The furniture every student recognizes

Why every American kid sits on the same chair

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

The Virco 9000 chair, an iconic staple in American schools, is a piece of nostalgia for many. Introduced in 1965, its design, combining practicality with durability, has sold over 60 million units. The evolution of the Virco 9000 reflects key educational shifts and manufacturing advancements. The video by Phil Edwards delves into why this chair became synonymous with American schooling and its interplay with cultural and economic factors, making it more than just a piece of furniture but a significant part of school history.

Highlights

The Virco 9000 chair's nostalgic connection is powerful, transporting many back to their school days. 🎒
Originally released in 1965, over 60 million chairs have been sold, reflecting its iconic status. 🏆
Key design elements like the use of tubular steel and molded plastic were revolutionary at the time. 🚀
The chair's success was boosted by changes in educational methods demanding flexible furniture. 🤹‍♂️
Domestic manufacturing and effective sales contracts allowed Virco to dominate the school furniture market. 🌟

Key Takeaways

The Virco 9000 chair has become an iconic piece of school furniture in the US, with over 60 million units sold. 🇺🇸
Its 1965 design combined practicality with affordability, making it a staple in schools. 🪑
Advancements in manufacturing, like tubular steel and molded plastic, influenced its widespread use. 💡
Educational changes, such as increased student populations and evolving teaching methods, necessitated more flexible furniture. 📚
Virco's domestic manufacturing and strategic contracts helped cement its ubiquity in schools. 🏭

Overview

The Virco 9000 chair is more than just a piece of furniture; it's a storied icon of American education. Since its launch in 1965, it has sold over 60 million units, finding its place in countless classrooms. The video's creator, Phil Edwards, delves into the chair's history, exploring its design origins and how it became a fixture in schools across the nation. This nostalgic journey offers a deeper understanding of why this simple plastic chair holds such sentimental value for many Americans.

Designed at a time when educational spaces were evolving, the Virco 9000's creation aligned with the need for cost-effective, durable, and flexible school furniture. Its introduction was timely, coinciding with the baby boom and a shift towards more dynamic teaching environments. Phil highlights how the chair's design, leveraging materials like tubular steel and molded plastic, played a key role in its adoption and success. This adaptability combined with strategic business practices helped Virco thrive.

Phil also touches on the broader cultural and business factors that contributed to the chair’s success. The Virco 9000 capitalized on domestic manufacturing advantages and entered into strategic contracts, solidifying its place in the educational furniture market. This not only made the chair a staple in schools but also embedded it in the collective memory of generations of students. The video captures this fascinating intersection of nostalgia, design innovation, and business acumen in shaping a memorable piece of school history.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to the Virco 9000 The chapter introduces the Virco 9000 chair, a product with over 60 million units sold by Virco since its introduction in 1965. The narrator shares a personal connection to the chair, indicating its significance and impact as more than just a piece of furniture and highlights the historical sales performance and emotional response it evokes.
00:30 - 04:00: The Design and Evolution of School Chairs The chapter explores the design and evolution of school chairs, focusing on how specific factors contribute to their iconic status.
04:00 - 06:00: Dynamo Sponsorship Spot The chapter discusses the robustness and durability of a product, likely a chair or furniture piece, highlighting its surprising sturdiness and design elements that contribute to its strong structure. The narrative mentions the product's launch in 1965 and compares it with historical school furniture from 1873 and 1881, which had material limitations such as being made with wooden slats and a brass frame, making them heavy and hard to move.
06:00 - 10:00: The Rise of Tubular Steel and the Birth of Virco The chapter discusses the evolution of furniture design with a focus on the transition from wood and iron to the use of tubular steel. It highlights how traditional school desks were once heavy due to the materials used, with wood and iron being combined to create durable yet cumbersome furniture. This change in materials signaled a broader trend in furniture design and set the stage for modern advancements. The chapter also introduces Virco, a company marking the beginning of a new era in furniture manufacturing, noted for its groundbreaking use of tubular steel in 1950.
10:00 - 15:00: Education Trends and the Need for Flexible Seating The chapter discusses emerging trends in education and highlights the need for flexible seating designs. The speaker introduces Dynamo, a sponsor, which has launched a new YouTube channel called 'Business Explains the World.' The channel features high-quality, well-reported, and beautifully filmed content. The speaker expresses excitement about the channel and recommends the first episode.
15:00 - 20:00: Why the Virco 9000? The chapter titled 'Why the Virco 9000?' explores the reasons behind the high cost of a Stradivarius violin, priced at $14 million. The chapter features an investigation by producer Nora Ali, who delves into the world of violins, discovering unique aspects such as violin cubbies. This exploration is contextualized within the broader perspective of how business decisions often shape cultural artifacts. The insights are provided by creators with backgrounds in Business Insider, Morning Brew, and Cheddar, who maintain a worldview that business explains various aspects of culture.
20:00 - 25:00: Nostalgia and the Shared Experience of the Virco 9000 This chapter delves into the concept of nostalgia and how it ties into the shared experiences associated with the Virco 9000 chair. It begins with an engaging invitation for the audience to explore related content, emphasizing the interconnected nature of these topics and enhancing the viewing experience. The host encourages viewers to consider all the intriguing factors that contribute to the iconic status of the Virco 9000, particularly focusing on how past experiences and emotional connections play a role in its lasting appeal. The chapter sets the tone for a deeper exploration of the chair's cultural significance.
25:00 - 29:00: Conclusion and Call to Action The conclusion reflects on appreciating the iconic violin and acknowledges the sponsor of the video. The speaker expresses excitement for future content and encourages further engagement from the audience. The chapter transitions back to discussing the historical context of tubular steel, noting its emergence in furniture during the 1920s and referencing the early days of the company Virco.

Why every American kid sits on the same chair Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 How does this chair make you feel? This is the Virco 9000, a chair that the company Virco says has sold more than 60 million units. Here's its introduction in 1965. And here are net sales in the decades after. When this chair came to my house, I felt things. I was transported. And no matter where you put it,
00:30 - 01:00 it belongs in a school. Why? I learned about the convergence of three factors to make a plastic chair into an icon. And I think I learned about my nostalgia in the process. This takes me back to science class. I would tip back on this and see how long…
01:00 - 01:30 I could balance. Thing is, it's actually surprisingly sturdy. It will not break. And I was able to recognize that the second that it got shipped to my home. But there were a couple of key design elements that were really important when it launched in 1965. This 1873 school chair shows the material limitations. It has wooden slats and a brass frame. You can tell it's heavy and relatively immobile. This 1881 catalog shows the even more typical
01:30 - 02:00 configuration of wood desks bolted to heavy metal. They were dovetailing wood and iron together. These were beasts. And this isn't just a school thing. It is a furniture thing. Anybody who has old furniture knows this. It's super heavy. And that's why it helps to understand that Virco — seen at their 1950 groundbreaking here — started
02:00 - 02:30 with a material that was changing design. Okay. So I am actually going to backwards-chair it for this section — like a cool guy — because I'm going to be talking to you about today's sponsor, which is Dynamo. And they have a new YouTube channel that is called Business Explains the World. That name should probably be enough, but I'm really excited about this as a video consumer. It is high-quality stuff. It is reported out, it is beautifully filmed, and you're going to love this first episode. It is all about
02:30 - 03:00 why the Stradivarius is so expensive. How could you have a $14 million violin? And producer Nora Ali — she investigates it. She goes to where they have the violin cubbies. Did you know there are violin cubbies? This channel is made by alums from Business Insider, Morning Brew, Cheddar. And that is the lens that they bring to this stuff — which is that business explains the world — that cultural artifacts often flow from business decisions. And if you've watched this channel, you can probably guess that that's a worldview that I
03:00 - 03:30 think is fascinating and often super true. You're going to love their channel too. So what I want to suggest to you is that you go ahead, scroll down a bit, click open a new tab. I will actually wait right now. Okay, I'm waiting. That should be enough time. After all, you're watching a video about all the factors behind an iconic chair,
03:30 - 04:00 so it totally makes sense to learn the factors behind an iconic violin. Thank you to them for sponsoring this video. Thank you to you for clicking over, subscribing, checking it out! I'm so excited to see the next video right alongside you. Now let's go ahead and get back to this one. So back to that Virco groundbreaking. Tubular steel started becoming a furniture material in the 1920s. And before Virco was Virco,
04:00 - 04:30 the founder — Julian Virtue — It's a very cool name, in my opinion. He sounds like a comic book hero. — ran U.S. Steel & Plating. This is why Dinky Links is on screen right now — because the earliest mention I could find of U.S. Plating Company was when they donated a steel shaft putter. This made its way to furniture. Tubular steel was most famously used by the Wassily Chair. It initially used a bit of strong cotton and tubular steel. Browse through the parent company's
04:30 - 05:00 catalog in the 1920s and 1930s, and you'll find lots of tubular steel. I want you to actually think of, like, Crocs today: an initially bizarre and kind of industrial-looking material that became quite fashionable. These furniture trends made tubular steel practical and trendy. So I'm giving you the super broad strokes here. But around the world, technology was changing the type of furniture that was made and the shape that furniture took.
05:00 - 05:30 Charles and Ray Eames started experimenting with molded plywood in the 1940s. And I think you can see the curves in this 1948 Herman Miller catalog That led to plastic and molded fiberglass chairs they created. These broad organic design trends — there are probably thousands of examples — became mainstream and flowed to the school market. Heywood Wakefield, a longtime school furniture maker, created beautiful chairs like this one from the 1950s.
05:30 - 06:00 These chairs featured Heywoodite, a way to sell molded plastic to a public just learning about the possibilities. So in the 1950s and 1960s, these organic-looking wood and fiberglass chairs really became mainstream. In 1962, the Brunswick stacking chair looked shockingly similar to our beloved Virco. Virco soon developed their own Martest plastic — plastic at the price of wood.
06:00 - 06:30 Let's focus on that. Plastic had been a more expensive option, but the price was quickly coming down. It was rapidly getting as cheap as wood and would soon be cheaper. So in 1965, all this technology came together in the form of the Virco 9000, a sturdy single-shell plastic piece with tubular steel legs. But that design evolution — that is just part of it. You have to understand a more important piece as well.
06:30 - 07:00 “Crowded schools exist everywhere. And there is a teacher shortage. Or haven't you heard?” “Well, they gave my boy half a seat.” I love the social dynamics here, by the way. It's two kids — they are clearly fighting over turf. So this video is from 1949, but it gives you a sense of some of the big changes that are going on.
07:00 - 07:30 Schooling used to look quite different. Desks were in long rows, immovable, and kids were packed in. Look at this diagram from an 1800s catalog. They crammed 62 pupils in a class and it was a tight fit. This desk from 1900 — it's beautiful, but you can see students have to be in a row for it to work. And it's heavy. Innovative desks like this one were in Montessori schools in the hope of encouraging flexibility. But you had a material limitation. This thing was heavy. Arrangements like these from the
07:30 - 08:00 '30s were just going to be pretty stationary. But you had two big changes in education in the 20th century — a change in the students and a change in the educational philosophy. And both of them affected the chairs. “What's the reason behind this crowded condition? There are many reasons, but it all comes under one heading: the increase in population.” Look at this chart. It shows total enrollment by the numbers of students from 1900 all the
08:00 - 08:30 way to 2000. So it's going from 17 million all the way up to 29 million by just 1950. And see this big pop here? That is the Baby Boom — 29 million to that 1971 peak of 51 million. Things were getting crowded. Virco, from the beginning, was built to cater to this market. And it worked. Their sales grew. The blue lines here are total sales. And the company even labels the Baby Boom and Baby Boom Echo. If classes are growing as quickly as these
08:30 - 09:00 graphs show, you need furniture solutions that are durable but also flexible and easy to expand on. Go ahead and look at this catalog. It is from 1971. One-piece molded Martest plastic shell is heavily reinforced. It's modern and durable. You can make permanent or semi-permanent rows of chairs with this ganging device, but you don't have to. And as importantly, it provides for quick and easy stacking. This teacher's happy.
09:00 - 09:30 The other thing that's going on is right around here. “There are various examples of the open education concept in operation at several public schools.” Do you remember that one desk? That was an attempt at a more flexible form of education — Montessori-style. That thinking was starting to trickle through to all public schools. The idea, roughly, was to have fewer rows of desks and instead allow children to move to their
09:30 - 10:00 interests in an occasionally chaotic fashion. That's the teacher. I drew the teacher. “Classes, of course, were marked by that formality that we know — the rows of chairs and desks that suddenly appear after kindergarten for some reason. And kids, are kind of, restrained in many ways from being kids.” I even found quotes to this effect in this article: "Where Learning Looks Like Play." It says, "Blackboards, cabinets,
10:00 - 10:30 desks and chairs move easily." Now, I don't want to overstate this. I think that saying “open education is the reason we sit on chairs like this” would be going a bit too far. However, I do think that directionally this does give us the right idea. Both of these trends do. There were more students in schools. And schooling was becoming more flexible — both of which led people away from desk-and-chair combos to flexible, movable chairs like this one.
10:30 - 11:00 It was ultimately a trend, but here is what I have failed to explain — and hopefully you will have this question: Virco 9000 — okay, but it's just a plastic chair. Why this one? Why not any plastic chair? Look back at that open education article. There's a plastic chair, but it's not the Virco 9000. Look — there's a triangle opening. This is the right type of chair, but it has a rectangular back. 1976: mobile plastic chair, but not the 9000.
11:00 - 11:30 So why is this the chair that sold 60 million times? Why is this the chair that triggers my nostalgia? Virco’s 10-K form gives us the clues. They say they have the largest direct sales force of any education furniture manufacturer. That's complemented by planning software they've developed. And they sponsor lots of awards and conferences. But their scale gives them way more important factors that led to their ubiquity — their manufacturing and their contracts.
11:30 - 12:00 My Virco chair is made in the USA, which might seem difficult, but Virco says that domestic manufacturing lets them fulfill highly seasonal school orders because factories overseas need longer lead times. They also say big, bulky school furniture — assembled like my chair was when I got it — is harder to ship. They have this thing called the "price cube threshold." Basically, it means that big bulky stuff erases the cost
12:00 - 12:30 advantage of overseas manufacturing. Most schools get stuff assembled and delivered for them, so this is an advantage for Virco. I also want to flag the most important thing by far, which is how these school supplies get bought. The company says subsequent to the dot-com bust and again following the recession, fewer school districts now administer their own bids and are more likely to use regional, state, or national contracts. Virco sells 64% of their stuff
12:30 - 13:00 from this. This is a huge deal. So basically a purchasing network like OMNIA Partners — nicely vague name —negotiates a mega contract for public schools. This is it, if you are interested in seeing it — and all the other school districts get to piggyback off those prices. So basically this way, instead of Lisa — a random school assistant principal in rural Arizona — and Frank — an assistant superintendent in New
13:00 - 13:30 Hampshire — negotiating directly with Virco, They can get their prices from OMNIA’s negotiation with Virco, and they're spending less time worrying about desks and chairs. Virco makes buying furniture easy. And with discounts? Guess which chair works best? The N2? The 3000? Analogy? 2000? The 9000 wins.
13:30 - 14:00 Obvious question: who cares about a chair? I initially made this video for the nostalgia clicks, and I felt a little bit guilty about it. I mean, nostalgia can be indistinguishable from a form of narcissism. Oh, look at this Squeezit commercial! My life matters. But I think there is something more meaningful going on. And that is because nostalgia can be specific. You know, I was talking to a group of middle school students about YouTube and stuff like
14:00 - 14:30 that. It was over Zoom. And so through this grainy Zoom window, it was kind of hard to distinguish exactly what was going on. But then one of the students stood up to ask a question, and I noticed that he had this chair. Suddenly we were connected. If you went to public school at a specific time in a specific country, you probably had this chair. All of us pop out in this, like, void — you know, without context —in our lives.
14:30 - 15:00 We find that context through things and experiences. But so many of those experiences are just individual — our old backyard, our old dining room. These are moments that we mostly don't share. Nostalgia is the point where those specific things about us meet the specific collisions of technology, and culture, and business.
15:00 - 15:30 The individual and the universe aren't split by a gulf. A chair drifts into view. And for a moment — just a moment… That is it for this one. Thank you so much to the people who sent me in their chairs. Thank you to the class that did it, that was really awesome. Also my friend Desmond, who did
15:30 - 16:00 it — that was really nice. Yeah. Thank you to them for doing that. Thank you for watching this video. I will tell you that I really did get a kick out of this chair. And this is going to be my chair. From now on, I'm going to use this at my desk. So I'm pretty excited about that. If you don't know, I've got a newsletter over on Patreon. It comes out whenever I publish a new video, and it has an extra article about something that I couldn't fit into the video proper. I looked through a lot of old school catalogs
16:00 - 16:30 for this video, so I want to give you the highlights in that article — all the weird stuff that I left out and all the other cool stuff, all the cool innovations that happened. I'm going to give you the best of those in that newsletter. It's hosted over on Patreon, but it's completely free to subscribe to. Just crossed that 4000-member mark — pretty exciting. Hoping to improve it. Yeah, that's pretty much it. I'd love to know: was this your chair in school? Did you have a different chair? Can you track it down? Find the catalog listing for me? And yeah. Thank you for being here and
16:30 - 17:00 watching it with me. All right. Bye.