Inventory Chronicles: White Folding Chairs (Yes, Really)

A boring asset, intentional friction, and why pricing above the market still worked

Author

Ramon Luna
December 27, 2025

As 2025 wraps up, I’ve been doing what a lot of us do quietly but don’t always talk about out loud. I’ve been staring at my inventory and asking myself what actually worked, what didn’t, and what I’d do again if I had to start over.

Today, that led me to white folding chairs.
Which is funny, because I spent a lot of time early on trying not to own them.

Why I Even Looked at These

White folding chairs ended up being the top-performing asset in my chair category in 2025.

That stood out to me for a few reasons.

  • I only own about 500 chairs total.

  • I’m priced at $3.50 per white chair, which I know is above market in most places.

  • Despite that pricing, they still drove the most revenue within the chair category.

That combination made me slow down and actually study them instead of just accepting the result.

Why I Avoided White Chairs at First

When I started four years ago, I only bought black chairs. That choice came from a mentor, and in hindsight, it was one of the best early calls.

I still listed white chairs on the website from day one, but I priced them higher than the black chairs on purpose. I didn’t want demand. I wanted friction. I thought that it would look odd to have only one type of chair and I wanted the black chairs to look like the obvious, rational choice when someone compared the two. And it worked.

White chairs felt like a headache.
More cleaning. More maintenance. More chances for something to go wrong.

Eventually, someone gave me a good enough reason to invest.

Pricing Above the Market (On Purpose)

As time went on, I noticed something else. Prices in my market were creeping up.

When I raised my black chairs to $2.50, I also raised white chairs to $3. It turns out that differential wasn’t enough to push demand back toward black chairs.

So I pushed white chairs to $3.50.
An entire dollar difference.

To be clear, these are not fancy chairs.
No fan back.
Not the ones with the bigger seat.
Nothing special.

Just standard white folding chairs.

I fully believe $3.50 is premium pricing in almost any market for this chair. And that’s intentional.

I don’t want these going to muddy backyards in 20- or 40-count orders and then having to turn around and pay someone $25 an hour to clean chairs that turned into a high-turn headache.

And if you’re anything like me (and I’m betting you are), you’re cleaning these chairs yourself because you’re too cheap to pay someone else to do it. Which, in my mind, makes this even worse.

If these go out, I want them going out in bulk.
Preferably 100, 200, or more.
And ideally indoors.

Do I discount sometimes? Sure.
But never back to the price of black chairs.
And honestly, not even to $3 most of the time.

A Note on Big Companies and Pricing

Early on, I paid close attention to what the bigger companies in my market were charging. And I intentionally priced above them.

In my mind, those big companies aren’t my competition. They’re my suppliers.

If a large company is advertising white folding chairs at $2, there is no scenario where I can price at $2 or below and expect to make money.

  • For one, they have an army of people and mechanical systems to move chairs efficiently without someone actually busting their ass.

  • Second, they have pricing power. They buy in containers. They import. They aren’t subject to the same sale cycles or batch pricing most smaller operators deal with. They control their costs.

  • Third, their pricing reflects volume. If a big company is advertising $2 chairs, it’s because they’re dropping off hundreds or thousands of them at a time. Not because they’re delivering 40 or 100 chairs to someone’s backyard.

That’s why smaller operators shouldn’t follow big-company pricing. It’s a structural mistake.

If they’re priced at $2, I have to be above that. Otherwise, the moment I need to sub-rent, I’ve already lost my margin.

What the 2025 Data Actually Says

Some quick, top-level numbers from this year:

  • Chair rentals made up about 10% of total revenue

  • White folding chairs generated about 25% of chair revenue

  • Total investment: just over $6,000

  • Blended cost: roughly $12 per chair

  • 2025 revenue from these chairs: just over $6,000

  • Annual turns: about four (very low for such a basic chair)

  • Payback period: roughly one year

At some point, I stopped debating this philosophically and just looked at the data. These chairs paid for themselves and kept working.

Strategic Role and Replacement Decisions

This year, I started forcing myself to answer a different question.

Not “did this rent?”
But “what role does this play in the business?”

For white folding chairs, the answer was clear.

Strategic role: core utility
Replacement verdict: automatic replace

If one breaks, replace it.
If demand grows, invest without overthinking it.

That doesn’t mean chasing volume blindly. It means being confident when the numbers already proved the case.

Where AI Actually Helped Me Think Better

The biggest takeaway here isn’t really about chairs.

It’s about using AI as a sparring partner.

Instead of guessing, I used it to help define things like replacement verdicts, strategic roles, velocity, payback, and operational realities that actually matter to me.

For example, I don’t have a liftgate. With my truck and dock setup, 40–50 chairs is manageable solo. At 60 chairs, even with an electric dolly, it becomes a two-person job.
I can’t even get a stack of 60 into the truck without tilting the stack back, based on my dock height.

That detail won’t show up in anyone else’s spreadsheet. But it matters in my business.

AI lets me model my reality, not a generic one.

Why I’m Sharing This

Big companies already do this kind of analysis. Or at least I assume they do. They just don’t usually talk about it.

I actually went on a tour recently at a company that was in the middle of inventory, and it somehow completely slipped my mind that inventory is even a thing in this industry. Funny how that works. Sounds like those accounting classes might come in handy after all… once I’m sophisticated enough to do full inventory. Maybe around 2040.

For smaller operators, a lot of these decisions just live in our heads until something breaks or cash gets tight.

If this was helpful, I’d genuinely love to know.
If it was too vague, say that too.
If you do this differently or better, I’m all ears.

I may do more of these.
Or I may not.

But I figured it was worth sharing the thought process, not just the outcome, especially since I’m already going through it anyway.

Until next time
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US Bank - Triple Cash Card
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Amex Blue Business Plus (referral)
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🎪 Rental Industry Resources

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