[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LBWguL-YGU[/embedyt]

Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – June 8, 2021”

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Alan: Hello, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com‘ and today is our biweekly massage chair industry update for Tuesday, June 8th, 2021. Thank you so much for visiting today.

[SCREEN TEXT: Father’s Day Sales on Now]

Alan: We have a few sales going on right now for Father’s Day. We just, of course, May was Mother’s Day, and then we finished with Memorial Day, and usually at this time of the year, every year, there are some good sales to be had, and there are some good ones right now in the, for the Father’s Day sale.

[SCREEN TEXT: Omaha Steak Gift Certificates When Purchasing an FFL Chair]

Alan: And an interesting one that kind of caught my eye and I kind of like, is the Furniture for Life offer where they’re giving you Omaha Steak gift certificates if you purchase, well, if you purchase a Positive Posture Brio Sport or a Positive Posture Brio Plus, you’ll get $600 worth of Omaha Steak gift certificates. If you purchase the OHCO M.8, the OHCO M.8LE, the OHCO MDX, the OHCO R.6, the D.Core Cirrus, the D.Core Stratus, or the Panasonic MA73, or the Panasonic MAJ7, you get $800 worth of Omaha Steak gift certificates. Now, I don’t know if I’ve ever had Omaha Steak before, but I hear it’s fabulous, and I’m not a real talented barbecuer or smoker, for that matter, even though I do have a grill and a smoker that was a gift to me from my wife last year, and I love, by the way, I love, but I just have gotten in to meat so much. And of course, this is coming from a guy that had a stroke two and a half years ago and was told to stay off the red meat. Well, it’s hard for me to pass up a good steak or a good brisket, to be honest with you, and I thought that this deal really piqued my interest, only because I enjoy grilling and I enjoy smoking meat. So, anyway, for those of you that, and it’s a great Father’s Day meal, right, you know, the men and their red meat, but anyway, that’s a good sale available.

[SCREEN TEXT: Kyota Yosei 868 on Sale for $4499]

Alan: In terms of price, we have the Kyota Yosei, Y-O-S-E-I, I believe the number on it is 868. Kyota is a division of Infinity, and they sell a lot of their product, in the past through Costco. Well, now they’re kind of opening up some of the models to regular retailers like ourselves, and this Yosei is, it’s the old Infinity Imperial, which we did sell quite a few of, if you recall. They discontinued that chair earlier this year, and they brought it back under the Kyota line, and it’s a good chair, and they have it on sale for $4499. They regularly list it at like $10,999, but the sale at $4499, which they do it, you know, quarterly or periodically throughout the year, and that’s a good deal, the $4499.

[SCREEN TEXT: Sharper Image Relieve on Sale for $2999]

Alan: And also, the Sharper Image Relieve, which is a, the Sharper Image is also an Infinity line, they purchased the trademark, or the registered name for, or licensed it, sorry, for a couple of models. One is called the Relieve, and one’s called the Revival, and the Relieve is on sale for $2999, regularly $3999. And we have that one in our showroom, it’s a good 3D option at a low, low price, a much lower price, and that chair is on sale for the month of June, as is the Kyota, and the Furniture for Life sale goes on until June 20th. So, you have another, let’s see, you’ve got another, well, week and a half for that one. And now, speaking of, oh, there are other sales, and if you want to see what the other sales are that we have going on, like the Luraco sale has $500 off their iRobotics 7, they have $1000 off on their Luraco Legend Plus, and but you can see all the sales that we have currently by going to the website, and going to the Promotions tab, and you can see what chairs we have on sale for new ones, and if you go to the pre-owned directory, you can see what pre-owned ones we have, whether it’s a floor model, or a returned chair, or some factory-certified model, but you got to keep an eye on those because those are fleeting, right? Those are pre-owned, so as soon as we sell it, it’s done, and some people really jump on it. Like for example, we just put up an OHCO M.8 pearl color, and that color is hard to come by because of the, you know, the port of Long Beach backups and delays, which I’ve been talking about ad nauseum for over half a year. But so, we have one of those, and that one, we just posted that one recently, it won’t last long, but call if you have any questions about it, or the price, or whatnot. It’s a couple of months old, and it’s a good, I think it’s two, two plus months old, and it’s always, the pre-owned chairs will always have great pricing. So, anyway, just off on a little tangent there, but those are the kinds of specials and sales that we have available.

[SCREEN TEXT: My Recent Visit to Furniture for Life]

Alan: Now, speaking of Furniture for Life, I went and visited them a couple of weeks ago, and I visited with Cliff Levin, who’s the CEO there, and I have been working with him for, oh my goodness, since he assumed the US distributorship for Inada back in, gee, I mean, started their website in 2005, 2008 is when I opened up the Utah store, and I think just a year or two after that, so I been working with Cliff 10 or 11 years. When we were first in the business ourselves, and he was first getting his start in the massage chair industry, but anyway, I went and visited Cliff, and Ne’en, and Brad, and Jamison, and all the good people there, Alex, Brandon. Anyway, good people and of course, they’re on a bit of a skeleton staff at their main office in Boulder, because of COVID, but it was wonderful to go there and visit with them. I went with the intent of trying out a couple of new chairs that they’re playing around with, that they may offer in the near future, but of course, there’s not much to talk about at this point. Either there’s not much to say, I did sit on the chairs and they’re good, strong chairs with a couple of interesting features that I’m not sure I’ve seen before, but we won’t really know much more about that, those chairs until they know for sure that they’re going to be distributing them here in the US, or whether, or even if they’re, you know, if they’re going to carry them at all, or if they do, when they’re going to carry them. So, we’ll kind of keep our mouth shut on that one until we know more.

[SCREEN TEXT: Luraco i9 Model Later This Year]

Alan: Also, Luraco, it’s no secret that Luraco has been putting out a, putting out, this started over a year ago at the CES back in 2020, when they brought their new i9 prototype to the show, and they invited retailers, like myself and others, to come and try out the chair and give them our opinions. And it’s an interesting chair, and I know that a lot of people are aware of this chair because they call me about it. Usually, the massage chair companies will tell me to kind of not say anything until the, you know, until things are more definitive. Well, they have been releasing information about the chair that we will learn more about. It was supposed to come out at the tail end of last year, but no thanks to COVID, or thanks to COVID, it was delayed, and what I’m hearing now is toward the latter quarter, or the latter part of the year, quarter number four most likely. I plan on going out there in August to see what’s cooking on the new i9. What I can tell you is that it is an L-track. From what I recall, it had sliding side doors, it had a very strong massage, and it had a roller mechanism that allowed for a more, a more, a stronger extension stretch, which is the type of stretch you typically will get from an S-track chair, not typically from an L-track chair. The L-track chairs are fixed Ls usually, a fixed L-shape, and it’s hard to flatten out that L to get a good full-body extension like you can in an S-track. The Daiwa Supreme Hybrid has come out with an innovative technology to allow for that, and I suspect that we might see something similar, or at least in the same ballpark with the new Luraco chair, but that’s about all I know, and I’ve not said anything more than what customers have called me about, so I don’t feel like I’m, you know, letting the cat out of the bag.

[SCREEN TEXT: Massage Chair Relief Brings Back Regular Hours of Operation at Our AZ Store]

Alan: OK, what else can we tell you? As far as Massage Chair Relief goes, we are back to regular hours at our Arizona showroom. You can schedule, oh, and by the way, we have calendars now for the Utah and the Arizona store. We are working on getting a calendar up for our Southern California store, even though we don’t have fixed hours in the Southern California store yet, and we, but you can schedule by appointment on all three of those stores, and should with the California store by, I’m hoping, this week. But you can schedule by appointment during the office hours that they’re there, or if there’s a time when they’re not there, and when our staff are not there, and you can, and you want to schedule a time, there’s probably some other time that you can schedule to see the chairs. Anyway, that is our store hours.

[SCREEN TEXT: A New Massage Chair Relief Store in the Near Future]

Alan: We are working on opening a new store. Hopefully, within the next couple of months, there’s been a lot of effort and energy that’s gone in to it. It has been a few years in the making, only because the timing has never seemed right, but it does now, and so I’ll have more information about that probably within the next few weeks. But anyway, we’re excited about that. I’m getting old, and slow, and when you get older, and for those of you that are with me on this, you start to realize that ‘Oh, you know what, I may not have as much time left as I originally thought I had,’ especially if you’ve suffered from something like a stroke, or a heart attack, or dealt with cancer, or any other kind of you know, difficult illness that compromises your health, and I’m not saying I’ve had all those things. I have had a stroke, but I know a lot of people that have suffered with other things, and it really makes you view your mortality a little bit different, and so you don’t just trust that in 10 years from now, I’m going to have this business at this place, or 200 years from now, you know, now you’re starting to think ‘Well, I sure hope I’m alive in 10 or 20 years.’ So, your perspective changes a bit. But we’re excited about this new store coming out, and hopefully we’ll follow up with another one shortly thereafter. But anyway, needless to say, lots of things that we’re, that are going on that we’re excited about at Massage Chair Relief.

[SCREEN TEXT: Fitting Longer or Shorter Legs in a Massage Chair]

Alan: Anyway, OK, enough of that. And I just wanted to mention one little tip, by the way, I talked about how to fit in to a massage chair when your legs are too long. There’s also some tips for making, to fitting in to a chair where your legs are too short, and most chairs can accommodate long and short legs, if they’re built for a reasonably-sized body, and I’m talking mostly about the long legs, but for short bodies, there are some legs that just will not hit the bottom of the foot roller, where the foot roller is, and so I wrote a blog, or yeah, a blog article, or a blog post earlier this week, or last week, talking about how to fit your legs in a massage chair, whether your legs are long or short. There are some work arounds to get you to fit in to that chair, and I talk about it in that article. And we will, and I, there are some pictures as well that I included to show, you know, how to fit longer legs and shorter legs. But anyway, it’s kind of, it can be a deal breaker for a lot of people, like I had a lady come in to my showroom who was 4′ 11″ tall, and you know, everything was fine, the chair scanned her right and everything worked, but her feet would not hit the bottom of the foot roller, or the bottom of the foot massager, which is where the foot rollers are, and we, this gal, we raised the ottoman all the way up, we did everything we could to help her fit in to that chair, it didn’t quite work until she slipped down the chair about a half inch or an inch, and her feet came down to meet the foot rollers, and it fit her. But my question is, do you have to compromise your body position in a massage chair to make it fit for you, and sometimes you have to. I had a customer who was 6′ 9″, and boy, we got him in a chair where the rollers almost went up his neck, but not all the way. Even though there’s chairs that say they’ll fit someone who’s 6′ 9″, very few, if any, you will find that have the rollers that will actually go all the way up the neck. So, he had to slouch down a little bit to make that roller hit the top of his neck. This other lady was 4′ 11″, her legs would not hit the bottom of the chair, so she had to slide down about an inch to get that to work, but then she was comfortable enough that it worked out for her. But ideally, you want to be able to sit, oh, and here’s one other tip, when you sit in a massage chair, don’t worry about your feet hitting the bottom of the ottoman, or where the foot rollers are, when you’re sitting in the chair in a neutral position. Sometimes you’ll sit in a chair, and you’ll feel like Lily Tomlin’s Ruth Ann back in the Laugh In days, where she’s sitting on a big rocking chair, and her feet are just sticking out over the edge of the chair. Sometimes that’s how it feels when you’re sitting on a massage chair when you first sit in it. Do not slump down in the chair to make your feet hit the bottom of the ottoman. Rather, focus on getting your body position right, so you’re comfortable in the chair, and then when you turn on a program, and the chair reclines, then you can start fiddling around a little bit with the length of the ottoman, either bringing it in shorter, you know, retracting it, or raising up the ottoman to make the shorter legs fit, or extending the legs out, or dropping the ottoman to make the long legs fit. But do not worry about your feet so much when you’re sitting in the chair before you turn it on. The time to worry a little bit more about your feet is when you have the chair on, the chair is reclined to its default position, and then you realize ‘OK, my feet aren’t hitting the bottom of the ottoman,’ or ‘My knees are almost in my nose, so I’m going to have to lengthen out the legs and drop down the ottoman.’ That’s when you should be worried about the legs, that’s when you can kind of manipulate that, but make sure your body is comfortable first.

[SCREEN TEXT: Removing All Back Pads for a Stronger Massage – Things to Consider]

Alan: Now, that wasn’t even the tips I wanted to give you. The tip I really wanted to give you was brought to my attention by a customer, and I kind of forgot about this, but a customer came in and said ‘Listen, I just wanted to share when I can take off the back pad, all of the back pads, so it goes down as deep and as strong in my back as it can,’ and I remember in the old days we used to do that, and when I say old days, I mean maybe 10 years ago, before they had airbags in the, waist airbags, and some of the shoulder airbags, we could actually remove, like, there’s a padding, and it has linen in the middle where the rollers go, but usually, there’s a second layer beneath that, that you never see, where there’s another linen cloth, that is also between your back and the rollers. Well, this gentleman wanted to take off the back pad altogether, so there’s just that one layer of linen between his back and the rollers. He wanted it just stiff and strong. Well, we went throughout all the chairs, and we tried to take off the back pads, and it was kind of difficult because you got airbags coming in to the chair for the waist airbags, you have airbags coming in for some of the shoulder airbags, you got airbags coming down, even down near the bottom of the back pad for seat airbags in an L-track chair. We, I found it increasingly difficult to find a chair where you could remove the back pad, so that if you really want a more intense massage, you could take off that back pad, that extra little layer of linen, and you can get a better massage. Well, we found one, and it was one of the lower-priced chairs, and it worked perfectly for him. So, I sold him the floor model, and he was happy as a lark, but just be aware that if you want to remove as much padding as you can, all the padding that it has, you may have to disconnect some hoses, and the problem with disconnecting hoses is that you’re going to, unless you can pinch off the hose somehow, the hoses, because there’s usually more than one, sometimes three, or four, or five, or six, you’re going to have to listen to the sound of that pshh, pshh, going through that air hose and personally, it would drive me nuts, but if you can get a workaround, either plugging that hose, or pinching off the hose, you can remove those back pads, and get a more intense massage. But that was the tip because it was something I hadn’t thought about since the old Doctor’s Choice chair from Inada came out. And I remember a customer coming in to the showroom and he wanted the strongest, strongest massage he could ever get. He’d been in an accident, and he just had scar tissue up the ying yang, and needed rollers that would just dig in and grind it out, and we took off that back pad and it worked great for him. But now, you have all these waist, you just, as I told you, you have all these airbags you got to deal with, and sometimes it’s not quite as simple as it used to be to get those pads removed and get the stronger massage experience. So, anyway, there’s a little tip for you. If you need that, just kind of be aware that you might have deal with a bunch of hoses to get that extra layer of padding out and off the chair.

[SCREEN TEXT: Please “Thumbs Up” Like This Video!!]

Alan: So, anyway, I think that’s about it for this week. I hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please feel free to thumbs up ‘Like’ us on our YouTube channel. And of course, help us spread the word about massage chairs by sharing this video, or any of our videos with your friends and family on your various and sundry social media platforms to help us spread the word about massage chairs. Anyway, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and I will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.

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