Happy 60th Birthday 9000 Series

A message from Doug Virtue – President & COO

When Julian Virtue founded Virco in 1950 he anticipated a big surge in the student population as returning servicemen started families and filled the public schools. This was an amazing insight for someone who never finished the 10th grade.

Initially, the chairs and desks sold by Virco were very traditional designs made from steel and hardwood. But by the early 1960s, the sheer volume of seating required by what came to be called “The Baby Boom” demanded a design and materials that allowed faster production.

Julian and his design team developed the Virco 9000 Series Chair, consisting of a unitized steel frame and backrest with an injection-molded bucket made from Polyethylene. The colors and finish were a distinct departure from traditional wood and steel.

The 9000 was an almost-immediate success, with sales of over 2,000,000 units per year through the peak of the Baby Boom.

Only in hindsight did Julian realize that he had invented the Official Chair of the Baby Boom. To this day, if you describe a school chair with “three slots in the back” to anyone of a certain age, they will smile and nod and say Yes, they sat in one of those when they went to school. The 9000 became almost as ubiquitous as the Teacher’s Apple.

Virco estimates that over 60,000,000 units of the 9000 have been sold since its introduction in 1965, making it perhaps the world’s biggest selling single chair design in history. The 9000 is still in production today, made in Virco’s two American factories in Torrance, California, and Conway, Arkansas, just like it was when it was first released. And 2025 is the 60th Anniversary of the 9000 Series. So, happy Anniversary to the Chair of the Baby Boom and congratulations to Julian Virtue for inventing a very practical and iconic product that has been used by millions of Americans.