HERITAGE CHURCH — Lake Zurich, Ill.
“For our new, 1,000-seat worship center project, we looked at several different theater seat companies and several different stacker chair companies. But — when we saw what SERIES® Seating could provide firsthand — our decision became an easy one. From the outset, it was evident they were not selling, but really educating our team. The differences were easy to see — both in their depth of knowledge and expertise, as well as in the design of their products. Also, they were the only provider to offer a matching loose stacking chair for our lower floor that would harmonize perfectly with the stadium seating.”
— Executive Pastor Jordan Lloyd
Q: What current trends are you seeing that affect seat selection for houses of worship?
Director of Worship Division
SERIES® Seating
RYAN ROLLEFSON:
MAXIMIZING BUDGET DOLLARS OVER LONG-TERM: Even with higher costs due to inflation in recent years, customers are increasingly focused on value over time, rather than just the singular line item. This has a lot to do with churches that purchased low-end, low-dollar seating products in the past and are now having to replace those chairs with new seating — again — much quicker than they had ever initially anticipated.
The expected lifecycle of quality seating should be much greater than 20 years; but, we are frequently replacing seating that has only been in use for 5 to 7 years.
SAVING SPACE: Because of ever-increasing costs in renovation and new construction, maximizing critical square footage has become a high priority for church leaders. Most seats and chairs currently available on the market take up too much valuable real estate and were not designed to maximize space. However, all SERIES® products are engineered with a commitment to the value of space efficiency with both our fixed and loose seating options. Space-efficient seating can dramatically reduce the square footage required for a building, while still accomplishing the desired seat capacity — which translates to a dramatically lower overall project construction budget.
• The VERA™ fixed theater seat folds exceptionally tight with the seat in the up position, saving upwards of six to eight inches of crucial walkway space in and out of the row compared with many other theater seats offered to churches.
• Our MODEL K™ stacking theater seat, which incorporates a gravity seat lift into a high-density stacking chair, was initially designed for churches that required flexible and stackable seating in a multi-purpose worship venue. This chair model is typically used to replace existing church stacker chairs with a goal of increasing seating capacity potential and traffic flow space in and out of the rows while also decreasing the amount of actual storage space required by up to two-thirds compared with traditional church stacker chairs.
MULTI-USE VENUES: A very high percentage of new ground-up project designs incorporating multi-purpose auditorium spaces, with flexible loose stacking chairs on the lower flat floor and fixed theater seats in risers at the back of the worship center instead of fixed theater seats throughout. This design allows the church to use the lower floor space for multiple types of different gatherings and events during the year outside of normal weekend worship services. In the past, churches had no choice but to look at multiple vendors for loose stacking chair options in addition to a theater seat provider; now, SERIES® Seating has answered this need by being the only theater seating manufacturer that also produces an identical matching loose stacking chair to harmonize with the theater seats.
VERA TL™ Stacker chair on lower floor designed to harmonize with the Vera™ fixed theater seat in the risers
The VERA TL™ stacker chair not only matches aesthetically with the VERA™ fixed theater seats, but also combines many critical design elements and features found in our theater seats, including the same cold-molded foam, internal steel structure design, removable seat and back cushion covers — all to ensure the best possible seating experience for everyone in the venue no matter where you are seated.
ARMLESS SEATS: Churches are growing increasingly more aware of the benefit of going armless to provide more space per person and to provide continuity between theater seats and stackable chairs. Currently, 97% of worship center projects go without arms between the seats, primarily to provide more personal space to each individual, no matter your size or stature.
INTRODUCTION TO SERIES® Seating:
Over the past four decades, SERIES® Seating has gained international recognition as the worldwide leader in design and manufacturing of innovative seating solutions, serving a wide variety of customers in different market categories.
As a company, our “Why” — or “Guiding Principle” — governs everything we do each day: to faithfully serve our customers. We call it Serving by Design. We are hyper-focused on the relentless pursuit of understanding the unique needs of the markets we serve and providing solutions not found or available anywhere else. Effective innovation only comes from an intimate understanding of what is most valuable to our customers.
Our Worship Team here at SERIES® Seating has the privilege of working with and serving hundreds of unique church teams each year, and — as the largest provider of auditorium seating to churches — we have a real pulse on the heartbeat of the Church and its unique and challenging seating needs. Because of this understanding, we are able to respond by designing and offering real solutions to the actual current and future needs of our customers instead of pushing products or ideas that might have been acceptable in the distant past but are no longer viable.
Innovation is much more than the introduction of something new to the marketplace; to those of us at SERIES® Seating, it has to fill a need and provide tangible benefits to the market which are not being provided by others.
RENOVATIONS: The vast majority of worship projects we do each year are renovations of existing spaces that are looking to replace pews. Most of these churches are not only looking for an aesthetic update to their worship center, but are primarily looking to:
• Eliminate the feeling of being confined, cramped, restricted and uncomfortable
• Maximize traffic flow and ease of access in and out of the space
• Increase space per person
• Enhance sightlines
• Increase seat capacity potential
• Optimize layout configurations to boost the number of best-in-house seats
• Better complement their current worship format
We also realize that a smaller segment of churches still favors the traditional look of a pew, which might be an important issue if the church is trying to reach a community and culture that values and expects a more traditional worship environment or is in a historic venue. We have effectively served this segment of the market with a seating product that preserves the more traditional appearance of a pew while delivering all the benefits our self-lifting theater seats provide. In the past, these more traditional churches might have initially considered the idea of refurbishing existing pews or purchasing new pews to try and maintain that more traditional appearance in their sanctuary space. These days, however — once a church realizes that you can maintain a traditional appearance while still gaining all the benefits of increased traffic flow, capacity, personal comfort, and easier maintenance over pew seating — the decision to go with our self-lifting theater seating solution has become an obvious choice.
Additionally, for a long time, pews were thought to be the most cost-effective option; but today, theater seats provide a drastically lower overall cost per person than traditional pew seating — further reinforcing the decision to go with theater seating over pews from a stewardship perspective.
Pew replacement project with the VERA™ theater seat with traditional pew end panel option
FABRIC SELECTIONS: We have seen a marked shift in fabric selections over the past 5 to 7 years. Today, churches are prioritizing low-maintenance fabrics over more typical and traditional upholstery options on their seating, especially due to the increased presence of in-house coffee shops located in nearly every church community. We have responded by providing advanced fabrics not found anywhere else that are (1) anti-microbial, (2) anti-bacterial, and (3) stain-resistant, making clean-up easier and less time-consuming for facility managers each week.
In addition, the fabric covers on our theater seats and stacker chairs are all easy to remove and replace if needed (in a matter of a couple of minutes). And, because of our production volume as a global seating manufacturer, we are able to provide these advanced and innovative upholstery options to the church market at the same price as the typical standard offerings.
Q: For church leaders who are considering buying new seating — a significant investment — what makes SERIES® Seating unique among other providers?
ROLLEFSON:
MANUFACTURER vs. RESELLER
The biggest differentiator is that we are a design and manufacturing company, not just a reseller of someone else’s products like many companies today. With hundreds of unique seat and chair models available — and dozens of critical design patents — SERIES® Seating is known around the world for innovation in seating design and manufacturing in a wide number of applications, including prestigious Performing Arts & Concert Hall seating; Sporting Venue VIP & Team Film Room seating; Higher Education & Lecture hall seating; Corporate HQ seating; and of course, Worship center seating solutions, as well as many others.
ADVANCED DESIGN FEATURES THAT ARE “STANDARD”
Because of our expertise in seat design and manufacturing (not simply a reseller), seating products designed for our worship customers incorporate many invaluable design elements and features as standard that other seating providers either cannot offer or offer only as costly upgrades.
INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS
We have a real understanding of our customers’ unique needs. And we are hyper-focused on providing solutions not found anywhere else. A few examples include
1. Our MODEL K™ stacking theater seat that can boost seat capacity by 20% versus traditional church stacking chairs and can stack three times more chairs in the same space as typical church chairs.
2. Our MODEL H™ high-density fully upholstered stacker stacks 30 high in our custom storage carts, and
3. Our VERA TL™ stacker chair is designed to harmonize perfectly with our VERA™ fixed theater seat.
All of these represent solutions to unique challenges that have not been addressed or answered by anyone else.
DEDICATED WORSHIP TEAM
Even though our company provides seating for a variety of different markets and applications, my team and I exclusively work with church customers — meaning that every day, we are singularly focused on meeting their needs and providing solutions to church-related challenges.
At SERIES® Seating, we really do believe in our mission and purpose: Serving by Design. We consider it a privilege to serve and partner with a continually growing community of ministries and would be honored to partner with your church community.
Ryan Rollefson, Director of Worship Division, has been with SERIES Seating since 2002 and is based at the company’s international corporate headquarters in Miami, Fla.
