Massage Chair Industry Update – November 1, 2022

November 4, 2022
 By Dr. Alan Weidner
November 4, 2022
 By Dr. Alan Weidner

Massage Chair Industry Update – November 1, 2022

Dr. Alan Weidner: [00:00:15]
Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from Massage Chair Relief, and today is our biweekly Massage Chair industry update for Tuesday, November 1st, 2022. I apologize for taking extra time. This time I was out of town taking care of some business there, but I’m glad to get back at it today. And thank you for watching. I hope you find the information I give you to be helpful. We’re into the holiday season now, and it’s November 1st today, and as a result, we already have posted sales on the website today, the I9. Now, as you know, we’ve introduced a new Luraco i9 Max series of chairs. There’s the i9 Max Special Edition, the i9 Max Billionaire Edition, and the i9 Max Royal Edition. And so, those are all on the website.

[00:01:10]
Now, there are no sales on that chair for the holidays, but the old i9, the one that has been discontinued, they still have a number of them in black and the price has been dropped down from 12,490 down to 11,990 on a black original i9, just so that you know. Furniture For Life, they have a sale right now also. There are discounts on certain chairs. For example, there’s $1,000 off on the Panasonic MA73, $1,000 off on the Kai GTS7. There’s $500 off the Positive Posture Brio+ and the Positive Posture Brio Sport. There’s also a $1,000 off on the Ohco M.DX, which is a scaled-down version of the M.8. Now, the sale, there’s a little bit more to it.

[00:02:07]
So, you can upgrade. Instead of getting the discount on the chair, you can get a Positive Posture Sol, which is like I call it, a gamer chair. It’s one of those banana-shaped chairs that sit on the ground, low to the ground. And I call it a gaming chair because you can play video games or watch TV and whatever, but it’s close to the ground. It’s a 1999 chair. And that chair, you can get that for free if you choose not to get the discount on the other chairs. So, anyways, I’m making it sound more complicated than it probably is. But anyways, that’s their sale. Ogawa continues on with their Master Drive AI and Ogawa Active L+ sales, and you can see those on the website as well. Let’s see, what else have we got? I believe that’s it.

[00:02:58]
I’m sure I’m going to be hearing from some of the other companies this month as we get close to Black Friday. This is our Black Friday. This is a busy time of the year for the massage chair business. And I say this every year, but I don’t know if it sinks in. And if you’re new to this, if you’re new to my broadcast, you should know that Black Friday is one of the busiest days of the year for massage chair sales. And massage chairs as it is, because of COVID and because of the logistics nightmare that we’ve had over the last couple of years, which still persists to this day for some models in particular, for example, the GTS9 from Kai is backorder until February for one of the colors, and you’re going to wait three or four months for that chair. But anyways, don’t delay. If you want to get a chair and you want to get it for the holidays, I would order it earlier this month than waiting for Black Friday.

[00:04:01]
Because after Black Friday, the chairs, there’s going to be stock that’s going to be gone, some colors. And also, you’re dealing with shipping constraints, too, because what used to take one week for a chair to ship for regular curbside delivery now can take anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks. For white glove delivery, which used to take 2 to 3 weeks, now it can take anywhere from 3 to 4 or 5 weeks. So, the shipping is taking a lot longer. And as a matter of fact, I’ve received some deadlines for shipping. For example, Ogawa, which is the same company that does Cozzia, Brookstone, and JP medics, their Christmas residential deadline is November 18th, so that’s coming up. That’s November 18th, if you want to make sure you get it by Christmas time. Human Touch cutoff dates; for white glove delivery the cutoff date was already back in October, October 19th.

[00:05:03]
Now, white glove delivery, their guaranteed delivery date was 10/19. Threshold, which is through the door, what we typically call curbside, but they actually bring it in through the door for you, that is 11/14. So, that’s almost a month and a half ahead. And that’s for guaranteed delivery. And lastly, there was one other company that sent me their delivery cutoff dates, and that’s Furniture For Life. So, for full service which is white glove in-home delivery and setup, if you live on the East Coast, the cutoff date is November 17th. If you live in the Midwest, it’s also November 17th. If you live in the Rocky Mountain states including the Pacific Northwest, and down to Arizona, you’re going to have November 23rd as your cutoff date.

[00:06:04]
And for most of California and Nevada, you’re going to have a November 23rd cutoff date, except for the Southern California area, then your cutoff date is November 29th. That’s because they warehouse those chairs in Southern California. If you want regular curbside delivery from Furniture For Life … And remember, Furniture For Life is OHCO, D.Core, Kai, Positive Posture, Katana, and Panasonic. For the East Coast, the cutoff date is December 5th. This is for curbside delivery, not in-home delivery. For the Midwest, it’s December 8th. For the Rocky Mountain states and the Pacific Northwest, you’re looking at December 12th. And also December 12th for Southern California. So, those are important dates to remember.

[00:06:59]
But I also want you to remember that we have stores in Northern California, Southern California, Arizona, and Utah. Now, we do in-home delivery and set up for all of our local customers to those stores. So, if you buy a chair from one of our local stores, we’ll have the chair delivered directly to our store, and then we have our own white glove crew. So, the cutoff dates are not as stringent for our local stores as they are for people around the country that are just ordering them directly or the chairs are shipping directly from the warehouse out to your home, wherever that may be. And for some places like our Southern California store, we have the Human Touch warehouse here, the Daiwa warehouse, Furniture For Life warehouse, the Ogawa, Cozzia and JP Medical warehouses are all there, so we can usually pick up the chair pretty quick for a Southern California order, and you can have your chair within a week, for the locals.

[00:08:00]
So, anyways, just know that these dates I just gave you our general dates, but know that there are some different circumstances for our local stores. Enough of that. Human Touch … You know what? I don’t know if I knew this before, but I have become recently aware of it. Human Touch, you have a three-year parts and labor warranty with Human Touch when you buy the Super Novo or the service [sounds like 00:08:34]. I think we include that. But it’s either one year labor, three years parts, or it’s three years parts through three years labor if you get the extended warranty. The bottom line is you’re getting three years’ parts. I just became aware of that. If you have a problem with your chair during the factory warranty, they will not pay for the shipping of the parts to you. They will pay for the parts but not the shipping of the parts.

[00:09:01]
And I believe that’s the only company that does that. All the other companies will include shipping of the parts, the cost of shipping with the part. So, just be aware of that for Human Touch. Just know that you’ll be on the hook for the cost of shipping. Now, if it’s just a remote control, it’s going to be marginal. But if you need to get a whole new roller mechanism, it’s a hefty thing so you’re going to be paying a little bit more for that. So, anyways, just be aware of that. Now, speaking of the cost of parts and the shipping of parts, if you order a chair and you live internationally, whether it’s in Canada or Mexico or South America or Europe or wherever, pretty much all the companies will honor their parts warranty. They will not do labor. Nobody does that outside of the country. They’ll send you the parts, but they will charge you for shipping as well. So, essentially, the parts warranty is the one thing that will carry over to international orders. But like Human Touch for domestic orders, you’re going to be paying for the shipping.

[00:10:02]
And that’s an important thing to know, the shipping of the parts. We just had a customer that ordered three chairs for his business in the Grand Cayman Islands, and I had to make sure he was aware. And a lot of people don’t ask these questions when they’re buying a chair. They don’t think about these things. I had to make him aware that our lifetime labor warranty does not apply unless there’s a tech there that’s part of the network that we use. But our network is pretty typically United States. I also had to let him know that if he does have a problem with the chair and he needs parts, he’s going to have to pay for parts. And of course, shipping to the Grand Cayman Islands is probably not terribly cheap. But anyways, those are the things that people need to be aware of with some of these warranties and some of these chairs. Again, getting a good deal on a chair is one thing, having good customer support after the sale, including warranty support and cost of warranty, is crucial.

[00:11:00]
And I’m a real big guy on that because a lot of people call me just say, “I don’t care about your lifetime labor warranty. I don’t care about this, that or the other. I don’t care about your service. I don’t care about all that. I just want the cheapest price on the chair.” And sometimes we turn people away because they’re getting priced so low that the company that’s selling them the chairs, you know they’re not making money, and that’s why they’re lowballing, they’re just trying to sell a chair. But the customer support from that company, you’re going to have a lot of problems getting taken care of. And of course, lifetime labor. If something goes wrong with your chair, we’ll make sure that you get taken care of. So, anyways, there are a lot of things to know. Just be aware that getting a good deal is important. I get it. I get good deals too when I shop. But know that there’s so much more to a good deal than just the price. You’ve got to get a good warranty support, good customer support, good service. Important stuff. And these are things that you that you’ll need to know.

[00:11:59]
And I guess that’s probably my soapbox for the day. The soapbox for the day is be aware of what you’re getting when you buy a chair. Don’t just look at price. We have people, and this is the funniest thing of all … We have people that come to our showroom and we quote them a price on a chair, and then they go and they go on to a website that they don’t have to pay sales tax to, they will give them a cheap price, and then they call me back and ask if we’ll match the price. Sometimes we can do it, but sometimes even when I can do it, I don’t want to do it because I tell them, you got a lifetime labor warranty, we give you free at-home delivery for your local delivery for local customers, and they say, “We don’t care, just can you match the price? We just want the price.” Nope, go get it from the cheaper retailer. And guess what? We have our support form on our website and guess who fills out that support form? People who didn’t buy from us and bought cheap online, and now they’ve got a problem with their chair and they’re not getting taken care of.

[00:13:04]
So, who do they come to? Well, they come back to us. Unfortunately, we can’t do much for them. We just can’t do much for them. We can give them a phone number to the massage chair company, we can give them a phone number to Jazz Enterprises, which is a national network of technicians, but they’re on the hook for all that stuff. So, anyways, I’m going off a little bit here and I apologize. I didn’t mean to do that. But I would like to close on a very, very, very, very personal note. I have been out of town because my stepson, a 21-year-old young man, had moved to Oregon a month ago, and he’s been reported missing and we can’t find him. I spent a week up there with my wife and her family and friends. And unbelievable support from local people.
[00:14:06]
And there’s nothing like that kind of worry when you’re a parent. And I know a lot of you people that are watching this video have a family, have children. And so, I went out to deliver flyers to gas stations on every place he possibly went, 100 to 200 miles around the Portland area and including Portland. And there were a number of us. It just wasn’t me. There were quite a few people that had come out to volunteer. But I went out to these gas stations, and there were other missing person flyers up in the gas stations and the restaurants, and I never really noticed them much before. I’ve noticed them, but not with any concerted effort. And I became painfully aware that there are families out there that are suffering a tremendous amount of anguish. And they don’t know if their child is dead, if they’re alive, if they’re ever going to come back, if bridges are unmendable.

[00:15:07]
But I just want you to be aware, I guess this is a public service announcement. When you go into a gas station in your local neighborhood, take a look at the window, take a look at the posting board inside a grocery store and see if there’s somebody you might recognize. We’ve had a lot of responses from these fliers. People calling. Not all of them are accurate, but there are people that are genuinely concerned. And there are a lot of beautiful people out there that care. So, just a little thought to maybe be mindful of that when you go to the store or go to the gas station. Anyways, enough of that. I don’t usually get into personal things, but I wanted to share that because it’s been a real pain point for our family and a pain point for many, many other families that I was oblivious to. I’m not proud of that.

[00:15:59]
But anyways, I hope you have a fantastic couple of weeks. I will see you again in two weeks. If you found this video helpful, please feel free to thumbs up like us on our YouTube channel and help us spread the word about massage chairs by showing this or any of our videos with your friends and family via your social media platforms. We appreciate you helping us do that. Have a fantastic day and we’ll see you again in two weeks. Bye-bye.


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