I have been invited to become a member of the  Human Touch Wellness Council, upon the recommendation of Human Touch. In case you are wondering what this means, here is a copy of their mission statement:

Mission Statement:

Human Touch’s Wellness Council is committed to educating professionals, sports-enthusiasts, back pain sufferers and consumers alike on the importance and benefits of taking control of their daily lives, maintaining a healthy balance of mind, body and spirit, and maximizing the overall health and wellness lifestyle by incorporating regular massage into their “wellness” routine through the use of personal massage products.  Human Touch has brought together influential persons with a variety of wellness lifestyle experience as members of the Wellness Council to educate and from their own experience and practice of integrating massage into their everyday routine.

Human Touch recognizes its social responsibility and is proud to help individuals achieve wellness in their everyday lives, and by offering massage in affordable, accessible and stylish products, it empowers people to bring themselves one step closer to improving their overall quality of life.

Each Human Touch Wellness Council Member serves as an ambassador for everyday massage, communicating their key wellness messages through online and offline media, community events and public forums.
So, the long and short of it is,  as a chiropractor of 16 years, and as the top retailer for the Health Care Division of the Human Touch company, I have been invited to be an “ambassador” of sorts for the company and for the wellness concept. I actually am quite flattered by this invitation and look forward to being an active participant in the wellness community of which I have been invited to participate. I do know that they ask me to add a monthly blog entry to their website which will launch August 1st, 2008. I will let you know when this is available if you would like to participate in any wellness discussions on that site. Other folks who are also members of this Wellness Council include PGA golfer Tim Clark,  Jeff Galloway, Sarah Harding, Iona MacKenzie, Dr. Michael Nathanson, and  Ted Tryba.

Have a super day!

Dr. Alan Weidner
www.massage-chair-relief.com

I am writing this blog entry from beautiful Pinedale, Wyoming…home to the Green River Mountain Man Rendezvous. We were invited to attend this event and bring our massage chairs along. So, my wife, Mona, our Commercial Sales Manager, Steffanie, and myself left for the Rendezvous on Wednesday of this week. The weather has been great and the folks so down to earth and kind. Pinedale is a quiet little town at the base of the Wind River Mountains and is home to much of the Wyoming gas and oil industry. You can see a picture of me and BK, also known as Black Kettle, a mountain man original. Although he has only had electricity in his home for 3 years now, he sat on the HT-1650 everyday…at least twice. You see…a massage chair even works wonders for Mountain Men!!

As usual, our massage chairs are a novelty, and folks are always attracted to sitting on them. Here is a photo I took with my cell phone showing our chairs at the Rendezvous with Mona and Steffanie in the background.

Other than the Rendezvous, I just wanted to say that we are working on a new home page redesign for Massage-Chair-Relief.com. It is something I’ve wanted to do for a while and it will include, among other things, a method to searching for chair models based on various features, a special of the month section, more testimonials on the home page, and some live video of yours truly to introduce folks to the site. I’ll keep you posted.

Dr. Alan Weidner
www.massage-chair-relief.com

Our chairs were featured at the annual Rivalry Cup at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah. It is a local event sponsored by Real Golf Radio and their hosts, Bob Casper and Brian Taylor. Real Golf Radio is a nationally syndicated golf radio program that broadcasts from the clubhouse at Thanksgiving Point. The course is beautiful and the the Rivalry Cup is a golf tournament that pits BYU alumni against Utah alumni. For those of you who don’t know, BYU and the U are rivals and love to beat each other up…particularly in college football games. Being from Alberta, Canada I liken it unto the fabulous Calgary/Edmonton rivalries over the years in hockey (hockey <—> golf…very similar, i.e. Happy Gilmore!)

They invited us to bring our massage chairs for the golfers to use before and after competing. It was a wonderful day and we got to meet some fantastic people, like legendary Hall-of-Fame golfer, Billy Casper. Steffanie took a couple of shots of him on the HT-1650 massage chair (everyone seems to enjoy that one!). Chad Lewis former tight end for the Philadephia Eagles, among others, also enjoyed our massage chairs. By the way, BYU won! (Utah won last year…the first inaugural tournament). I should also mention that everyone loved the chairs. Lots of oohs and aahs.

We’d like to thank Bob and Brian for inviting us out to the golf course and treating us like royalty while we were there. These are two awesome fellows. We had a great time and saw some awesome golf.

Fore!!

Dr. Alan Weidner
www.massage-chair-relief.com

 I’d like to report to you that our Grand Opening of our Massage Chair Relief showroom was fantastic! We had GaryMichaels from Arrow 103.5 broadcast from the showroom and we had plenty of opportunity to talk about our new store showroom, products, and website on the air with Gary. He was very gracious to give us lots of air time.

Many people came by to visit and “test drive” our chairs. Everyone loves them. The highlight of the day was a visit from Suzette Willcox, the Sales Manager of the Health Care Division of Human Touch! She traveled from Long Beach early in the morning to be here on our special day. We so appreciate the support of Human Touch at our Grand Opening. Suzie brought a beautiful Human    Touch banner/sign as a showroom-warming gift. It is awesome and sits at the front of the showroom in the main window.

I’ve put up some pictures of the event so that you can see what was going on.

I also put up a link to an mp3 file of one of the on-air conversations we had with Gary Michaels, the DJ from Arrow 103.5. Enjoy:

Arrow 103.5 Air Check

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Grand Opening and to everyone who has supported us through the years, bringing us to this point and time in our business! We are so grateful.

Dr. Alan Weidner
www.massage-chair-relief.com

I conducted a 10 question survey over the last two weeks and the results were somewhat surprising. What I did was create a small, 10 question survey that covered some of the topics that I always wondered about that were going on in the minds of the visitors to my website. I sent out the survey to everyone who had subscribed to my special report “5 Things You Absolutely Must Know Before You Even Consider Investing In A High Quality, Robotic Massage Chair”. Here are a couple of insights that I gleaned from that survey:

1. 78.3% of massage chair buyers were male.
2. 67% of massage chair shoppers were looking for pain relief in a massage chair.
3. 56% of buyers fell within an income range below $100,000 (massage chairs are not just for the rich and famous!).
4. I also learned that only 11% of my subscribers cared about getting the bonus gifts with a purchase (hhmmm…may have to reconsider that one, eh?)
5. back massage intensity adjustment was the most important thing for shoppers of massage chairs (81.1% of folks were looking for this feature in a chair).
6. 97.2% of our shoppers found our website, www.massage-chair-relief.com, very easy to navigate around.

I would love it if you would take our survey too. I appreciate all the input I can get to make my site and business as wonderful as it can be. And, with your assistance, I can do it!

Here is the link:

www.massage-chair-relief.com/survey

There are two pages…each one with 5 questions. It will take you  less than 5 minutes to take the survey and your input will have an effect on how we manage our site and business.

Thank you so much for your input. It is very much appreciated.

Dr. Alan Weidner
www.massage-chair-relief.com

I mentioned last week that I had a telephone interview with Cliff Levin, president of the US Distribution arm of Family Inada massage chairs. I said I would post a link to the interview once I had it edited and ready to go. Well, it is ready to go. Below is the link to that interview. It is about 50 minutes long and we discuss a number of things, from the new and exciting Sogno massage chair to the other Inada models to some of the industry issues at the current time. I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.massage-chair-relief.com/Cliff_Levin

The Sogno massage chair is available right now to order. The Sogno Dreamweaver Plus will not be available until the third week in June. You must call our showroom or our toll free number if you wish to order a new Sogno massage chair. Online shopping cart sales are not part of the retail agreement with Inada. So, give us a call at either 1-888-259-5380 or 801-417-8240.

Have a great day!

Dr. Alan Weidner
www.massage-chair-relief.com

We were invited to bring one of our massage chairs down to KSL, which is the local NBC affiliate, to demonstrate it on the noon hour TV show, Studio 5. So, I went down with my black HT-1650 massage chair and showed it to the great citizens of Utah. Below is a link. I am certainly not TV personality material, but I sure appreciated the chance to show our cool chair to the public. The host,  Darren, seemed to really enjoy it, don’t you think?

Here is the link to the segment:

http://studio5.ksl.com/?nid=56&sid=3615841

My wife and I were over at the showroom last night putting some finishing touches on the showroom preparatory to our Grand Opening on Saturday. We are pretty excited about it. I will post some pictures of the event over the weekend so you can see what was going on.

Did I also mention that we will begin carrying the two of the iJoy models, the iJoy 300 and the HT-2720, as well as the Perfect Chair, all by Human Touch? These chairs should be on the website and the showroom this next month.

Dr. Alan Weidner
www.massage-chair-relief.com

I just came out of the back office to check on my son, who came to work with me today and I found him, fast asleep, on the Omega Montage massage chair, apparently listening to some soothing music on the headphones from the built-in mp3 player. It was so dang cute that I had to take a picture and share it with you all. This is one of the perks of owning a massage chair…putting your kids to sleep and then being able to adore them when they fall asleep (and some times that is the only time you can adore them!!). This son loves to help out his dad and mom when he can.

By the way, we are busy getting ready for the Grand Opening this Saturday. We are excited about it. We have been doing some radio ads and have a local classic rock station coming on Saturday to do a remote broadcast from the new showroom. Today, the electrician has been over all day putting up the sconce lighting that my good wife, Mona, purchased for the showroom. All the decorating, by the way, I leave to her…she has a real knack for decorating and making things look really good. Our showroom has a real “homey” feel to it, thanks to her. It truly feels like a lovely living room of a home.

In July, I mentioned that we will be having the new Inada massage chairs in the showroom, but I failed to mention that we will also be having an iJoy chair and a Perfect Chair, both manufactured by Human Touch, in the showroom too. The iJoy chairs are a lesser priced, less luxurious chair that are great for college kids and lesser budget massage chair shoppers. It does not have a leg/calf massager and it sits low to the ground. The Perfect Chair is not a massage chair, but an anti-gravity chair that is the predecessor to the HT-7450. It is a very comfortable chair, great for low back pain, and about half the price of the HT-7450. So, you get the anti-gravity feature without the massage.

Talk to you soon. I’ve got to get back to work on the showroom.

Dr. Alan Weidner
www.massage-chair-relief.com

Every upper end massage chair nowadays has a scanning feature of some sort that checks out your spine prior to beginning your massage session. The feature is designed to get a feel for your height, weight, and muscle tight spots to figure out how intense the chair will decide to massage you. Very fascinating, actually.

What this means, is that each person that sits on a massage chair could have an entirely different massage than any other person that sits on the same chair. What is even more interesting, each person that sits on a massage chair will have a different massage each time he/she sits on the massage chair if the musculature of the user has changed from session to session.

For example, if I sit on a massage chair in the morning, after a good night’s sleep, the massage chair will scan me based on the relaxed musculature of a night’s rest. If I have a tough, stressful day, that very same day, or if I become injured playing basketball or get in a car accident, and my musculature changes accordingly, the reading of the massage chair scan could be completely different. Thus, my massage at the beginning of the day and my massage at the end of the day may be completely different.

This personalizes the massage that much more. I think this is a development in massage chair technology that just further adds to the effectiveness of massage chair recliners and further allows the chairs to compete with real therapists. Of course, nothing we have in the industry, right now, completely mimics the hands of a licensed and trained massage therapist or even a chiropractor, but I can tell you…they are working on it!

I will discuss individual manufacturer’s body scanning technologies in subsequent blog entries. Though most of the quality massage chair manufacturers have body scan technology in some shape and form, they are different and proprietary for each company.

Dr. Alan Weidner
www.massage-chair-relief.com

As you may or may not know, with every online purchase of a massage chair on www.massage-chair-relief.com, I include some complimentary bonus gifts. Those gifts include a 3-day, 2-night mini-vacation, a hand massager, a travel-core neck pillow, Sombra muscle cream, and a couple of ice packs. Well, I was just notified this morning that the hand massager has been discontinued, so from here on out, the bonus gift package will not include that gift. I apologize for that, but it is completely out of control. They claim to have a replacement massager that will be available in the fall, so perhaps we will add a new one at that time.

In the meantime, of course you will still receive the other gifts, just as before, but, best of all, you get a fantastic massage chair from any one of 5 major suppliers with a fantastic warranty (oh yeah, and don’t forget, if you buy before June 20, 2008, you also save some major bucks on the HT-7450 and HT-1650 from Human Touch!).

Have a super day!

By the way, stay tuned for some information in the weeks to come about our grand opening and the media hype around that.

Dr. Alan Weidner
www.massage-chair-relief.com