The Aeron: It’s Become the Limousine of Office Chairs

It may look like a large high-tech fly swatter on wheels, but for compensation specialist Terry Malone, no other office chair but the Aeron will do.

“It was really the most unusual chair,” said Malone, recalling the first time she saw the plastic and fabric-mesh chairs in her Brea office. But it’s “very comfortable.”

Despite its unusual look and lofty price, the Aeron has rolled into American offices in force, challenging long-held notions of comfort as well as established corporate traditions.

The Aeron--born in a Santa Monica design studio--is one of the few pieces of office furniture recognized by name outside of the worlds of industrial designers and purchasing agents. And although office furniture sales are slowing in the face of economic weakness, the Aeron’s appeal has spread beyond the American office and has become a status symbol of sorts. It can be spotted on television shows and in home offices, hotel rooms and even Dodger Stadium.

“It’s become the object to have,” said Katherine Bennett, a product design specialist and teacher at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. “It’s high-performance seating.”

The chair is not for everyone. Some taller workers complain about its back support. Others grumble that the armrests are too low. But the chair has proved a big hit for office furniture maker Herman Miller Inc., which has sold more than a million Aerons since the mid-1990s. New chairs are priced around $700, although companies can purchase the Aeron in quantity for $400 to $600 each.

The look and philosophy behind the Aeron represented a major gamble even for a company like Herman Miller, which is known for cutting-edge furniture created by such legendary designers as the late Charles and Ray Eames.

The Aeron, designed by industry veteran Donald Chadwick of Santa Monica in partnership with Bill Stumpf of Minneapolis, features a sheer but sturdy netting on the chair seat and back instead of traditional upholstered padding. The netting helps reduce the number of pressure points and heat buildup, the company says. The structure of the Aeron--which comes in three sizes--and a variety of adjusting mechanisms allow for a range of motion and positions.

The chair “has completely changed people’s concept of what is comfortable seating,” Bennett said. “It used to be the big, expensive, padded chairs. This is the new definition of comfort.”

In addition to being stylish and ergonomically correct, the Aeron reflects the designers’ egalitarian view of the workplace in which comfortable seating is not limited to those in a corner office. Instead, the Aeron is meant to appeal to all classes of employees, particularly those who spend many hours working on a computer.

Despite initial concern about its radical styling, Herman Miller introduced the Aeron in late 1994 to widespread acclaim.

“In the marketplace of office chairs, you need to stand out,” said Chadwick, 64, during a recent interview in his modest studio-workshop in a Santa Monica industrial park. “You need a strong visual image.”

The Aeron’s image and comfort proved especially popular among the Internet and high-tech companies that Chadwick had in mind when the Aeron was being created. Not only did the Aeron have a high-tech look, but its egalitarian aura fit well into a high-tech culture that scorned traditional corporate hierarchy and traditions.

So even when most dot-coms favored desks fashioned from doors and filing cabinets, the Aeron emerged as the chair of choice.

“Because of the radical way it looked, it fit into the tech culture,” said Pasadena interior designer Jeff Wirt. “They were looking for something different.”

While the dot-com bust has given rise to a thriving market in used Aerons, the chair has made inroads into new industries and settings.

Screenwriter Michael Murray’s Aeron sits in his Pasadena home office amid historical Stickley furniture.

“Some office chairs are abominably ugly,” said Murray, who purchased his Aeron shortly after it was introduced. “I saw this chair and said, ‘I must have it.’ It’s very high style.”

Sound engineer and musician Benjamin Maas said he appreciates the chair’s fabric, which keeps him cool in some of the poorly ventilated recording studios where he often spends hours on post-production work.

“It fits your body real well,” Maas said. “It makes those really long days go a lot easier.”

At the suggestion of movie studio executives who had just ordered Aerons by the truckload, the Los Angeles Dodgers outfitted their new luxury suites with about 500 of the chairs, said Tim Carey, senior vice president of Catellus Development Corp., which managed the 2000 renovation.

“It’s a recognizable chair, and it gives the suites an [upscale] imprint,” Carey said. He later persuaded Catellus to equip its Los Angeles offices with Aerons.

The chair has gained popularity in even the most traditional of companies. In the executive suite at 21st Century Insurance in Woodland Hills, Chief Executive Bruce Marlow personally gave the thumbs-up to the Aeron as part of a sleek new interior design. Eventually Aerons will be available throughout the company.

“Now everyone has the same chair, and they are all just as comfortable,” said 21st Century administrative assistant Michelle Phillips. “It’s almost like an easy chair.”

In the Brea offices of Avery International, where Malone, the compensation specialist, works, the fact that top managers and receptionists now use the same chair did not seem to rankle anybody’s sense of status.

“We found that those big, square manager’s chairs . . . were not necessarily the most comfortable,” Malone said. “We really had no problem converting.”