Massage Chair Industry Update – May 31, 2019 (Video)

June 1, 2019
 By Dr. Alan Weidner
June 1, 2019
 By Dr. Alan Weidner

Massage Chair Industry Update – May 31, 2019 (Video)

Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – May 31, 2019”

[SCREEN TEXT: SUBSCRIBE to Our YouTube Channel and be Notified of Each New Massage Chair Video!]

Alan: Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com’ and today is our biweekly massage chair industry update for Friday, May 31st, 2019. I’ve had a bit of a cold, and so my voice may go out on me. I’ll try not to take too much time today, but anyway, we’ve got a few things to discuss.

[SCREEN TEXT: Osaki First Class Massage Chair!]

Alan: First of all, the new Osaki First Class massage chair is now on our website. This is another chair in a line of kind of high-end 3D L-track chairs. This chair, some of the features that this chair includes are, of course, 3D L-track, lumbar heat, space saver, the negative-ion therapy, which we also have seen on a couple of other chairs, like the, I believe, the Infinity Overture and the DreamWave M.8 have something similar to that, where these negative ions are sent in to the air to, you know, attach to pollen and dust and whatnot to kind of clean the air around your head. It has a Bluetooth system with high-definition speakers, 24 airbags, quick keys, the USB – oh, quick keys, by the way, are those little extra keys on the armrest, where you can kind of operate the chair without having to use the whole, you know, pick up the remote, and use the whole remote thing – it’s got foot rollers. It has calf kneading, it has airbags that knead the calves, 23 auto-programs, adjustable shoulder airbags. It’s a nice chair, the chair is listing for $7999, which seems to be more or less, kind of the price point for a lot of these new 3D L-track chairs, 3D or 4D L-track chairs.

[SCREEN TEXT: 3D vs. 4D]

Alan: Don’t be too fooled by the 4D, the name ‘4D,’ it’s kind of like, you know, 3, 4, so 4 must be better because it has more numbers, but not necessarily, 4D, 3D applies to the three dimensions that the rollers work in. They work in side to side and up and down, and you can move them forward and back, that’s the third dimension. Four dimensions, there aren’t four dimensions in our time-space continuum, at least not that we deal with with a massage chair, but they credit the speed, or the rhythm of the rollers, so you can increase the speed of the rollers, or decrease them, that is the 4D, or the fourth dimension. Well, all 3D chairs have a speed adjustment, so you can really adjust the speed on any 3D chair, so really 3D and 4D, to me, are quite similar, if not exactly the same, except for maybe how they integrate the speed or rhythm feature in to the automatic program. But anyway, the First Class chair, it’s a nice-looking chair, I sat on it when I was at the Furniture Market, back in January, in Las Vegas, and I have a video of that. I didn’t discuss too much about the chair at the time, but it is a, I remember it being a strong massage chair, a good strong massage.

[SCREEN TEXT: ‘My Chair Finder’ Software Update]

Alan: OK, we have a software on our website called ‘My Chair Finder,’ I don’t know if you’ve ever used it, but it’s a very popular feature on our website. Up until now, you could plug in your – you go on to the software, you plug in the symptoms that you have, you plug in features that you’re looking for in a chair, the brand names that you want to look at, and the price ranges that you have, and then the software will pop up all the chairs that have those criteria associated with their chairs – well, we’ve never had weight or height involved, input involved in the software until now, and I’ve been hesitant to do it because weight is pretty clear cut, I mean, if you weigh 250, there are certain chairs that will handle you, or 265, or 285, there are certain chairs that will handle you, and some that won’t, or that are not recommended. But height is a different animal because, you see, the literature on a lot of these chairs will say ‘Our chair can 5′ up 6′ 4″,’ well, it may be true that the chair can handle someone that’s 6′ 4″ tall, but the question is, can the rollers actually hit the neck, the top of the neck, or any part of the neck at that height? And so, you know, when we have people come to the showroom, we have them sit on chairs that say it’ll handle people up to 6′ 9″ or 6′ 7″, and yes, people that tall can fit in to the chair, but the neck does not get massaged on someone that tall, and so that’s why I’ve been a little hesitant to have that search criteria on our ‘My Chair Finder’ software, but I said ‘Oh, what the heck, we’ll just add it anyway.’ Just be aware that it may not massage the length, the full length of your neck if you’re a taller body. And here’s another thing, and I’ve talked about this before, that bodies can be taller in the torso, and shorter in the legs. So, if they’re taller in the torso, and shorter in the legs, then the problem is, you can, and you might only be like 5′ 10″, but your torso might be that of someone who is 6′ 1″ or 6′ 2″. I am an example of someone that has a longer torso than legs, and I am only 5′ 9″ or 5′ 8″ and a half, but when I sit in a car, that someone taller than me has sat in, and I adjust, I always have to adjust the mirror up because I have this longer torso. So, anyway, it is tough to size these chairs for height, but I have included it anyway, so now when you go to use ‘My Chair Finder’ software, it has features, symptoms, brands, and price ranges, but now it also has weight and height, which I think is really, really helpful, even if it may not give you exactly, the height department may not exactly definitive for your body. It just depends on, you know, how your body’s made up, and how tall you really are, and how tall the chair can really handle as far as massaging the neck goes.

[SCREEN TEXT: Zero Gravity – 1-Stage vs. 2-Stage vs. 3-Stage]

Alan: Alright, also, you know, we have these chairs that say they have, you know, one, or two, or three-stage zero gravity. True zero gravity is – anyway, as it’s been defined in the massage chair industry, and I’d have to give credit to Human Touch about this, because they were the first ones that really had a zero-gravity chair, back in, I don’t know when, in the ’80s or ’90s, I’m sorry – but zero gravity, so far, has been defined as a seat that tilts up at 30 degrees, and a chair back and seat that articulate at a 120-degree angle. Some people have said that zero gravity also includes the ottoman coming all the way up. Anyway, and that is neither here nor there, I don’t know if that really is part of the true definition. When I did some homework to find out the true definition of what zero gravity is, the articulation between the chair back and the seat is actually about 120 to 128 degrees, but there was not really any defining angle for the legs. But anyway, zero gravity, by definition, is typically a 30-degree tilt in the seat, and a 120 to 128-degree angle of articulation on the chair back and on the seat. Now, some of these chairs say they have two-stage zero gravity, or three-stage zero gravity, what it just means is that a second stage means that it reclines farther back, let’s see, yeah, it reclines farther back, and a third stage is reclining farther back even more, but often it changes the articulation between the chair back and the seat, so it’s more than 128 degrees, or even less than 128 degrees. So, that is something that is not completely and fully defined by the massage chair companies when it comes to zero gravity. So, just be aware that a chair – if a chair has zero gravity, it has zero gravity – if it has a second-stage zero gravity, it’s not really zero gravity, it’s just a farther recline. If it has a third-stage zero gravity, it’s just a farther recline than that. So, just be aware when you read, you know, zero gravity, in two stage or three stage, you know, again, do you think you’re getting more because of a two or three-stage zero gravity? No, you get zero gravity because zero gravity, by definition, is a 30-degree seat angle, and 120 to 128-degree articulation of the chair back and the seat. A second or third degree, or a second or third zero-gravity position is just, I mean, you can recline, even if the, all it means is that you can push a button and it’ll recline farther back, and the seat will, the seat and the chair back will change position, but you can do that with any chair just by using the feet and chair back position adjustment buttons. So, it’s just, again, like 3D, 4D, you know, one, or zero gravity, two-stage zero gravity, three-stage zero gravity, it’s all stuff that pretty much every chair has, whether it’s an automatic button, or whether it is an adjustment of the chair back and the chair, and the ottoman. So, but hopefully I didn’t overkill that with what I just explained.

[SCREEN TEXT: Made in Japan??]

Alan: But anyway, and then, one last thing I just wanted to talk about was that OK, this whole Made in Japan thing has become quite a lightning rod of controversy, you know, back in the day, it was said that chairs were made in Japan, and I believe, back in the day, way back in the day, chairs were made in Japan, but nowadays, there is no chair that is made in Japan 100%. If it says ‘Made in Japan,’ it means, it usually means that the chair is assembled there, there’s quality-control testing done there, and it’s known in the industry that the Japanese are very, very particular and exact in the quality-control department, and it could, and it also means that some of the chair programming was done there, but most of the parts come from China. So, everything from the Fujimedic Kumo to the DreamWave Classic, to the DreamWave M.8, to the Synca JP1100, to the Osaki 4S, or 4D, or 4.0 chairs, those are all claimed to be made in Japan, but they all have Chinese components. The degree of, or the percentage of Chinese components probably varies a little bit on every chair, but the bottom line is ‘Made in Japan’ does not mean the chair is actually made in Japan, and I know that’s a little confusing, but that is how it is, or if it says ‘Made in Korea,’ most of the components are made in China, and there’s a few that might be made in Japan, the testing, and the assembly, and the programming might be done in Korea, or as we know with Luraco, or done in America, and but their components, they’re non-US components are made in Taiwan, but pretty much every other chair that says ‘Made in Japan’ is really assembled, tested, and programmed in Japan, but made, the components are made in China. And I was speaking to someone involved in one of the, one of the companies that I, you know, buy my chairs from, and we had a conversation about this, and he was making the point to me that eventually, so many companies are going to come out with these ‘Made in Japan’ chairs that it’s just going to muddy the waters so much that it’s all going to be just, it’s not going to be meaningful at all. So, what you’ve got to look at is more of the quality of the build, the quality of the roller massage, the quality of the whole massage experience. You’re going to be looking at just the overall, oh, you’ll be looking at the warranty, if the warranty’s better, those are the kinds of things that you’ll look at, and eventually, being made in China, or made in Japan, or made in Korea, or made in America, is going to be kind of a, it’s going to be, it’s not going to be very well defined as to what it really, really means. And so, the thought of this one expert was that, you know, don’t get hung up on whether it’s made in Japan, and like I have people that come in to my showroom, and say ‘Now, this chair is made in Japan, right?’ And I go ‘Well, you know, some of it is, but most of it is made in China.’ And then, it’s like they’re shocked to hear it because they expect ‘Made in Japan’ to be made in Japan, just like I’m sure cars that are, you know, made in Germany, or made in Japan, have a lot of components made elsewhere. I don’t know, that’s outside my industry, but I just wanted to maybe talk a little bit about that, so that you don’t get too hung up on the term ‘Made in Japan,’ and I know that that has been a real bone of contention for a lot of people in our industry, because what does that mean, what does made in said country mean? And I’ve talked about this on my blog, I’ve talked about it in videos, but it’s come up again this last couple of weeks with chairs that are coming out from Japan, and this, that, and the other, and it’s very important to understand what I just kind of talked about. So, I hope that helps, and doesn’t, you know, again, I hope I didn’t overkill it with too much talking, which is what I tend to do sometimes.

[SCREEN TEXT: 888-259-5380]

Alan: But anyway, I guess that’s about it for this week. If you have any questions, feel free to give us a call at 888-259-5380, and of course, you can reach out to us through our chat software, through any of our social media platforms, we’d love to help you, and you know, answer any questions that you might have in your massage chair buying journey. But we’re also here for any other questions about any chairs, or if you have a chair already and you have a question, because you have a problem with it, let us know, and we can point you in the right direction. Anyway, we’re always here to help you.

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

Alan: But if you found this video helpful, 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, and any other video that we have from our YouTube channel on your social media platforms, whether it’s, you know, Instagram, or Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, well, not on Google Plus anymore, but anyway, any of those platforms. We appreciate you helping us spread the word about massage chairs. Well, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and I will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.

Click on the following link to watch this Massage Chair Industry Update on our YouTube channel.

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