My wife has been telling me for about three years that I need a better chair. Frankly, she's right. The one I've been using since I sold the office-supply business in 2019 is a tired old swivel that came out of my warehouse, and the lumbar pad fell off somewhere around the second pandemic winter. So when one of my grandkids asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I said, "A chair I can sit in for two hours without my hip going on strike." That sent me down the road of looking at Relax The Back, and the first thing I did, naturally, was ask them to send me the catalog instead of paying for a $40 shipping charge to look at one online.
What Relax The Back actually is
For folks who haven't run across the name, Relax The Back has been around since 1984. It started in Austin as one store opened by an osteopath who wanted his patients to have somewhere to buy decent back-pain gear. An entrepreneur named Virginia Rogers bought the place in 1987 and turned it into a franchise. Today the company sells ergonomic chairs, zero-gravity recliners, adjustable beds, lumbar pillows, traction devices, and a long list of other things that promise to keep your spine in one piece.
The catalog is the print version of all that. Twenty-some pages of furniture and accessories, photographed nicely, with prices listed (most of them, anyway — the big-ticket recliners say "starting at," which is industry code for "higher than you think"). The point of the catalog is to get you in the door, either online or at a franchise store, where they can fit you to a chair the way a good shoe store fits you to a pair of wing tips. Or used to.
How to order the free catalog
This part is straightforward, and it really is free — no shipping, no "processing fee," no auto-enroll into anything. Two ways to do it:
- Go to the request page on the Relax The Back website, fill in your name, mailing address, and email, and hit submit. You can also start from the Catalogs.com listing and follow the link from there.
- Pick up the phone and call 1-800-222-5728, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern. A real person answers, which I appreciate.
They quote 10 to 14 business days for delivery. Mine showed up in nine, which I'll take. The catalog is for U.S. addresses only — if you're up in Canada or anywhere else, you're stuck with the website.
One thing to know before you fall in love with the catalog
Here's the part the company isn't going to put on the back cover. A lot of Relax The Back's brick-and-mortar stores have closed in the last couple of years. As of early 2026, locations in Torrance, Dallas, Los Angeles (Melrose), Chicago (Clybourn), Greenwich, and Simsbury are all listed as closed on Yelp, with closure dates running from late 2024 through early 2026. Other stores in places like Charlotte and Kennesaw are still open and still doing in-person fittings.
Frankly, this matters more than people realize. The whole pitch of the catalog is "come try it in the store." A massage chair runs $4,500 to $9,000. An adjustable bed base with a decent mattress is $3,000 and up. Even a Stressless-style recliner is going to run you $2,400 before you blink. I'm not laying that down sight-unseen, and I doubt you are either. So step one when the catalog arrives is to go to the company's store locator and see whether anything is within driving distance. If there isn't, the calculus changes. The website has a 30-day return policy on most items, but you're paying return freight on a 90-pound chair, which is not a small number.
What's worth a look in the catalog
I've thumbed through this thing twice now. Here's where I think the value actually is, in order of how much money you can save versus where my wife already shops:
- Lumbar supports and seat cushions. Twenty to ninety bucks. McKenzie-style rolls, gel cushions, the BackJoy posture seat. These actually work, and you can take them with you between car, office, and the recliner.
- Adjustable laptop and monitor stands. Eighty to two hundred bucks. If you spend any real time at a computer, a stand that gets your screen up to eye level will save you more neck pain than any pill.
- Inversion and traction tables. Three hundred to a thousand. Talk to your doctor first — my cardiologist had opinions when I asked — but for the right person, they're useful.
- Office chairs in the $700–$1,200 range. Decent fabric, decent warranty. Above that, you're paying for upholstery, and below that you're not getting much over what the big-box office suppliers carry.
What I'd skip, frankly: the high-end massage chairs unless you have a specific medical reason and a generous trial period. Five grand is five grand.
How to actually save money once the catalog shows up
The catalog itself rarely has the best price. A few habits I've picked up over the years that apply here:
- Sign up for their email list once. The first email almost always has a 10 to 15 percent off coupon. Then unsubscribe if you don't want the daily nags.
- Cross-check the model number on Amazon and on the manufacturer's own site. Some Relax The Back products are exclusive; many are not, and the same Human Touch or Svago chair is for sale at three other places. Last time I checked, the same WholeBody massage chair was $300 cheaper at a regional dealer.
- Ask about floor models. The franchise stores rotate inventory, and a lightly-used floor recliner can be 20 to 30 percent off. Worst they can say is no.
- Watch the calendar. Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Black Friday, and the post-Christmas weeks are when the real sales hit. Buying ergonomic furniture in February at full retail is leaving money on the table.
Other catalogs along the same lines
If your back is the issue but you're not sold on Relax The Back's price points, a few neighbors in the category are worth requesting at the same time. The Quill office-supply catalog carries ergonomic chairs in the working-stiff price range. Cable Organizer is good for the desk setup that goes around the chair. And the senior-living catalogs — you can find those over on Catalogs.com — carry recliners and lift chairs at price points that won't make your accountant call.
The bottom line
The Relax The Back catalog is free, the request takes two minutes, and there's no catch I've found. Order it, look it over with a cup of coffee, and use it the way it's meant to be used — as a starting point, not the final answer. Then check whether your nearest store is still open, compare prices online, and never pay full retail on anything over five hundred bucks. That's the rule I gave my grandkids when they took over the business, and it still works on chairs.
