Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – October 9, 2013”
Alan: Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com‘ and today is our biweekly massage chair industry update video for October 9th. We’ve got some fun stuff to go over with you today.
[SCREEN TEXT: Stock Status – GOOD STOCK!!]
Alan: First of all, we’ll talk about stock. There’s not a lot to talk about. Most of the companies have their chairs in stock, I haven’t heard back from everybody, but apparently stock is good for all companies right now.
OS-7075R
[SCREEN TEXT: New Osaki OS-7075R Container Load – Better? Better!]
Alan: Osaki just came back with their new shipment of 7075Rs, which were back-ordered for the last number of weeks, but they have a new container load. I might mention, the 7075R, that last container load seemed to have a lot of problems with the chairs breaking down, and I’ve had a number of customers that complained about it, and I’ve alluded to it here on these industry updates. Apparently, what Osaki said happened is they had a container load, and apparently there was some heat, a heatwave in China, and this container load was left out in the sun during a particular time when business was stopped, or there was a break from business, or whatnot, and they believe that some of the chairs were damaged by the heat. So, they’ve got a brand new load in now, with all the new colors, and so we suspect that this problem has been taken care of. So, the 7075, which I heretofore have been hesitant to refer over the last number of months, I’m ready to go ahead and say that they’ve got a new shipment, the problems have been no doubt corrected, and we assume that the 7075R will be in good shape, and a good chair to buy now again, with the same kind of failure rate as the other models of Osaki and the other models of other companies. But I do want to let you know that they are in stock, the 7075s are in stock, ready for you to purchase if that’s the chair that you’re interested in.
[SCREEN TEXT: Another New Osaki Pro Model Coming Out Soon]
Alan: Also, getting on more with Osaki,Osaki, as you know, Osaki’s had a lot of new models come in to the market lately, they’ve had the OS-2000 Combo, the OS-3000 Chiro, they’ve had the OS-Pro Marquis, the OS-3D Pro Intelligent, the OS-7200CR, and its sister chair, the OS-3D Pro Dreamer, so all these models, and I might mention that they have another model coming out in the next one to two weeks. I wasn’t allowed to tell you the name just yet, but it’s a chair – maybe because they’re not firm on the name yet – but it’s supposed to be coming out in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll keep you posted on as we see that chair come to light. So, that’s quite a few models for Osaki. They’re being very aggressive with their new models. I don’t know how they’re selling yet, they’re all relatively new. I’ve sold some of the OS-3D Pro Dreamer.
[SCREEN TEXT: OS-3D Pro Dreamer Now in Our Showroom]
Alan: I actually have that chair now in my showroom, the OS-3D Pro Dreamer, which is the same body styling and mechanics as the OS-7200H. It has foot rollers, mechanical foot rollers, and it has 3D massage, which means that the rollers move forward and back, as well as, up and down, and side to side to give the user the ability to increase the intensity of the chair moving forward, of the chair with the rollers moving forward.
[SCREEN TEXT: OS 3D-Pro Dreamer Review on Our Blog]
Alan: Now, we set this chair up, I actually set this chair up myself, which is a miracle. I’m not a real fixer-upper guy, I usually have my shipping guys do it, but I did it this time, and I actually did it. You know, there were a couple of frustrating moments when I couldn’t get a nut to go in to a particular receptacle, but that’s just me being kind of bush league when it comes to assembling things and being a handyman. But I did set up the OS-3D Pro Dreamer myself, and I wrote a long review about it, and you can check that review out on my blog. One of the things that I noticed about that chair that was different from the old 7200H, after which it is patterned, is that the neck massage is more vigorous. It was definitely a more intense neck massage, and I would also mention – and it’s a good neck massage – I mean, it’s not a bad neck massage at all. So, if you’re looking for a chair that’s got good low back and good neck massage, the OS-3D Pro Dreamer is another chair to throw in to the hat to choose from, along with some of the other chairs that we’ve talked about, some of the other Chinese-made chairs. Of course, the Inada chairs do the neck well, as well, as a Japanese-made chair. But that OS-3D Pro Dreamer, nice chair, they’ve cleaned up the look of it, if you can even say cleaning it up, but they’ve put this dome over the top of the old 7200H to give it this finished look and it’s got speakers inside. The speakers are a little tinny, but you get used to it pretty quick, and it’s a nice chair. It’s definitely more aggressive – oh, the stretch program is very, very aggressive – I really like the stretch program on the OS-3D Pro Dreamer. It uses that 3D motion of the rollers and you can actually hear it, and by the way, when you turn on the 3D roller, you can actually hear it, [whooshing sound], you know, [whooshing sound], moving forward and back. I mean, that’s not a great sound effect, but that’s the gist of it, and you can feel it move forward and back when you adjust it, but that stretch program’s pretty intense. It just seems like that roller really gets pushed forward in some of the positions in the stretch program, where you really feel it digging in to your back and arching your back, very good, very nice, if you like an aggressive stretch program, which I do, you’ll like that feature.
[SCREEN TEXT: OS-3D Pro Dreamer Offer – 2 Yrs. Parts and Labor / 2 Yrs. Parts]
Alan: OK also, oh, Osaki is offering through ‘Massage-Chair-Relief’ until the end of the year, if you buy the Osaki OS-3D Pro Dreamer, the chair of which I just spoke, you will get two years parts and labor, in the warranty, and an additional two years parts only, so they’re giving us quite a nice warranty for our customers. So, when you buy the OS-3D Pro Dreamer, not only do you get the instant discount, but you will also get a two-year, parts-and-labor, in-home warranty, and then an additional two-year parts warranty, instead of the typical, or standard, one-year, parts-and-labor, in-home warranty, with another year of parts. So, that’s a nice gesture for our customers that Osaki has given us, and so then that may help you in your decision making process as well. Oh, and by the way, the new chair that’s coming out from Osaki is part of their Pro series – you know, they’ve got the Pro Marquis, the Pro Intelligent, and the OS-3D Pro Dreamer – and this new one’s going to be part of the Pro series.
[SCREEN TEXT: Marquis & Intelligent Review on Our Website]
Alan: Speaking of the Marquis and the Intelligent, I wrote a literature review, I’ve not sat on those chairs, I don’t have them in my showroom, we may carry one yet, I’m not sure, but those chairs I wrote a literature review on in my blog. So, go check out the article on the blog, and you can get a good feeling for what the Marquis and the Intelligent have. The things that kind of set apart those two chairs are – the Marquis has a body styling, it’s very similar looking, it’s very similar looking to the OS-7075R, so I assume they’re created in the same – no, I don’t assume, I know, I actually asked Osaki, those chairs were made in the same factory. The body styling is a little different, but it’s very reminiscent of the 7075R, and what it has, it has a portable heating pad that moves around. You can move it around, it’s kind of like attached to a cord – and you can put it on your chest, or on your thighs, or on your viscerals and on your belly, or on your forehead, where ever you want to put that heating pad – and you get portable heat. It also has, allegedly it has very nice, very high quality acoustic speakers in the head area, so you can listen to music, and good quality sound music. The Intelligent, the OS-3D Pro Intelligent, as the name implies, has 3D massage, so the rollers move forward and back, as I discussed earlier. It also has arm airbags that, or arm massagers, that kind of elevate and retract in to the armrests, so you can’t even see that there’s an arm massage, but when you push on the armrests, up come these things, you put your arms in there, and get massaged. It also has a retractable ottoman, but what’s interesting about the ottoman is that when it unfolds completely, when it deploys completely, it has foot rollers underneath the feet. When you bring it back, when you start to retract it, the feet will fold in, and the ottoman will fold under, so it’s a flat, level surface because all the calf and foot wells are hidden underneath, but there’s a soft linen material on the top of that flat surface. Well, guess what that is, those are the foot rollers that are now coming through the top of the – or through the back of the ottoman, which is now where your calves are laying – so you actually can use the foot rollers to massage your calves. So, that’s a pretty innovative feature, we’ve not seen that before, and I kind of like that, I’m looking forward to trying that chair out. Anyway, check out the review on my blog, and you can read about that.
[SCREEN TEXT: 3-Part Interview with Cliff Levin, President of Inada USA]
Alan: I did another series of interviews with Cliff Levin, the president of Inada, and we just did that on October 1st. I’ve posted parts one and two on our YouTube channel, but I had a nice conversation with Cliff. The third part will go up either later this week or early next week. We talked about a number of things as far as Inada chairs go, as far as the industry goes, and one of the things that I kind of found interesting was they have – Cliff divulged to me that they have a 3% call rate, you know, we were talking about failure rates of chairs, and how some chairs have higher break down rates than other chairs – and he mentioned that they had a call in rate of 3%, a call in rate. Now, a call in rate doesn’t mean there’s a problem with the chair, it means either someone’s calling because there was a issue with shipping, or they didn’t know if their chair got set up properly, or they didn’t learn how to use the chair because they bought the chair sight unseen, or they bought it from a store and then they were never really taught how to use the chair. Well, guess what, that’s their call in rate 3%, and the thing that’s interesting is, only 1%, when you weed away those other calls, the ones that have to do with – that are not mechanical in nature, or failure rate in nature – you only have a 1% failure rate, that’s phenomenal. I know Panasonic and Inada have very, very low failure rates, both in the same ballpark, and I think that’s phenomenal, but I found that interesting. I’d never really known what their failure rate was, and sometimes I’m afraid to ask because if it’s a really high failure rate, I’m sure they don’t want to tell me, or they’re afraid to divulge it, because they know I’ll talk about it on my videos or on a blog post, but that’s a pretty impressive failure rate for Inada.
[SCREEN TEXT: Commercial Warranties for Businesses]
Alan: Now also, you know, I had an issue with a customer of mine that bought a chair, bought a Human Touch chair from me, and they bought it for a gym that they have, like kind of a, not a health spa, but like a gym where you work out. Anyway, they had the chair for quite a few months, and something broke down on it, it was a piece that needed to be replaced. Well, unbeknownst to me, this Human Touch chair had a different commercial warranty than the standard warranty of the chair, which is for residential use. I knew that Inada had a different warranty for commercial use. I knew their three-year, parts-and-labor warranty, their residential warranty, is null and void if it goes in to a commercial setting. When I say commercial setting, I mean like a gym, spa, salon, tire store, you know, we’ve sold to all kinds of places, repair shops, any kind of office where the employees use it as a perk, those settings – the standard warranty that comes with the chairs, which is a residential use only warranty – is null and void on most companies. So anyway, I was a little embarrassed because I was unaware that Human Touch had a commercial warranty, and that’s my fault that I was not aware of it and that I didn’t take the time to figure it out, but anyway, we worked our way through that. But what I’d like to mention to you – and I wrote an article about this just yesterday – each of the massage chair companies have a different commercial warranty, if they have one at all. So, for example, what I just mentioned to you, of the eight companies that we carry, Cozzia does not have a commercial warranty at all, so if you buy a Cozzia chair for a commercial setting, you will not have a warranty. Inada doesn’t – you have to purchase a three-year, parts-and-labor, commercial warranty – and that’s a $600 purchase. With Infinite Therapeutics, it’s two years, parts only, so no labor. Human Touch, it’s 90 days, parts and labor, and I believe a year for parts. Osaki is – oh, I get confused now, but I think Osaki is, two year, parts, oh no, no – well anyway, read the blog post. I apologize for not remembering, I should have the article up for reference right now, but the long and short of it is if you’re buying the chair for a commercial setting, and quite a few people do, just know that the warranty’s going to be different. You can call me about it, we can chat on the phone, you can read the article, whatnot, but FYI, that is an important thing to know. I think that’s just about it for what’s going on in the massage chair world right now.
[SCREEN TEXT: Order Soon Before the Holiday Rush]
Alan: Of course, we’re getting close to the Christmas holidays, and this is a big time of the year for people buying massage chairs as gifts and whatnot. That’s the main reason why we have good stock in all the massage chair companies right now. We have people – you know, the companies are loading up for Christmas, and there’s a high demand at Christmas time and come Black Friday and Cyber Monday, a lot of the chairs are going to be already – not a lot, but some of the colors are going to be gone already, and some of the stock will be gone. So, if you’re thinking of getting a chair for the Christmas holidays or for, you know, Thanksgiving, or whatever the holiday may be, or for any time between now and the end of the year, actually between now and the end of January – because we sell quite a few chairs in January for some reason, there’s kind of maybe this after Christmas or, you know, after the New Year kind of mentality of people wanting to get in shape, and getting healthy and whatnot – but I would encourage you to, you know, start thinking about getting a massage chair now, obviously you are, if you’re watching this video. Please, you know, order ahead of time if you want to get the color and the model that you want, because it gets a little crazy, it gets a little crazy toward the end of the year, that’s just my FYI to you. We have a lot of interesting things coming up at Massage-Chair-Relief that I’m excited about. I’ll be talking about those in the next update and on my blog posts. I will be interviewing Jim Coppins again, the vice president of Infinite Therapeutics that import the Infinity chairs. I’m looking forward to talking to Jim. We talked a year ago, almost exactly a year ago, and I’ll be interviewing him. We’ll be talking about the new Iyashi, no doubt, and the 8100, which are chairs that have come out since our last interview. I’m excited to talk to Jim a little bit more now that I’m more familiar with his chairs and have sold a number of them, I, you know, maybe have a different perspective and maybe different questions to ask, or different topics to discuss. Anyway, I’ll be interviewing him and we have some other things that are going on that we’re very, very excited about. I will share those with you as they come about, and we just appreciate you for taking time to watch this video. I know we’ve got quite a few videos out there, and it could keep you busy, watching these videos all day long, if you had the time. But we do appreciate people that take the time to watch our videos, read my blog posts, and take the time to go through the site and use it as a resource, which is what it was meant to be, a resource for the massage chair shopper, and you know what, not everybody buys from me. But I’ll tell you, most massage chair shoppers come to my site and learn from me, and I’m grateful for that, because it helps you to make an informed decision, it minimizes your buyer’s remorse, and you feel a little more comfortable going in to the buying process – especially if you’re going with a retailer that you’ve never known before, and you’re shelling out, you know, thousands of dollars for a chair that you’ve never maybe tried, or that you’ve heard about or tried somewhere else – but you’re buying it online, and you’re worried about getting it from a reputable dealer. Well, you know, we try to take care of a lot of those worries for you, and we appreciate your patronage just by watching the videos and reading the blog posts.
[SCREEN TEXT: Please ‘Like,’ ‘Share,’ ‘Tweet,’ ‘+1,’ and/or Subscribe Below!]
Alan: If you would be so kind as to, you know, ‘Like’ these videos if you like them, share them on your social media platforms and help us spread the word about massage chairs. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, below here, you can subscribe to the channel and be updated with subsequent massage chair industry updates like this video, or to be updated of massage chair review videos, which we put out every week, and you know, you can just get updated on what’s going on.
[SCREEN TEXT: Call Me Anytime at 888-259-5380!]
Alan: Thank you very much for being here today. Have a wonderful day, and next couple of weeks, I hope it’s a good couple of weeks for you. We will see you in two more weeks and then, of course, if you have any questions, you can call me. You can always reach me at 888-259-5380, and people have trouble believing this, but I do answer the phone, and this is one thing in my business that I don’t like to delegate to others unless I’m in a meeting or indisposed. I love to talk to the customers. It’s probably the biggest high I have in my job is to talk to the customers and help them make a choice, or help make them feel comfortable about what they’re getting themselves in to, so please don’t ever hesitate to call, I’m always here. Again, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com’ and thank you for watching this massage chair industry update for October 9th, 2013. We will see you in two weeks. Bye bye.
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