How to tell a good quality folding chair from a poor quality folding chair

There are many different kinds of plastic folding chairs on the market today. Understanding the quality of the product, especially as a rental operator, will help you ensure the investment you’ve made will stand up to the wear and tear associated with rental products. We learned of a test to tell whether the plastic folding chair was susceptible to breakage years ago but never thought to film it until recently.

If you have a plastic folding chair that is made of recycled plastic of any kind, you can tell by the give of the plastic. If your plastic folding chairs do not have recycled plastic in them, you should be able to attempt to bend the chair back and notice that there’s a give associated with this move. If your plastic folding chairs do have recycled plastic in them you shouldn’t be able to notice any give at all. This might seem as though a plastic folding chair made of recycled plastic is a better quality chair – but in the rental industry that’s not the case.

Unfortunately there’s a number of clients or even staff that may be less cautious in how they handle your products. A stiffer plastic with less give means it’s more prone to breakage. If they fall over upon delivery or two get hit together during setup, the plastic with more give will be more forgiving to a potential blow.

Enter the Hammer Test.

If you’re unsure whether a plastic folding chair contains recycled plastic I’d suggest asking for a sample – and then do this to it:

Here’s what one of our plastic folding chairs will do (note that we do not have recycled plastic in our chairs):

Pretty cool huh?