Does anyone know where you can get nice reproductions of Eames stuff in the US for a good price?

How did you get the chair to review? I couldn't find any "shipping to the US" information on their site.

it is a AT Australia Post, it's in the tags

At $238 US Dollars - I HIGHLY doubt that the part that actually is leather (the back is "Leather Match" - code for Vinyl) is Italian...
...more likely Chinese - like the rest of the chair.

It's Chinese leather.
It's not the best, but it's good enough for the price.

Thanks for you input bepsf.

Just a couple of points to note:
Given that I flinch on the rare occasion that I do touch 'pleather' I can assure you that I wouldn't have bothered to use this chair for 2 weeks before I reviewed it.
Also, I'm sorry to say that in this day and age no one expects a reproduction office chair to be actually made in Italy.

The important thing to note is that it's incredibly hard to find a good reproduction of any classic chair in Australia that's not full of plastic and wont cost you an arm and a leg.

Hi all,

Thanks for your comments about our reproduction Eames Management Office Chair. You can rest assured that this chair reviewed is a premium Italian Leather on the front of the chair (so the part that you sit on), and the back is a leather match (PVC). In manufacturing our chairs we have the choice of Italian Leather, Chinese Leather (which doesn't smell the best!), or Synthetic leather. If we did use Chinese leather (which we never have) we would be able to sell the chair for prox $200 mark. But a chair of this stunning design deserves the best materials, which is why we opt for Italian Leather.

If anyone has any other questions you can email me direct (dean@milandirect.com.au) or Follow us on
Twitter: http://twitter.com/milandirect

All the best,
Dean - Milan Direct
www.milandirect.com.au

Well, what would you know. I live in Melbourne, Australia and bought the same knock-off Eames Aluminum Group chair in white from Milan Direct under a year ago. To say I've been disappointed in the performance of this chair is an understatement; "ripped off" comes to mind. It got two months -- yes, two whole months! -- of use before I was forced to replace it.

When I first received it I was disappointed but not unhappy. The leather did appear to be real leather but not of high quality (Italian or not, I have no way to tell). Details and certain sizings and proportions were off when compared to the original design, but this wasn't readily evident when seen from a distance. My overall impression was that it was not a particularly well-made chair, but for the price I paid I couldn't complain and it was probably "good enough" to last me a couple of years -- oh, how I was wrong.

The poor quality of the chair really became evident about a month into using it, with the seat losing much of its tautness and exhibiting major, permanent sagging. Within two months the chair had become very ugly and practically unusable, with the stitching on the underside breaking and the "leather match" (PVC as Dean from Milan Direct says) ripping. The sagging was not just potentially dangerous and an eyesore (ruining the lines of the Eames design), but had a very real impact on the ergonomics of the chair, placing me in a lower seating position than I wanted to be in and making the whole thing rather uncomfortable to sit on.

Just for this post I've gone and dug this chair out of storage and have taken some photos.

http://img164.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=60193_milandirect_1_122_562lo.JPG
http://img242.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=60198_milandirect_2_122_354lo.JPG
http://img206.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=60201_milandirect_3_122_500lo.JPG

Look at the underside of the chair -- the rips are evident as is the sagging. Doesn't that look like a very painful injury just about to happen? Ouch!

Look at any 10-, 20- or 30- year-old Eames Aluminum Group chair made by licensees Herman Miller or Vitra and you won't see such conspicuous sagging. The chair I bought to replace the Milan Direct knock-off, a second-hand Eames Aluminum chair made by Vitra, is a few years old and after nearly 10 months of use by me exhibits no sagging or material faults whatsoever. The quality is evident, and it has held up well under use; I am sure if I needed to resell it I could recoup most of my buying price (A$400, second-hand).

Why have I kept this Milan Direct knock-off in storage? Despite offering this lump of junk for FREE on Gumtree (a popular alternative to Craigslist here) and Freecycle, I haven't even been able give it away -- is there a better indication that something is truly a worthless piece of junk when you can't even give it away for free? It will, unfortunately, have to be thrown out at some point -- what a waste! In fact, it is likely I will have to incur additional expense and pay someone to come and dispose of it for me.

This chair is my first, and most certainly last, purchase of an unauthorized Chinese "reproduction". There's no pride in the construction, they are not built to last, they have no resale value, and by buying it you are supporting a parasitic industry that rips off original design. They are "cheap" but expensive for what you truly get. Vitra, by comparison, offers a 30 year warranty with their chairs, and for good reason -- they are confident in the quality of the products they put out.

My rating: Avoid at all costs. Stay away from Milan Direct and other purveyors of such junk and buy second hand originals; you get what you pay for, as they say.

Hi Ben.

You can rest assured that there is plenty of pride in the construction of our chairs! I have been in the furniture industry since I was a toddler as my family is a leading furniture manufacturer in Australia for the past 50 years.

If you had an issue with your chair why did you not contact us for a replacement? As you are aware, all Milan Direct products come with a 7 day money back guarantee as well as a 1 year warranty which covers such defects. We will happily replace your chair with a brand new one.

As for the quality issues with your chair, we did have an issue with one order/batch of chairs a while ago whereby we experienced similar problems that you experienced. This however was a once off and an easy issue to fix. Instead of having just one layer of leather underneath the chair we now manufacture the chair with 2 thicker layers. So this problem has not arisen again, and any customers who had this problem we happily replaced for them, and have had only glowing reports.

Ben, we have placed over 200,000 pieces of designer furniture into Australian and NZ homes in the past 3 years
and have served over 40,000 highly satisfied customers.

Shoot me an email direct (dean@milandirect.com.au) and we can arrange to collect your chair and send you brand new chair. You can also rest assured that we will repair your chair ourselves and put it to good use in our office.

All the best,
Dean - Milan Direct
www.milandirect.com.au

thanks for the info, ben. i was tempted to buy this chair after reading jenny's review but your post has given me second thoughts...those pics are shocking. i think i'll feel safer sitting in my ikea chair for a little while longer. ;)

Dean: Thanks for your reply. I've sent you an email; I'd certainly be interested to see if the quality of the chairs you sell has improved.

annah76: My comment still stands in relation to the chair I received. But just to be fair to Dean and Milan Direct, it is possible, as Dean claims above, that the chair I received was a "once off" and the quality of the stuff they sell has improved. I have my doubts, but I guess I'll see if Dean sends me a warranty replacement as he has offered above.

I have bought several pieces of furniture from Manhattan Home Design. I actually sat in this chair in their showroom. Although I didn't buy it I was impressed with the quality. It is not "pleather" but real leather. They seem to have good quality pieces. Everything I have bought from there has been great.