Human Touch Novo

I visited my Southern California showroom this week and while I was there, I was invited to come to Human Touch’s headquarters in Long Beach to try out the new Novo massage chair. This is a model that they have been market testing through Costco roadshows and the response has been favorable. They are introducing a new model, the Novo XT, and they want to distribute it through regular retailers.

I had a great visit with Michael Yu and Andrew Cohen, discussing the feature set of the Novo and Novo XT. They will be introducing the new XT model in November, at which time we should have a floor model in at least one of our showrooms.

Here are some observations I made about the Novo massage chair:

1. No assembly required. It comes fully assembled, but because of it’s size it may be difficult to maneuver in some homes. There is an assembly guide that will assist you in dealing with tough twists and turns in your home that make it difficult to move this chair around.
2. Because of it’s sheer weight and size, Human Touch recommends getting white glove delivery on this model. We may choose to include that with each purchase of this model.
3. It comes in some pretty cool colors. The Novo and Novo XT come in black, brown (a cool looking, leather-like brown), cream, red, and blue. The blue on the Novo is a bright, sky blue color, while the blue color of the XT is a little toned down. You can see both colors in the video.
4. It has 6 programs, and each program has 4 variants: Shiatsu, Swedish, Sports, and Thai. There is also a 7th “Demo” program to give you a taste of all that the chairs can do.
5. The arm airbags are sequentially inflated, as opposed to one big air bladder that inflates on the whole forearm at once.
6. This chair has mechanical foot rollers and an L-track.
7. The XT will have a 3D L-track (extended roller track).
8. The remote control is very simple and easy to use. It looks much like the remotes of the Infinity Iyashi, Infinity Escape, and Infinity IT-8500. Made in the same Chinese factory.
9. Calf airbags on the sides and back of the calves.
10. The hip airbags moves your hips side to side across the extended roller track, much like that which is found in the Iyashi.
11. Side shoulder airbags
12. Bluetooth connectivity.
13. Rocking is available in the Novo, but will not be available in the XT. Because the rocking feature will be removed, the XT will be able to provide the space-saving feature.
14. The price of the XT will be $7999, which is quite expensive for a chinese-made L-track chair, in my opinion, but some test results in the some retail stores are promising as far as price point goes.

Check out this brief video of my visit to Human Touch earlier this week…

I’m eager to see how this chair is received in the market place.

Dr. Alan Weidner

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