parts tolerances to prevent rattling and unwanted play between connected parts. It drives me absolute bonkers a $1,000 chair just doesn't feel "solid" and every adjustable piece doesn't fit perfectly together causing it to wiggle or rattle.
Excellent use of ubiquitous. I love hearing that word.
Kelleen BRX hehe thanks! I was very happy I found a place to use that word haha.
One of the unfortunate things about the ISO standards, as well as others, for example BIFMA standards, is that they cost money to obtain. You can’t just look up an ISO standard online to check if your chair is conform, you have to actually buy a copy of the ISO standard first. I think all standards should be free and open to everyone.
OK. Rant finished.
Fun anecdote: My colleague was recently in a posh furniture store to buy an office chair. He couldn’t find the right lever to raise the chair’s height and asked a shop assistant for help. She knelt down and groped around under the seat for the right lever, and when she finally found it, the chair seat sprang up and hit her under the chin with such force that it literally knocked her unconscious. She revived a few seconds later, but after the ambulance had taken her to hospital for a checkout (she was OK, no permanent harm) he decided NOT to buy that chair!!
Appreciating this illuminating case for office chairs, Betty (you have great content and style). I'm about to sit in my new Herman Miller Sayl chair - a more economical ($600!) of the fancy chairs - thankfully expensed by my employer for my WFH... phew, damn expensive!, butt my back 'll be happy.
Thanks!! Hope you enjoy your new chair! Feel free to report back and give us a review haha.
If a chair costs you 50 bucks and you replace it once a year, you spend 500 in 10 years which is still less than 1000 bucks for a chair that you'll get bored of in 5 years.
I have an Aeron and absolutely love it. Wouldn't have any other chair. It looks so cool at your desk when you're not sitting in it. When you are sitting in it, it kind of moves with you as you lean back and forth. There's a reason they're iconic. And now there's really no excuse to get one, you can find them at office furniture liquidators for sub $300. I found one two weeks ago at a Goodwill for $15, took it to an Aeron chair guy here in Austin, he fixed a couple of things and boom, I have a $1100 chair for about $180. It's true that these more expensive chairs hold up. You definitely get what you pay for and they're fixable.
Although, we have the Generation chairs by Knoll at my office and they are extremely uncomfortable and feel cheap despite costing about $500 each. I absolutely hate them. Some of the execs got Knoll Life chairs which are designed similarly to the Aeron and are priced about the same.
What kind of science and innovation is there to be made? We had fancy office chairs in the 80s, with all the ergonomic bells and wistles you would never thought you need.
You explained so nicely
Thank you for your video. I am interior design student right now and I need to do a research on a chair. The info that you share in the video is so helpful. By the chance, can I ask you how do you come up with all the research number and study on Steelcase chair? If you can share, I would be so thankful.
Very good video!
I got the Herman Miller embody chair and my back feels so much better, also it’ll last me at least 12 years since it has a 12 year warranty
I tried showing this vid to my coworkers because we have quite a few of those Herman Miller mesh chairs amongst others in our work space. They found the whole topic uninteresting sadly 😞
Haha aww that's ok. Most of my coworkers also cannot appreciate the value of a good chair either lol. Thanks for sharing nonetheless! =)
Excellent volume, very good presentation. If only all TH-cam video creators would get mic'd up
the way you have done, I wouldn't have to keep casting videos from my old laptop to our TV's,
in order to hear them.
I just wanted to warn people *** NOTTT *** to buy those cheap plastic covered, faux leather, desk chairs
from Staples. They only last about 2 years before the plastic covering begins to flake off in tiny pieces
and from that point on, you will have a part time job of vacuuming that crap off your rug about 3 times
a week if you have solid rugs that will show black plastic flakes easily. I bought 3 of these chairs from
Staples and all of them have had this exact same problem. And there is no way to repair a chair
with this problem. I have placed a black shirt around the back of the chair, to try and deter some
of these fakes from falling on the rug but that is only marginally useful.
WRZ
Delaware County, PA
metro-Philadelphia
then why a lot of that expensive chair missed headrest? this is the most annoying problem for me as the choice is mostly only ikea markus or gaming chairs.
There is a consensus among researchers ; headrests are not so good for you. Your head need to move freely during long sessions to avoid pain and health conditions. If you use a headrest, i advice to not use it all the time, it will have consequences on a long run. But you should be fine if you use it only for short resting sessions.
@@drez1274 can you point to the publication? I did not find for such information, I found many articles that chair should have headrest instead.
I got a cheap chair once, after two days my butt hurt so bad I thought it had injured me, I was scared to sit in it again.
I took it back for refund.
So, you get what you pay for
and the odd thing on a good sale goes miles further in quality.
in the sense that you pay for not doing due diligence with your buttocks and spine, yes.
I'm using a boardroom mesh chair from my fathers old work, so it's not ideal for computer desk use (armrests jut forward too much, seat adjustability isn't right, like theres only one setting for the seat slider/back tilt/chair height that lets you sit properly, and thats with everything at the maximum) but it was probably $1500 when new, and i got it for $0 so i guess i'll just live with it until it literally falls apart
I think the design of chairs are getting even better with improvement in CAD and design. This isn't the ideal example but I have the Aeron Chair mentioned in the video at my workplace but I have a Serta "Big and Tall" executive style chair at my home office and I am more comfortable in the Serta. Why? I think it is because it is overbuilt to support a much larger and heavier person than I and support them well for 6-8 hours a day. The Aeron on the other hand is good but the style, like many trendy things, is put ahead of comfort in some ways and gets in the way sometimes. Keep in mind you still get what you pay for but occasionally style is a factor in that too. The Aeron cost over $900+ in my case and the Serta I bought was $220 on sale or $350 at MSRP. Anyway just some food for thought. Cheers!
Interesting. Thanks.
You clearly never buy a Dxracer to say that
Greetings from South West Florida how about flood resistant furniture and interiors?
I got my desk chair a decade ago for $10 at a garage sale. I can't imagine having enough money to spend hundreds of dollars on a chair.
them: talking about how expensive chairs are
me, an intellectual: BED
Back even just five years ago you used to be able to get a reasonably priced chair that was ergonomic and comfortable. A new chair of the same caliber and possibly even cheaper materials has almost doubled in price I feel. For the price of some of these chairs I might as well buy a lazyboy and install some casters on it. There's no justification for the price of some of these.
When I had a studio in Oslo a graphic designer on the same level donated me his old chair, it looked horrid, weighed a ton, I'd say it was a 1970's design and this was in 1997. That chair lasted me another twenty years, being comfortable with perfect ergonomics that whole time, eventually the welds failed on the steel frame. Now I'm in a crap cheap chair because I'm broke and it's so laughably bad, not just in build quality but for my newly developed back ache as well, dreaming about having a couple of grand to spend on a nice chair again.
I don't know where to get light welding done near Oslo but wish you good luck. That sounds like a chair that would be comfortable for another 20 years with a little repair work.
Thank you so much, that was informative
The arguments stated on this video are valid but irrelevant. Office chairs are expensive because business can pay for them, simple as that. Charge as much as the costumer is willing to pay. Many products across many industries are overpriced, the cost of manufacturing is sometimes orders of magnitude lower than the price at the store, but if a costumer is willing to pay that much why not charge that much. For example the perfume industry, it's obvious that no liquid on earth should cost that much per gallon, but you do not see costumers complaining.
jnvqc I think to some extent you are right, but the biggest factor a business takes into consideration is ergonomics, at least that’s what should matter. Since a business is going to have some many people of different sizes shapes and fitness levels, it’s important to have chairs that can be adjusted to accommodate as many body types as possible. You want employees to be focused and comfortable. If employees are sitting in chairs that are uncomfortable or don’t fit them, they won’t be productive and even worse, you could cause them back pain which could mean days off of work. For a company, decent long lasting office chairs make sense especially if they are to last 10-15 years really doesn’t cost them much in the long run, however cheap chairs getting broken every few months will add up quickly.
In defence of perfume: Some perfume components are actually extremely expensive to produce, for example, rose otto (oil of rose). No machine yet exists that can pick the blossoms, so they must be picked by hand. They have to be processed within hours of picking or they go bad, so processing facilities must be right next to the rose farms. Over 3,000 Kg of blossoms make one single Kg of oil. Not all perfume uses real quality ingredients. Middle priced perfumes are the biggest rip off, where you pay more for celebrity endorsements, but really expensive perfume is often made of really expensive stuff.
For the curious, the Aeron chair starts at $820 and goes up to $1295
We are in 2020 now, but even in 2017 how is designing an ergonomic chair still an issue? Why does every last company have to muddy the waters? Material fees alone, how can I buy a massive leather couch that is top of the line and lasts for a decade for $500 but I can't find a good office chair with lumbar support and a headrest in the same price range? This isn't ground breaking technology, we are talking about chairs here. People have been sitting in them, designing them and refining them since before any of us were born. And now that the pandemic is in full motion, why is this even still a discussion?
Everyone says the steelcase leap and herman miller aeron are great...but- granted, I haven't tried them out- just by looking at them, they look kind of cheap. I mean, look at how thin the seat cushion is on the leap, and how comfortable can a mesh seat really be compared to some nice, thick, high density memory foam like the tempur pedic chair you can find at Staples?
With mesh there's no bottom, so after years of use the mesh will just sag compared to bottoming out on a hard wood/plastic base.
leap seat pan and backrest are shaped to fit your body so they dont need so much cushions to be comfortable. Cheap chairs have flat bottom and back so they need a lot of cushions to conform to your body.
The Aeron chair design is brilliant but the mesh is waaaaay too easily torn for them to charge $1,000 odd dollars. Honestly, I think over half that price is in the brand name. Seriously, my old job had them and while comfortable and breathable we always seemed to have a handful that needed repairs every month, and these were all relatively new too.
0:34 I think you meant $399.
Nope. Wal-Mart sells office chairs for $40.
@@nathanjohansen7169 r/woooosh, Do you even meme bro!? The meme is from pewdiepie!
@@katsudom Alas, I do not meme...
@@nathanjohansen7169 hmmm, touche
we have those mesh chairs at my office. I actually dislike them despite all the wonderful reasons that make them great. I dislike them mainly because when I sit in them the weight of my body pushes down on the mesh while the frame of the chair pushes up under my knee/thigh area. this makes it very uncomfortable and frustrates me everytime I need to use one of them
It’s one of the items I never skimp on, including my mattress and shoes. Office chair and mattress definitely has to be 4 figures, there is such a leap in quality and durability. I noticed if you buy cheap items, you pay just as much in the long run, just inconvenience yourself replacing and throwing stuff away, burden the environment and have to put up with an inferior experience. Just not worth it.
TIL I'm sitting on a piece of art. How many people get to say they fart on art nearly every day
Thanks.... I was shocked when i started researching computer chairs to add to my podcast studio... I thought i was getting scammed by amazon.
And i still kinda do but hey it is what it is.
I spend 6 minutes watching a video about chair
And if you are truly in the market for one, you will spend hours, days of research.
Whoever came up with the partially divided toilet stalls deserves a special place in hell.
price is 10 - 20% where i live. similar quality. america is just expensive
The main reason why it’s so expensive it’s because it’s made in and from countries that have high pay rates. Why you think everything is made in China? It’s because employees gets pay under $4 a hour.
I have a cheap 40 euro chair. It has served me well for almost a year (daily usage). Yes, it's not the best choice - the only adjustable property is the height. Though, it has armrests and it is better than a plain wooden chair. Not going for anything more fancy with my student budget.
Thanks a lot. I'm considering a chair with mesh.
I'm thinking of all those chair in schools, and libraries. Wood, no cushions.
I'l love to hear about mice and keyboards, I get a lot of flack for using a trackball, and liking 'ergonomically designed' keyboards.
I bought Steelcase Leap v2 and my office chair now feels like bar stool.
Herman Miller chairs come with a 12 year three shift warranty, that means a butt in that chair 24/7 that entire time
I get that, but you'd expect all of that stuff to be standardized by now since in the end it is "only" a chair and little additional original research is needed over the years. So $1000+ for a chair still seems rediculous to me.
Part of the issue is that standardization is not ideal. If everybody sells the same chair, then the brand doesn't matter anymore.
Of course, but by now all major brands have probably converged towards the same set of principles that make a chair "good" (i.e. the criteria of the ISO standard). So they're not identical (also due to fashion reasons), but very similar.
Making something non-identical requires you to do things differently, which requires you to test your new thing.
Assuming minor differences don't have big consequences can be a fatal mistake.
but can your chair *DO THIS*
*mine cAnt*
You would think that after years of research we would have already set standards for a chair's ergonomics, adjustability, as well as durability in terms of material choice, etc...and that would have help manufacturing cheaper and selling at a reasonable price....but no, the price keeps getting higher.
On the other hand, you can get a very fine durable mattress with great ergonomics for a very decent price ( which also gathers a lot of scientific research, design improvement, etc...)
So i love your videos and the explanation is clearly broken down like usual, but i'm not quite convinced that it explains it all....
I suspect the main reason for that high price is set by the buyer's ability to pay a lot, which usually is a firm....
I still find it funny that you can buy a bus seat, movie theater chair, or airplane seat for around $300 to $500 which last for 10 to 15 years with around the clock use and are completely comfortable to sit in even if they aren't meant to move around but soon as you slap wheels on the bottom suddenly it has a $2000 price tag. don't fall for the rip off. office chairs should never be over $500 no matter what.
If you would spend 50$ per year for 15 years, that is still far less than 1.000$. When you are like me, you don't have money left to spend in furniture after you paied for your loan and bought food.
finally a video i can send to people to justify me buying a $400 chair
my stupid flat is so small I can't even have a chair to sit ... I have to sit on my bed ... or stand up ... i don't even have space for walking.
My chair only cost me 40 quid, but it's the executive model. I think I got a deal.
You would think that truck or aircraft manufacturers already figured out how to make a comfortable chair that we could just copy 🤔
e aki no brasil q a cadeira de 39,99 vira 249,99?
Office chairs are adjustable and widely used, why doesn't the economy of scale apply to just office chairs?
car chairs need far more testing and experimenting, office chairs require far less as most every material and design has already been tested and most major brands are all owned by the same company. you get get a chair for a car far cheaper and many consider them far more comfortable and even modify them into office chairs
0:44 Wait, I have that chair and it happened exactly like that.
Just found out that my chair is in the museum of modern art lol thanks I feel better for spending 1,650 EUR on it
steelcase leap owner reporting in!! its wonderful!! came from an old bucketstyle gamer chair DX racer and never buying that trash again!
Ironically I did not watch this video in a chair
Where did you sit? Unless you watched this standing/lying down/doing a headstand?
I'm sitting in a mesh chair right now. Very comfortable and keeps me cool, unlike my old chair that I used to find myself sticking to. I've had it for years and it only cost about £60.