Polyside Chair

The original Poly side chair designed by Robin Day was launched in 1963 after three years of development work. Polypropylene had been invented in 1954 but it had not been used in the furniture industry before. Robin Day and Hille looked to develop seating using this new durable, cost efficient material working in conjunction with the British petrochemical company Shell. Robin had specific criteria that he looked to meet with his design such as hidden fixings using an integral fixing boss, a fully rolled edge to add strength and a range of bases which gave the chair the potential to appeal to a multitude of markets.

The investment for Hille for the moulding tool was huge at the time at around £6,000 and development of the product was very time consuming with many tests and alterations. In the 1960’s of course there were no CAD or CGI facilities and early prototypes had to be created by hand with full product testing only possibly once the actual shell moulding had been created.

Once the development had been completed Hille’s genius marketing campaign was to first send out a line drawing of a stork alerting the recipients who were major government buyers, architects and designers to the following attractively packaged chair sample they were to receive. Hille sent out 600 sample units and the launch and the subsequent marketing campaign’s saw Hille sell Millions of units in the years that followed.

Such was the global success of the Poly side chair by the early 70’s Hille became licensor and had licenses in 30 countries allowing the production and sales of their designs which helped overcome high import duties and shipping costs with the sales bringing in revenue for research and development. Tools were produced in the UK and shipped out to various countries with comprehensive instructions covering every aspect of the chairs productions including materials and methods so as to maintain quality.

In the early 1980’s testing levels for severe contract use meant that the ubiquitous original Poly side frame had to be changed to a more industrial version. It is fair to say that Robin very much preferred the original version but at the time this would only pass testing for domestic use so the decision was made to focus on the revised version which has been produced up to the present day. In 2009 the Poly side chair was featured on a first day cover celebrating British Design classics cementing its place in design history.

Over the many years of working with Robin Day he never relented in mentioning that the original Polyside frame was by far more elegant and of course he was right. In 2011 we have been working with steel suppliers to look at new variants of tube available which allow the original frame to be manufactured to pass the severe contract use tests and as a result Robin’s original design classic will be re-launched shortly.

Polyside Chair Overall Dimensions