Massage Chair Industry Update – August 18, 2023

Well, good morning. I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from Massage Chair Relief. And today is our bi-weekly massage chair Industry update for Friday, August 18th, 2023. Thank you so much for joining me today. You can tell from the screen layout and from the microphone here that I’m trying to improve the quality of my videos. If you’ve watched many of my videos, and I’m sure some of you have seen hundreds of them, but they’re all pretty, pretty bush league, nothing too fancy, nothing that you’d see in Hollywood or on any particular television commercial. But we are trying to improve the audio sound and the format for this recording and also my interviews, which we will be live streaming in the future.

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Interviews with customers, interviews with industry specialists, interviews with staff, etcetera, etcetera. We will be using this new format to try to help us to make it a little bit more professional, looking a little cleaner, a little better quality. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. We also had a new intro. I don’t know if you noticed that. And you’ll also notice that we’ll have the titles and the headlines here on the screen will be done a little bit differently as well. But anyway, thank you so much for joining with me today. Now, I mentioned that August 10th was our drop-dead date for Furniture For Life® products, carrying Furniture For Life® products on our website. And we do not have them on our website anymore. I’ve deleted all of our videos and all of our articles regarding their products, as requested by the company.

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We still do have floor models for sale. We have the OCHO M.8, we have the Positive Posture Brio Sport, we have the KAI GTS7, and we have the Katana 700 in most of our showrooms. We’ve sold some off already, but if you’re looking for a good deal and a used chair doesn’t scare you … And by the way, these chairs will come with a full warranty. You might want to check out what we have available. You can go to the pre-owned directory tab of our promotions website. If you look at the navigation bar across the top of the website, one of the navigation links says promotions. And you can go to the pre-owned directory, and you’ll see what chairs we have there as well. We also have a pre-owned Human Touch® WholeBody 8.0 and a pre-owned Infinity Circadian™, which is a split track, just like the Daiwa Supreme Hybrid.

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Those are good chairs. We have one of each of those available. They’re pre-owned. You’ll get our lifetime labor warranty. For those chairs, you’ll get the remainder of the factory warranty. And, of course, you get free shipping to your home. We just started carrying the Inada Robo chair. Inada is a company that’s been around in the massage chair industry since, I’d say, the early 60s. And I think I discussed this on our last recording, a little bit of the history of the massage chairs and the industry that was born of the invention of a massage chair. Anyway, Inada is a Japanese company. The components for their chairs are made in China, but like other made-in-Japan chairs, the chairs have been exported, assembled, and tested in Japan, which where the Japanese really excel is in the testing.

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And the Robo chair is the only chair that’s in the US market right now. The Inada Dreamwave, when it first came out in 2010 or 11, it was it took the industry by storm, and they sold literally hundreds and hundreds of them. It changed a lot about the industry. It changed the way airbags were used. It changed the look of the massage chairs. It changed quite a bit. And copycats came out trying to mimic that chair. And some did so successfully, even though the chairs were never quite as nuanced and as subtle and as sophisticated as the Dreamwave was. But that chair has now been discontinued. And from what I’ve heard, Inada doesn’t have a huge lineup of chairs that they have for sale, and even less in the United States.

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So, the Robo chair is an S-track chair. It’s a very cool-looking chair. I sat in it when I was at the furniture market when they first introduced it to the market. And if you look at the way the armrests are massaging your arms, it looks like big fingers coming around and massaging your arms. It was pretty impressive. It also has some sophisticated technology, like face recognition software. And there are a couple of other things about it which make it very unique. It’s a very, very nice chair. We should be having that chair in our Southern California showroom within a short period of time for anybody who wants to come out and give it a try. So, we’re back to carrying Inada again, and we have the Inada Robo chair at our disposal. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but for those of you who have visited our YouTube channel, we have typically full-length videos anywhere from three minutes up to 30 minutes on the industry updates.

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We have turned some of those into shorts. And now we have YouTube shorts that are less than a minute long. And if you want to get a real concise shot and insight into whatever the main video is about, our editor does a great job at just chopping it down to less than a minute. And it goes pretty quickly. It happens pretty quickly when you watch the video, but it does give you a more brief version of what I was saying with longer verbiage in the original videos. So, you can check those out on our YouTube channel. By the way, the YouTube channel for us is youtube.com/massagechairrelief. Pretty simple. We have made recently a change to our homepage. Sorry, not necessarily the homepage, but the navigation. We used to just have the heading. We had education, we had massage chairs, we had support, we had locations.

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But the massage chairs navigation thing has been changed because we’re adding new products. And we’ve added new categories. We’ve added Zero Gravity Recliners like the Human Touch® Gravis ZG. We’ve added the Svago chairs. We’ve added the new Osaki Sumo chairs. So, these are all chairs at this point that are recliners. See, what we sell primarily, and we have been selling for 20 years, are massage chairs that also have a zero-gravity component and might even try to look nice in your room. But massage chairs are pretty bulky things. Well, there are zero gravity recliners out there that are, first of all, recliners. And they look good. A lot of them have a European styling. They’re very aesthetically nice as opposed to a regular massage chair, which is not altogether pretty,

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But it doesn’t have a lot of massage functions. The ones we carry do have massage, but it’s in the form of airbag inflation, and decompression, vibration, things like that. So, the massage is secondary. In massage chairs, massage is primary, the look is secondary. With the recliners, the look is primary, and the massage function is secondary. And we also have added office chairs from X-Chairs. And these are chairs that are beautiful office chairs. The four models that we’re carrying have a section in the low back where you can plug in a module called ELEMAX™. And that module, when you plug it in, it will give you heat, cold, and massage to your lower back. So again, we’re trying to stick with massage products. And those four office chairs will be on the website. They’re not on now, but the navigation for them is on now.

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Instead of saying massage chairs with a dropdown menu, now it says shop. When you click shop it’ll bring down the first page which will be bestselling massage chairs, then it’ll bring down massage chairs. And when you mouse over that, it’ll bring up all the categories. Then the next option is zero-gravity recliners. Then we’ve got the office chairs. And then we have targeted massagers or personal massagers. These are things like neck massage, hand massage, massage guns, massage seats, and massage cushions. Lots of massage paraphernalia that you can buy and use when you don’t have your massage chair at your disposal. So, we’re branching out to these other products. I’m excited about it because it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but I’ve either been too lazy or too intimidated to make that jump. But we are making that jump now.

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The menu for the website has changed. Now we just have to have our web guy add the products. And so, you’ll see those added over time. But anyway, that’s kind of new. And also, I just updated my book, The Ultimate Massage Chair Buyer’s Guide. It’s the second edition. The first edition I did back in 2011, so it’s like 12 years ago. And my goodness, when I looked at it, I was embarrassed. It was very old school, very out of date. This is what the old book looked like. And the new one, I just have the author’s proof coming to me this Sunday. But we will have that chair available as well on Amazon, and we’ll have hard copies available at our stores and whatnot. But anyway, that’s also new, the updated version. And I’ve made it much more evergreen.

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In the old the old book, I mentioned, “And this chair, the Inada Dreamwave has this feature which is very unique.” Well, the Inada Dreamwave is not even around anymore. And some of the Human Touch® chairs I talked about in that book are not even around anymore. So, chairs come and go. Now I’m trying to talk more about big picture stuff, which is more evergreen. Instead of talking about the Diawa Supreme Hybrid, the Infinity Luminary, or the Luraco i9 Max Special Edition, I’m just talking about split tracks because split tracks are here to stay. Whether the model that includes that feature is still around is another thing altogether. And we want to avoid that. So, Chair the book is going to be much more evergreen. So anyway, if you get a chance to read the book, you’re welcome to read it. I’m very proud of it. I consider it to be … Well, it is the ultimate massage chair buyer’s guide.

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So, if you’re looking for a massage chair and you’re not quite sure what to see what to find, and what to look for, read the book. The book will give you everything you need to be aware of. Everything from shipping internationally to buying a chair for your home or business or making sure you can fit in a massage chair. These are all the things that I talk about. Massage chair versus a sauna or a hot tub. Or a massage chair versus a massage therapist and all that sort of thing. I discuss how massage chairs work and why they might work for you as a searching consumer. And that brings me to my next point. I’ve always said that massage chairs are primarily for people with lower back pain, and mid back pain. That’s what I had intuitively stated that that’s what most massage chairs are for and that’s what people get them for.

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Well, you know, I did a survey with all the people that had purchased my chairs. I sent out an email to them, and I did a survey, and I asked them two questions. And I think you’ll find this interesting. The first question was, what motivated you to consider getting a massage chair? And I made a list of all the possible things. Low back pain, mid back pain, neck and shoulder pain, headaches, sciatica, hip pain, stress, relaxation, arthritis, wellness, better sleep, improved flexibility, or other. And I  allowed them to select all that apply. So, someone may have had headaches. Someone might also have had low back pain or stress or whatever. And then the second question was, did your massage chair give you the result or the relief that you were seeking? Now, here’s what’s interesting. Low back pain was the number one reason that people bought a chair, but tied with that was relaxation.

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Neck and shoulder pain was the second symptom or set of symptoms that people bought it for. So, it was low back pain first, and neck and shoulder pain next. And then it dropped down to mid back pain and then sciatica, hip pain, and headaches in that order down to the lowest symptom. Well, low back pain, that’s exactly what we always thought it was, that massage chairs were for people with low back pain. However, the stress, relaxation, wellness, and better sleep, were four categories that don’t necessarily have a symptom. It’s just more of a lifestyle thing. Like relaxation and stress, that’s stuff people just want to feel through a day of stressful work and homemaking and playing and whatever it is that you do. The stress is a big deal. And stress and relaxation combined with wellness and better sleep, the vast majority of people on the survey got it for those reasons.

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So anyway, if you’re someone who’s stressed out a lot or has trouble relaxing or has trouble sleeping at night. And I’m surprised by how many people commented how massage chairs helped them sleep better at night. Well, that is what you’ve got in terms of some reasons to get a massage chair. So, I may have said something there that you thought, “Oh, I didn’t know a massage chair could treat that or handle that.” Well, you know what? It can. And you look at things like hip pain and headaches and sciatica, or better sleep and stress relief, those are things that massage chairs are great at. Now, the second question was, did your massage chair give you the result or relief that you were seeking? And almost 91.5% said yes. So, what’s fantastic about that is that massage chairs will typically give you the relief you’re seeking. And if you’ve got low back pain or headaches or stress or you can’t relax, or you need to relax better, a massage chair has a 91.5% chance of helping you.

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So, that is great for those of you who aren’t sure if a massage chair is going to help you. Of course, we give you a 90-day satisfaction guarantee. So, if within 90 days you find that it doesn’t help you, you can always exchange it. But anyway, I thought that was fantastic. And then also the X-77. I should have mentioned that off the top. The X-Chairs chairs that I talked about that were carrying the office chairs for, the X-77, which is their sole massage chair offering to the industry have been discontinued. So, they’re getting away from massage chairs altogether. That X-77 was the same chair as the Positive Posture Brio sport, but just with some different aesthetics. Now, the X-77 still has chairs available in inventory, but when those are gone, they’re not bringing any more back in. That chair is what we call dead. There’s discontinued, and then there’s dead.

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So, when a chair is discontinued, it means they’re not going to be bringing any more chairs in, but they still may have inventory that may last months and months. When the inventory is gone, then we call that dead because they’re not bringing any more chairs in, and there’s no more available. Now, the massage chair company that has these dead lines of chairs should still have parts for you, but I don’t know how long that would be. So, some companies will keep parts for a long time, while others, maybe not so much. Some models will be kept longer or the parts will be kept longer for some models, and others not. But you know what? I think that’s just about it. If you found this video helpful, please feel free to thumbs up like us on our YouTube channel. And, of course, by all means, help us spread the word about massage chairs by sharing this video or any of our videos with your friends and family through your various social media platforms. We appreciate that. Well, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from Massage Chair Relief, and I will see you again in two weeks. Bye-bye.