Venues compare chairs on unit price because that is the number on the quote. It is rarely the number that matters.

Do the labour arithmetic once

Count how many times a year the room gets set and cleared, and how long it takes. Multiply by five years. For most venues that figure comfortably exceeds what the chairs cost to buy.

Everything that reduces it — thinner folded chairs, better carts, castors that actually roll on your floor — is buying down the larger number.

Folded thickness compounds

Two centimetres per chair sounds trivial. Across a stack of forty it is eighty centimetres, which is frequently the difference between two cartloads and three, or between a cart fitting through a standard doorway and not.

Ask for the folded thickness. It is a number every manufacturer knows and almost none publish.

Buy trolleys matched to the chair

A generic cart lets chairs shift in transit, which chips powder coat and marks walls. Both are visible within a year and neither is repairable in place.

A matched cart holds the stack, puts the handle where a single person can push it, and has braked castors so it does not travel across a sloped floor on its own.

Plan the repair, not just the purchase

Ask whether seat pads can be replaced without scrapping frames, and whether glides are replaceable. Both are cheap parts that extend a fleet by years.

A chair designed to be maintained is a different financial object from one designed to be thrown away, even when the two look identical on a website.