Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – October 2, 2014”

Alan: Well, hello, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and today is our October 2nd, 2014 biweekly massage chair industry update. We’ve got some good things to cover today, and I’ll get going right away.

[SCREEN TEXT: Stock Status]

Alan: First of all, I will give you a little update on stock. The Inada DreamWave in ‘Crème’ is back-ordered until the 25th of October. Now, this chair was back-ordered until this week, and they just got a new shipment in the tail end of last week, and delivered this week, and they’re already out of stock again. So, what that does is it speaks to the notion that – and it’s something that I’ve addressed many times in this biweekly update throughout the years – if you’re going to get a chair, don’t wait until closer to Christmas. If you want to get a chair, order it soon, so that you can get in on the colors, because the demand will start to pick up here, October, November, December, it’s going to go crazy, and you may not have much choice, the longer you wait. So, if there’s something back – oh, and that’s, the other lesson is – if something’s back-ordered, don’t wait for the back-order to come in, order now, so that when the back-order shipment comes in, you can go ahead and get your chair in that shipment. If you don’t, and you wait, you might be ending up like the ‘Crème’ chair, the DreamWave ‘Crème,’ which just now is out of stock, but it just came in this week. So, anyway, also in stock, the ‘Taupe’ Osaki 7075 is back-ordered, and the ‘Black’ 7200CR from Osaki is back-ordered, and there’s no date of when they’re going to be in. The Human Touch, Panasonic, Infinite Therapeutics, they all seem to be in stock, Cozzia seems to be, everything seems to be in stock. So, if you need anything, right now is a good time to get a chair, but again, don’t wait, if something’s back-ordered, get it now.

[SCREEN TEXT: New Luraco Upgrade: iRobotics i6SL]

Alan: You know, Luraco, which has the one model, the 6S, the iRobotics 6S, has just announced that they’ve come out with a new version, the i6SL, and what the i6SL has is, it’s got leather, genuine leather components on the areas of the body that touch the body, or the areas of the chair that touch the body, the neck, the arms, and the feet. So, you’ve got some leather components now to that. Also, they’ve decreased the, there’s a noise reduction feature, or not feature, but they’ve introduced some kind of way to decrease the noise of the chair. The chair did have an airbag thing, you could hear the airbags going, pfft, pfft, pfft, as it was inflating and deflating, but it was actually kind of hypnotic, to be honest, and sometimes it almost helped you to relax more, just hearing the repetitive sound of the airbags inflating and deflating. Well, they’ve, I assume that’s why they’ve introduced the new noise reduction technology, to decrease the sound of the airbags. Also, hmm, was there something else about that chair? Oh, it’s got an improved neck-and-shoulder massage. So, I don’t know what it’s like, I haven’t felt it, I only have the 6S in our showroom, but I suspect that it’s probably a deeper, maybe a little bit more sophisticated neck-and-shoulder massage, so that’s from Luraco.

[SCREEN TEXT: Updated Massage Chair Free Report]

Alan: Also, you know, the free report that you can get on our website, if you go down to the bottom of any page on our website, or to the right-hand corner of any page on our blog, or article library, or on our YouTube channel, on any video, in the description, you’ll see, you can request, you can click a link and request to download our free report, which in the past has been called ‘5 Things That You Absolutely Need to Consider When Investing in a High-Quality Robotic Massage Chair.’ Well, we’ve changed it to ‘8 Things That You Must Consider, Absolutely Must Consider,’ I’ve updated the, I’ve upgraded or updated the report. It’s actually the report that I upgraded in my book ‘The Ultimate Massage Chair Buyer’s Guide,’ which you can get on Amazon, either as a Kindle download or a paperback hard copy, but that report’s been updated to eight things. So, if you’d like to get a report that talks about things you really need to consider when you’re looking to buy a massage chair, check out our report, ‘The 8 Things That You Absolutely Need to Consider,’ and you, like you can get it in those places that I just told you about.

[SCREEN TEXT: Inada DreamWave vs. Inada Flex 3S Review]

Alan: Also, let’s see, I wrote a, I wrote a review, a two-part review comparing the Inada DreamWave to the Inada Flex 3S. Now, they’re very similar-looking chairs, but they’re very different functioning chairs, and I go over that in this review. Part one talks about the similarities between the two chairs, part two talks about the differences, and hopefully that’ll give you a better sense of what you’re getting with each chair. Now, there’s a couple of thousand dollar difference in price between the DreamWave and the Flex 3S, and they look similar, but the Flex 3S is a different chair, a smaller chair, doesn’t have the same feature set, great chair, as any Inada product is, but different. So, you can check out that review if you’d like to know what those differences are.

[SCREEN TEXT: My Visit to Infinite Therapeutics]

Alan: Also, let’s see, well, I just got back this week actually, just got back yesterday from Boston, I flew out to Boston on Monday, spent the day all day Tuesday with Infinite Therapeutics. They’re the importers and the distributors of the Infinity line of chairs, like the Infinity IT-8500, the Infinity Iyashi, great bunch of guys, I got out there late Monday night, and the story of getting there was a story in and of itself. I was on the way to the airport, I had a, I think, a 10 or 11 o’clock flight on Southwest, and I got a flat tire on 215 here in Salt Lake, going to the airport, and I didn’t have a spare with me, so I had to call AAA. They come pick me up, take my car to the tire shop, I get new tires, while I’m there I book a new flight on United, because there were no more flights available on Southwest. So, I book a flight on United, and then by the time my tires are done, and I get back to my house – and that flight was supposed to leave at 4:30 that afternoon – I get an email that says, an alert from United, saying because of the air control, air traffic controller problems in Chicago, and this flight had a stopover in Chicago before it went to Boston, the flight was delayed an hour. Well, my layover in Chicago was only 45 minutes, so I was going to miss that flight, so I was just frantic, and I canceled the hotel, then I called United to see if there was any option, they said yes, we can put you on a different airline. So, they put me on a Delta flight, and it got me directly from Boston to, or from Salt Lake to Boston, Monday night, I left about 5:30, got in to Boston around midnight, to 12:15, and I tell you, by the time I got to the hotel, it was 1 in the morning, I was beat, I was exhausted. Fortunately, I was able to book another hotel, but it was further away, and it was a nightmare. Well, I finally got there, and all day Tuesday, I spent with the guys from Infinite Therapeutics, and it was awesome. Michael Malone is the national dealer manager, and he’s the guy that kind of is my point man at Infinite Therapeutics, great guy, young guy, like these young guys, I’m just amazed at how savvy the young kids are, you know, these kids that are around 30 years old, and when I was that age, I wasn’t that sharp. I think I was a complete idiot, to be quite frank with you, but Michael, and a lot of these guys I deal with, are just sharp, sharp guys. Well, anyway, needless to say, he took me up to New Hampshire, where their offices are, which was about a 45-minute drive. I had a wonderful day of visiting with Michael Garceau, the president, Jim Coppins, the vice president, who I’ve done interviews with in the past, there’s two of them on our – two different occasions I’ve interviewed Jim, talking about massage chairs – and they’re on our YouTube channel, and you can check those interviews out, and of course, with Michael, and I met Mary, who takes care of all the logistics, and Rochelle, who sends all the tracking information. I went to, and this was in their main office, and a mile down the road, they’ve got their tech support office, where they have their tech support guys, like Ian, and Tim, and a couple other guys, and they have a big, kind of a warehouse there, where they – and they don’t stock their, they don’t have their stock there – they have chairs that are getting refurbished, chairs that are getting repaired, they have all their parts there, and these guys know these chairs, inside and out, they take them apart, they put them back together again, they fix the chairs, they refurbish them, they’re really, it’s really a pretty impressive setup there. Then, they have, of course, and I just learned this, I knew that they ship chairs out of Oregon, I knew that they had a warehouse in Oregon, but they have a warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee, which I did not know. So, that’s why they, if you order a chair from me, and I send the order to Infinite Therapeutics, you will get your chair like quick, like three to five days, which is pretty incredible. If you’re on the west side of the States, they ship it out of Oregon, and I remember one lady who lived in Spokane that ordered a chair, and she got a phone call from the shipping company, who wanted to schedule an appointment with her, before she even got the tracking information that I still hadn’t received. So, I get the tracking information from the company, and I forward it to the customer, and they can call, or go online, and find out where their chair is. It was so quick that she got the chair before I even got tracking information, which is remarkable. Well, I didn’t know they had a hub in, a warehouse in Memphis, so now they can cater to the East Coast from their Memphis warehouse. So, you’ll get your chair pretty quick if it’s from Infinite Therapeutics, I was impressed with that. Anyway, so we spent the day yakking, and I took some video, and I’ll get the video together. I always carry my video camera with me whenever I go visit one of these companies, and I’ve been to Human Touch, I’ve been to Inada, I’ve been to Luraco, and I’ve been to Osaki, and it’s always great, and you know what? Every one of these companies has wonderful people, wonderful people, and I just love working with them, and I love interacting with them, they’re great people, and I just love it. Even though sometimes, some of the companies’ protocols, I don’t care much for, the way they actually manage the distribution of their chairs, or the shipping of the chairs, or the handling of customer support issues, regardless of the protocol around which these people have to function, the people are great, and I really, really enjoy working with them, and Infinite Therapeutics is no exception, these guys were great, and they treated me like royalty. I mean, geez, we spent the morning talking massage chairs, and that’s awesome, for a massage chair guy like me, that’s awesome, because I never get to talk about massage chairs. Who am I going to talk to about it, my son, who doesn’t really know much about it, who am I going to talk to? There’s some customers that know as much or maybe more than I do about massage chairs, but there’s not many. So, to be able to sit down for, you know, two, three, four hours and talk massage chairs is like I’m in heaven, and that was how it was. So, anyway, I got to see their facilities, they had my book on their – they had my book ‘The Ultimate Massage Chair Buyer’s Guide’ – on their little table in their showroom, in their little store there, which I thought was awesome. Of course, they probably just planted it there to make me feel good, but I thought it was awesome, seeing it there.

[SCREEN TEXT: Fenway Park Tour!]

Alan: Anyway, after that, we go back in to Boston, and Michael has been my escort the whole morning, he’s the guy that picked me up from the hotel, and he’s, you know, he’s the national dealer manager. Here he is taking a day out from his busy schedule, no doubt, and driving me all over the place. We went in to Boston, and went on a tour of Fenway Park, are you kidding me, the oldest stadium in the, the oldest baseball stadium in the country. I’ve never been out East before, and here I’m in Fenway Park, like I was actually, like I’m sitting in a seat that’s 80 years old, and I’m looking at the Green Monster, I’m on top of the Green Monster actually, I went on top of the Green Monster, they have seats up there. I’m seeing the, the little red, like out in the bleachers, in the right-field bleachers, it’s all green chairs, all green seats, except for one red one, and the story is, that Ted Williams hit a ball out there, and it hit a guy who was napping on the chair. He was wearing a hat, and it covered his eyes, and he didn’t even know what was going on, ball hits him, knocks him out, it doesn’t kill him, it just knocks him out, he wakes up, doesn’t know what happened. Well, it turns out that this shot, was a 502-foot shot by Ted Williams, the longest hit in Fenway Park history, and they had the seat, it’s a red seat out in the middle of all these green ones, pretty cool stuff. Anyway, I got to see Fenway Park, you know, you look down there, and you go ‘Geez, Babe Ruth stood at that home plate, Cy Young pitched from that pitcher’s mound,’ I mean, it’s like surreal, it’s absolutely surreal.

[SCREEN TEXT: Boston Marathon Finish Line]

Alan: Anyway, that was a blast, and then after that, we go to see the Boston Marathon finish line, and where the bombs went off, which is a tragic, tragic thing, and it’s very humbling and sobering to stand there, and see a place where one of the bombs went off, but there was the finish line, and that, it’s just beautiful. Then, we go watch, now, I’m a hockey fan, I don’t know if you know that. I’m an Edmonton Oiler fan, you know, it’s hard to be a fan of the Oilers right now because they’ve not done well for quite a few years, but I love hockey, I play hockey with my son, we play all the time, we play in a league, I play a couple of noon-hours a week, we love hockey.

[SCREEN TEXT: Boston Bruins vs. New York Islanders!!]

Alan: Well, they get tickets to go see the Boston Bruins, one of the best teams, if not the best team in the East, against the New York Islanders. Here I am sitting in the TD Gardens in Boston, watching the Boston Bruins playing against the New York Islanders, and I was in heaven. We were 11 rows up from the blue line, I couldn’t believe it, it was just an amazing day, amazing day. Then, of course, I had to get up at 4 in the morning to catch the flight back, which by the way, went well, and now I’m back here dealing with all this, and I can’t even remember where I was going with this, I just went off on a tangent. Anyway, the Infinite Therapeutics guys were fantastic, thank you to Michael, and Mike, both Michaels, and Jim, and everybody over there, just wonderful people, and they’ve got a great customer support department, by the way, like it is a good customer support department, they will take care of you if you ever have a problem with your chair.

[SCREEN TEXT: FINALLY … BLACK IYASHI!!]

Alan: Anyway, they announced to me, while I was there that – OK, the Infinity Iyashi is a popular chair, but the biggest beef that people have with it, and this is the chair that has that extended roller track that goes down, what they call the L-track, down in to the butt, and massages your butt, it’s the only chair, reputable chair that really does that – well, it’s a white one, it’s a white plastic shell, with either a ‘Berry Red,’ a ‘Caramel Brown,’ or a ‘Black’ interior. Well, the exterior’s always been white, and it looks like, you know, Captain Kirk’s chair on the starship Enterprise, you know, the captain’s seat, and people have loved the chair, but a lot of the wives didn’t like the color. It was like ‘Are you kidding, I’m not putting that in my house, or in my living room,’ or whatever. That was probably the biggest deterrent to people buying the Iyashi, because it’s a great chair, a great massage. Well, as it turns out, they just announced to me that they’ve come out with a black exterior, and it’s going to be here, available in two weeks. So, now we’ve got a black exterior Iyashi, and it’s going to have the ‘Black’ interior option, or the ‘Caramel Brown’ interior option, not the ‘Berry Red,’ but I think it’s going to be a sharp looking chair. It’s going to be something that people are going to like, because it’s not going to be as ostentatious as the white exterior, and I think this is going to be a hit. So, for those of you that want the Iyashi, and you don’t want the white, the black’s coming, hang in there, it’s not too far away.

[SCREEN TEXT: Objective Product Reviews]

Alan: I think the only other thing I have to mention is, I got an email from a customer of mine. His name’s Buck, and a nice guy, a very good customer, bought a chair from me, he was very happy with the service he received, but when he got the chair, he didn’t like the smell of it, and I’ve heard this before from customers. Some of the chairs that are made of this synthetic leather, or faux leather, some of the chairs have a scent, kind of a odor to it, a new chair scent, if you want to call it that, but for some people, it’s a rather poignant scent, and it’s a little toxic to them. Well, Buck had mentioned this in an email to me, he told me the chair came, everything was good, it came on time, everything was alright, but the smell was a little too overwhelming for him, and he was waiting to find out if the smell would go away, or if there was anything he could do to get rid of the smell a little quicker. Well, and he was telling me how much of a concern this was to him. Well, I emailed him back, in a short email, and I said ‘Thanks for your feedback, that’s great, this is awesome stuff,’ and I said ‘I hope you’ll share a review on our website, when you, you know, when you’ve had a chance to sit in the chair, and experience it, and share all this with our viewing and reading audience. Well, he emailed back saying, you know, ‘Gee, I don’t know if Dr. Weidner read this, because he’s the kind of guy that I would suspect would read my email, and actually not think that having this scent that is quite disturbing, be awesome stuff.’ I felt bad, I was embarrassed when I got that, you know, I break out in a nervous sweat whenever I get uncomfortable with something I’ve done or said, and that happens a lot, I might add. Well, anyway, I emailed Buck back right away, and I said ‘Geez, thanks so much for your review, and it was me, I did read your email, and what I meant by awesome stuff was, this objectivity is awesome,’ like I love reviews on our website because people can tell us, tell everybody who’s looking for a massage chair, what their experience was really like, either the experience of shopping, the experience of figuring out what chair is right, the experience of getting the chair, the experience of dealing with us, the experience of dealing with customer support after they’ve got the chair. All these things are good to know, but a lot of people say all the good things, ‘Oh, this is great, that’s great, this is great.’ If everybody says ‘This is great,’ on every chair, it would look, it wouldn’t look, it wouldn’t look authentic. So, it’s nice to have an objective view on things, so when Buck wrote about this scent – I have heard this from other people, he’s not the first guy to tell me about this – I thought this is great, this is awesome, because now other, he’s verbalized it so well in his email, put this on a review so other people can hear this. So, I had to explain that to him, so if I say something like that to you, ‘Awesome stuff,’ when you say ‘Man, the service sucked,’ or ‘The delivery guy stunk,’ or ‘I can’t get ahold of their customer support,’ that’s awesome, like I like to hear that, because I like to hear what’s really going on with the customer. I like that review to be shared with other people who are looking, so it can help them make a decision about which chair is right for them. So, anyway, to Buck, I say I’m so sorry for being maybe flippant about your email, really, I appreciate stuff like that. That’s why I think it’s so awesome, because I love the good and the bad, I don’t just have to hear wonderful things all the time. If there’s something you don’t like about the chair, people want to know. If there’s something you don’t like about me, if you don’t like my twitch, or if you don’t like the space between my teeth, or how fast I talk, that’s OK, share that, people need to know what they’re getting in to. Anyway, well, I think that’s about it for this week. I can’t, what happened to my sheet, oh, there it is, I think we’re pretty much done. If you have any more questions, oh, oh, oh, oh, one more thing, sometimes, on my comparison chart, which is the most thorough comparison chart out there, it took me months to put it together a couple years ago, and it’s the most read thing on our site, other than the home page, the comparison chart’s the most utilized page on my site, people love that to compare chairs, sometimes the data is not right. Not very often, but once in awhile, I’ll get someone email me and say ‘Hey, your site says this about this chair, and another site says this about the chair, which one’s right?’ So, I’ll email the company, and I’ll find out what the right answer is, and I’ll get it done. Sometimes I’m right, sometimes it’s not right, but I just basically put in information in there that has been fed to me, either by my own experience of the chair, having it in our showroom, or by getting information from the company.

[SCREEN TEXT: Chair Spec Errors!]

Alan: Well, Infinite Therapeutics told me when I was out there that I had a 300-pound weight limit on the IT-8500 and the IT-8100, there is not a, and the Iyashi, it’s a 285-pound weight limit, not 300. It’s only a 15-pound difference, but it is different, but it is not, it’s inconsistent. The IT-9800 does have a 350-pound weight limit, and I think the IT-7800 has a 265-pound weight limit, but see, that little small thing might confuse the consumer, and the consumer does not need to be confused when they’re spending 4 to 5, 6, 7, $8000 on a massage chair, they need to know the facts. So, if you ever use the comparison chart, and you find that something’s not right, something’s amiss, let me know, and I’ll do the research on it, and if we’re mistaken, I’ll change it, if we’re correct, I’ll let you know.

[SCREEN TEXT: 888-259-5380]

Alan: Anyway, I think that was the last thing I needed to share with you. Well, that’s it for this week’s massage chair industry update, I will see you in a couple of weeks. If you found this video helpful, please feel free to thumbs up ‘Like’ us, share us, subscribe to this YouTube channel so you can be updated about subsequent videos, if there’s anything else that you have questions about, you can call me at 888-259-5380. Or, go down in the comment section here and leave a comment, or go on our website and chat with me, or email me. I’m always available, and if I can’t get, if you can’t get ahold of me, you can leave a message, and I will eventually get back to you. Well, again, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and we will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.

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