There is a chair from J Voich Designs that they actually call a bag chair.  It doubles as a tote bag for your trips to the beach or sporting events.  They even say it great for a needlepoint tote.  Constructed with a hard birch wood frame and canvas seat it normally retails for eighty five ($85) dollars, but is on sale for only $49.99.  It can support up to two hundred sixty five pounds and comes with a built in pillow as a head rest.  Weighing three and a half pounds it is a premium product designed to last for many years.

The ‘bag’ chair as most people know it is constructed on a metal frame with a nylon back, seat and arms usually with a matching color carry bag with a strap.  Frames vary in strength and material and the fabrics range from simple nylon to padded nylons and canvasses.  The bag chair has become a staple in the promotional product industry which offers many styles in various colors that can be imprinted on both the chair and the carry bag with your company logo or event logo in one or more colors.

Northpole is a manufacturer of tents, sleeping bags, packs and chairs that has been the private label supplier for Kmart, Wal-Mart, Sears, Sportsman’s Warehouse and many other regional and national retailers.  Due to the fact that they can screen logos on the chair fabric prior to the chair being constructed there is usually only a minimal charge in addition to the chair cost when wanting your company logo on the product.  Minimums are much higher (one thousand pieces or more), but the resulting cost savings is significant.  Wholesale cost on a standard bag chair with six hundred denier (600D) nylon seats with a single color print was less than five dollars in 2007 so that it could be retailed for $14.99 and $9.99 on sale while making full mark up and getting their name out in the public eye.

If you are looking for portable chairs to take camping or to go to your kids’ sporting events you can still find a decent chair for less than fifteen dollars.  If you want thicker fabric, padding or other bells and whistles expect to pay a bit more.

Northpole is an import company that has been producing tents, sleeping bags, canopies, screen houses, camping folding chairs and pretty much anything that can be made with fabric and poles for over twenty five years.  They currently produce Columbia brand tents, sleeping bags and packs as well as their own Northpole brand.  The also provide private label products for Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse, Bass Pro, Gander Mountain and many more sporting goods companies.  That camping folding chair from Wal-mart may just be a Northpole creation.

In making your decision on what kind of camping folding chair to buy you need to know how many you want and what your total budget will be.  If you are only looking for a tripod chair you can expect to spend less than ten dollars and as little as five dollars.  If you want several camp chairs to go around a fire pit, then you will need to decide what features you want in your chairs and how thick or deluxe type of fabric.  Most of the bag chairs available today start at about $9.99 and can run as high as $49.99 unless they have a canvas fabric or solid wood frames.

Even those models with wood frames vary widely in price as well.  You can get a director’s model chair for under thirty dollars from Target and Kohl’s but you can find a deluxe director’s chair from a couple of different websites for over two hundred dollars hand crafted from certified American Oak.  These are heavy duty chairs that I would not want to leave outside in the weather around our fire pit out back.