The Cape Cod Beach Chair Company: Makers of New England’s Best Wooden Beach Chairs

It was the early aughts, and the dot-com bubble was bursting. The economy was faltering. And Justin Labdon, a young sales and marketing professional, had just been laid off. At the time, he was living in a condo in Boston’s North End with his fiancée, Jill. “The condo had a roof deck,” Justin tells me now, as he provides some shading to the origin story of the Cape Cod Beach Chair Company. “And I was sitting up there, thinking about what comes next.” While pondering his future, Justin was seated on a folding beach chair. An uncomfortable, flimsy aluminum number, low to the ground with the rod that hits your thighs just wrong. “I thought, Why doesn’t someone make a better beach chair?”

Justin, who grew up on Cape Cod, had slung plenty of beach chairs over his shoulder en route to water’s edge, and he knew a better chair would need to be portable and comfortable. Also durable, and “really cool.” That’s where the influence of Justin’s father, Bob, a veterinarian and wooden-boat enthusiast, came into play. “Growing up, going out on this gorgeous sailboat—everything was varnished—wooden masts, too. We always got noticed. So in the grand scheme of beach chairs, I thought wood was the way to go.” Using the woodworking tools in his father’s basement, Justin started experimenting, designing and redesigning chairs, until he had a working prototype.

“We moved [from Boston] to Sandwich, and I launched the website in 2003,” he recalls. “It looked like a real thing, even though I was in my garage, making chairs. I bartended at night—it took a few years until I could pay myself.” Manufacturing was eventually relocated to an industrial park, while Justin searched for a commercial space where the chairs could be built and sold.

The current home of the Cape Cod Beach Chair Company, in East Harwich, was once a barrel factory. Dating to the late 1880s, the building has that lopsided look that proclaims there’s been at least one add-on through the centuries. Justin calls it “a big old barn,” and one end is indeed tall and barnlike, while the other is a single story nestled under a shed roof. Thanks to the silvering cedar shingles, it’s what a visitor might call “very Cape-y.”

Inside, the retail store is well-stocked with beach chairs, all bright canvas and gleaming wood. Most are folded and stacked in rows against the back wall, with a few samples set up alongside folding wooden side tables, also made on-site. Tote bags, sewn from leftover chair fabric, and canvas beach umbrellas with retro fringe are available for sale, too, along with various accessories that have grown, like the business, out of the founder’s quest for a better beach chair. (I’m especially taken by the chair extender that can be attached to any chair’s legs, turning it into a canvas chaise longue.)

We head up a narrow stairway to the second floor. “This is Kate’s domain,” Justin says, making a joke as he introduces us—“Kate 1, meet Kate 2.” There are huge bolts of canvas fabric standing sentry by the entrance, scraps and partial rolls scattered on steel shelving around the edges of the room, large tables for measuring and cutting in the room’s center, and a single sewing machine, positioned near the front window. Kate Limeburner is one of two full-time seamstresses who sew the sturdy canvas seats and backs of the 5,000 beach chairs that will find their way to customers this year. Assembling those chairs are three more employees who work year-round, with about half a dozen college students rounding out the crew in the summer.

Back on the main floor, I get a glimpse into the wood shop with two megasize table saws, and what must be hundreds of wooden chair parts, stacked Lego-like on shelves. “We stockpile in the off-season,” Justin explains, “so we have a good supply ready for the peak times.”

We move outdoors to enjoy this sunny, breezy day, and settle into two sturdy and remarkably comfortable beach chairs; both are variations on the company’s Nauset Heights model. “I started making chairs with higher seats almost right away. On the Cape, there are a lot of older—” Justin interrupts himself. “Hey, I’m 53 now, and I appreciate a taller chair myself.”

Any Cape Cod Beach Chair can be customized. Resorts order chairs with their logos, and the company does a brisk trade in corporate and university sales around the holidays. Just as Justin mentions the many repeat customers who give personalized chairs as gifts, Maryellen Keteltas shows up to collect her 15th chair. “Wedding presents, engagement gifts, graduations,” she says. “And I get the little ones for baby gifts.”

At this time of year, Justin runs the embroidery machine, so I know he’s responsible for the striking University of Virginia insignia and the recipient’s initials on the back of the Nauset Heights chair that he invites Maryellen to inspect. “My new grandson-in-law is the only one who doesn’t have a chair—so this is perfect,” she says. Justin folds the chair, then places it carefully in her vehicle. Watching him, I am surprised to realize … I want one, too.

To see the full range of chairs and beach products or to visit the workshop store, go to capecodbeachchair.com.

This feature was originally published as “Preferred Seating” in the July/August 2025 issue of Yankee.

Kate Whouley

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