Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Update – September 11, 2013”
Alan: Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com‘ and today is our massage chair industry update for 9/11, 2013.
[SCREEN TEXT: Patriot’s Day!]
Alan: So, today is Patriot’s Day, a very emotional day for most Americans, for most anybody, and then particularly emotional for me is my youngest son, Josh, was born on that very day, 9/11/2001, and he turns 12 today. That was a heck of a day, and not to wax too terribly personal during these updates, but we remember that morning and how traumatized we all were, just sitting in front of the TV watching what was going on, and thinking that the world was falling apart, and trying to negotiate our feelings through that, we were all kind of numb. Then, I remember, my wife’s water broke about two o’ clock in the afternoon, that afternoon, and we went to the hospital. Even though everything seemed like – it seemed like time had stood still that morning, it just seemed so surreal what had happened, that we were all, I think, in a – well, at least we were all in a state of shock, and it just seemed like everything had just, the world had just stood still dealing with this tragedy. Well, later that day, we find ourselves in a hospital just up the street, and Mona’s going in to labor, ready to have our son. You know, and then it was surreal again because here we were in a hospital setting, where babies were coming in to the world, and so many thousand people, almost 3000 people, had left the world that day, and yet babies continued to come, and then circle of life, you know, the old ‘Lion King’ movie, but we were thinking of the circle of life, how life just continues on. There’s tragedy and there’s heartache and there’s sadness and pain, but then there’s life, and new life, and then there’s a renewal of life, and the world carries on. Somehow we got through that day, we got through the negative and the positive that day, and the emotional swings. I do remember that day being intensely fierce emotionally, and I was kind of glad when it was over, but each year we’re reminded, not only of that tragedy and what has happened to so many dear people, but also, what happened to our family that day, and that renewal of faith in human nature, and in the ability of the world to come back, and bounce back, and regenerate, and create something good out of something so sad, and so traumatic. Anyway, Happy Patriot Day, and I hope it’s a wonderful day for people as they reflect on the good things in life, and the blessings in life, even though that might sound a little counter-intuitive, with what happened on that day 12 years ago for the nation, but hopefully today is a day of renewal, and a day to remember that life goes on, and we can start something wonderful today. Anyway, enough of that, sorry to wax too terribly philosophical, but it’s kind of an important day for us in the Weidner home, and obviously an important day in the nation’s psyche.
[SCREEN TEXT: Stock Status]
Alan: OK, well let’s get on to massage chairs. So, we’ve got a few good things to talk about today. Number one, we’ll talk about stock. There’s not much to talk about. I believe the companies are all kind of stacking up for the fourth quarter, for Christmas. The fourth quarter’s a huge month for most retailers. It usually starts around Thanksgiving, for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, all the way on through Christmas, but the companies are stocking up with chairs. It’s a good time to actually be thinking about buying, earlier than later, because the stock is good. Later on when we get closer to Christmas, there’s less selection, less color selection, less model selection, and it gets a little scarce so you kind of have to pick and choose what you can out of what’s remaining. So, now is actually a good time to start thinking ahead, and maybe thinking about what you want to get, and maybe making plans to get a particular model. Well, here’s what we’ve got as far as stock goes, the Iyashi apparently came in this last weekend, and so now that chair is shipping.
[SCREEN TEXT: Infinity Iyashi in Stock!!]
Alan: That’s been a popular chair, that Iyashi has been, and I really like that chair. I’ve mentioned that, I love the rollers down in the buttock and the back and the thighs, fantastic, I’m very excited about it, but that chair should be here now. Nothing else that I’m aware of from Infinite Therapeutics is out of stock. The Sogno ‘Black’ leather was back-ordered until September 12th, but now it’s back-ordered until October 6th, so for some reason the Sogno ‘Black’ leather is a hot item. I might also mention I to talked to Cliff Levin at Inada USA this past week, and he says that the Sogno sales are incredible this year, and that always boggles my mind because it’s the most expensive chair in the market. It is an iconic chair, it’s been around for five years now, and it’s very well established. It’s got a very low failure rate because they’ve been able to tweak it and tune it up and make it better over the last five years. That chair continues to amaze, and it’s still selling like crazy, and I still have – it’s my most visited page on my website, after my home page, and my comparison chart page – but that Inada Sogno is a special, special chair, and that’s continually borne out in their continued big sales. So anyway, congratulations to Inada on a winner, and doing very well with that chair. Also, Osaki is back-ordered on their 7075R ‘Brown’ for about five weeks, and they’re low on stock on the ‘Creme’ 7200H and the ‘Brown’ 4000, so those are low on stock. So, when you order it – if you order those two models, they may not be around, they may have gone out of stock until the next shipment – but give me a call ahead of time, or place the order and get in the queue for that chair, so that you don’t miss out on it when it does come in. That is it for stock, I believe everyone else is pretty decent with stock.
[SCREEN TEXT: New Massage Chair Models!]
Alan: Now, let’s get in to the meat of the information, the Osaki, and I mentioned – it’s funny how I mentioned this a few weeks back, or actually maybe a month or two back how this is – we’re coming in to the season where the companies are starting to come out with new models of chairs to get ready for that fourth quarter.
[SCREEN TEXT: Lots of New Osaki Models!]
Alan: Of course, we’ve seen Infinite Therapeutics come out with their new Iyashi chair. We saw Osaki come out with the modified 3000, called the Chiro, which has a 36-inch roller track, which is about five or six inches longer than most typical massage chairs. Then, all of a sudden, they came out with the 7200CR, which was the 7200H with foot rollers.
[SCREEN TEXT: What the Heck is 3D Massage???]
Alan: Now, they’ve come out with the OS-3D Pro Dreamer, which is the 7200CR with 3D massage. Again, to reiterate, 3D massage is nothing more, if you understand – rollers all go up and down and side to side – they go up and down in the y-axis, side to side in the x-axis, and the z-axis is forward and back. Inada came out with 3D, z-axis roller movement, with the Inada Sogno. So, now the rollers can move forward while they’re going up and down and front to back – or up and down and side to side – and now they can go forward and back, That is the 3D, the third dimension – the x- and y-axes are two of the dimensions, z is the third dimension – and all that means, it sounds very fancy, but all it means is that the rollers can go forward and back, and you can adjust that from your remote control, which means you can adjust the intensity to push your chest out more or let your chest retract a bit, that is what 3D is. Well, Osaki and Infinite Therapeutics didn’t have any 3D massage until this Osaki OS-Pro Dreamer came out, which was taking the 7200CR, which was the 7200H with foot rollers, and now adding a 3D component. So, that chair the OS-Pro Dreamer has all of that.
[SCREEN TEXT: Osaki OS-2000 Combo]
Alan: Well, they’ve come out with a couple other models now. The new OS-2000, it’s called the 2000 Combo, and this chair has, it’s got a 31-inch track – it’s a lower price chair, it’s under $2000, I believe it’s $1999 and we’re allowed an instant discount of $200, so it brings it down to $1799, it’s a nice looking chair, a very basic-looking chair – it has a 31-inch track, and it has kinda really cool, really cool colors. One is kind of like the Iyashi, where it’s ‘Ivory’ on the outside and ‘Red’ on the inside, other ones are ‘Brown’ on the outside, ‘Creme’ on the inside, ‘Brown on the outside, and ‘Cognac’ on the inside, so they’re a really two-tone color. They’re kind of neat looking, but a very simple chair, under $2000, a 31-inch roller track, which is great, and it sounds like a good bang for the buck. Also, they came out just this last week with the Pro Marquis and the Pro Intelligent, so they’ve added to the Pro family. They started with the OS 3D-Pro Dreamer, now they’ve got the Pro Marquis, and this is what I’ve picked up from this chair – and by the way, these chairs are not on our site yet, we’re just in the process of getting them up on our site – but I thought I’d tell you about them ahead of time. Call me if you have any more questions, I’ve got the data about it, we just haven’t put it up on the website.
[SCREEN TEXT: Osaki OS-Pro Marquis]
Alan: The Pro Marquis, it looks like, the body is very reminiscent of the 7075. It has the same kind of body styling, body shape, it also has a remote control built in to the armrest. Hopefully, it doesn’t have the problems that the 7075 has, and I suspect it’s coming from the same plant in China, and hopefully it does not have the same problems that the 7075 has. You know, I sell over 40 models and I haven’t had more trouble than I have had with this 7075. It seems to have a lot of problems with it, and a few of my customers have switched over to the 7200CR and other models because they’ve been unhappy with the 7075 because of all the troubles with it. So, I don’t know what’s going on with the plant over there, if it was just a container load that was bad, or if there’s something wacky with the internal guts and the parts. Anyway, hopefully the Pro Marquis is an improvement on that. Here are some other features about the Pro Marquis – it has a sliding feature like the Iyashi, where you can put the chair close to the wall and it’ll slide forward when you turn it on, and then it reclines, so it doesn’t hit the wall. It has a portable heating pad, and it’s a little portable heating pad you can put on your chest, on your legs, on your legs, on your shoulders or neck, whatever, but it’s portable and it is a heating pad that basically moves around, and you can use it while the chair’s working. This one also has mechanical foot rollers, it has – it talks about its high-quality music speakers, so it has a really high acoustic sound quality with the speakers – and that chair, after the discount, is $3495. So, it’s regularly $4195, they’re offering a $700 discount, which brings it down to $3495, so about the same price as the 7200H.
[SCREEN TEXT: Osaki Phasing Out the OS-7200H]
Alan: By the way, the 7200H, now that they’ve come out with the 7200CR and the OS-Pro Dreamer, which are simply iterations of that 7200H, they are going to be phasing out the 7200H. It makes sense to me, even though it’s a lower price chair, and if you don’t care about foot rollers and 3D, it’s a great chair. I’ve got it in my showroom, I actually just sold my floor model, but it’s a great chair, and not made in the same plant as the 7075, but obviously, it has a whole different and different feel, but they’re going to be phasing out the 7200H, FYI.
[SCREEN TEXT: Osaki OS-Pro Intelligent]
Alan: Then, they have the Pro Intelligent, which is a chair that kind of looks like a regular chair, a regular recliner – but it’s got an ottoman that retracts and comes out, or comes out, extends, and then it’s got a foot and calf massage, with foot rollers and calf rollers, which is kind of fascinating, we haven’t seen that yet – so mechanical foot rollers and calf rollers. Also, the armrests kind of pop up, it’s like something out of a ‘Star Trek’ movie. You can push a button, and bloop, up pops these armrests, and then you can slide your arms inside the arm massagers, and it massages you. When it’s done, the armrests go back in to the chair, it looks like a faux wood armrest cover, that’s all it looks like. So, they’ve really hidden the massage chair, you know, look, which a lot of people don’t like. You know, they love massage chairs, but they don’t like the way it looks because it doesn’t look like a regular recliner, and it just kind of sticks out like a sore thumb. I heard one guy make an interesting comment, he said ‘You can either look at a massage chair as a sore thumb that sticking out of your regular decorum, or you can look at it as the centerpiece of your decorum, which is where everybody will want to go and sit.’ So, I guess that’s a glass half empty / half full viewpoint, but I kind of like that because I’m really a positive guy by nature so I thought to myself ‘Yeah, well, we can look at it as a beautiful centerpiece for the room.’ Anyway, again it’s got the foot and calf rollers, it’s got the hideaway hands and feet, it’s got 3D rollers, so it’s got the 3D roller function. I don’t know if the Marquis has that, I didn’t see that mentioned in the feature list, and that chair is, let’s see, it’s $5795 with $1000 instant savings, so it brings it down to $4795.
[SCREEN TEXT: Chinese-Made Chairs Going Up in Price?!]
Alan: So, it’s interesting to see that the Chinese chairs are starting to get more expensive as they add these feature sets. We’ve always had, you know, the $2000 – $3000, $3000 – $4000 price range for the Chinese chairs, then you’ve got the, you know, $5000 – $8000 price range on the Japanese-made chairs. Now, these other Chinese chairs – like the Iyashi, like the Pro Dreamer, like the Marquis, and the Intelligent – they’re all kind of migrating toward this void that was there before, which is the $4000 – $5000 price point, and so we’re seeing more chairs in that price point. So, I’ll be interested to see how these things sell, I haven’t sold any of them outright. Well, I’ve sold quite a few Iyashi, but I haven’t sold any of the Osaki chairs. I’ll be curious to see how that plays over the months ahead, especially as we get close to Christmas. That’ll be a really good test of the validity, if you will, of this price point, of these chairs and this price point. So, that’s what’s going on with the new models, so lots of exciting stuff. Osaki is just busy as all get out – getting these chairs ready – getting these models ready for the Christmas holidays.
[SCREEN TEXT: iRobotics 6 – An Upgrade!]
Alan: Also, I think I mentioned this last time, but Luraco has come out with the new 6S, so what they’ve basically done is taken their iRobotics 6 and upgraded it with a few features like ‘Voice Response’ that’s not just English, they have English, Spanish, French, and Vietnamese. It has Bluetooth technology with an app that will, you can manage the function of your chair and your music system from the app. I believe it has more sophisticated programming for the chair, particularly in the foot area, and they can change all that programming right there at their office and plant in Dallas, Texas.
[SCREEN TEXT: Special Price of iRobotics 6S – $5990]
Alan: That’s the new 6S, and what they had done, and I had mentioned this in my videos, they had gone from $4990 on the iRobotics 6, up to $7990 on July 1st, so they jacked the price up by $3000. Well, I had a feeling at the time, and I voiced my displeasure with that price jump on this video, but I had a feeling that the sales would drop considerably because it’s not on par with the Inada Sogno. Even though it’s an American – half of it’s made in America, and the chair is fully assembled in America, I didn’t know, I didn’t feel that that justified a price jump that huge to match the Sogno price, when the chairs were – even though the Luraco is a Sogno look-alike, and it does have some features that are kind of mimicking the Sogno, it’s not the Sogno. So, I was very happy to see that they announced that they’re offering a special on the chair for $5990. So, again, we’re in to that lowering the price, it’s not a Chinese chair, it’s not a Japanese chair, it’s an American chair, so it’s kind getting that – it’s looks like it’s in that $5000 – $6000 price range – and of course, these companies can charge whatever they want for a chair.
[SCREEN TEXT: The Market Will Ultimate Determine Chair Pricing!]
Alan: The market will bear the pricing, so if the chair is too expensive, the market will not buy it. If the chair is too cheap, and it’s a good price but it’s a cheap chair, the market will not buy it. If it’s a good chair at a good price, the market will buy it. I will tell you, the market, the public, you, are not afraid to spend money if it’s a good product, case in point, the Inada Sogno, very popular chair, it’s always been our top-selling chair. The IT-8500 has become, over the last couple months, more popular than Sogno during these last couple months, but the Sogno is a chair that’s $8000, but it just sells like firecrackers. On the other hand, the IT-8500, which is a $3695 chair, is selling like crazy too. So, it can be different price points, but if the chair is quality and the companies that sell the chairs, or that import the chairs, or manufacture the chairs offer good customer support, which I think is so important – you can get a great looking chair with cool features, and a drop dead cool warranty, but if you’re not getting customer support, or you’re getting voicemails, or you’re getting the run around – it doesn’t matter. People love good service, they love good customer service, whether it’s from me as a retailer, or from the importer of the chairs, the manufacturer of the chairs, as the distributor of the chairs, and if you’ve got those things – a good quality chair and good customer support – you can sell these chairs. You can see from those two ends of the spectrum, both of those chairs are very, very well-sold chairs, and they’re both good chairs with good companies backing them up.
[SCREEN TEXT: www.massage-chair-relief.com/blog/]
Alan: OK, enough of that. Now, just quickly, I’ll go over my – I’ve written a few blog posts since my last massage chair industry update, and one that was a good one, it turned in to – it actually began as a question on my blog from a guy named Jeff Payne, who was reading an article, reading something, I think he was maybe reading the transcripts from one of these videos, and he asked – he’d been looking at massage chairs, and he was looking at the Iyashi, which a lot of people are looking at right now, and he was comparing it to a chair called the Ultimate Massage Chair, which is kind of a, and I don’t mean to insult anybody involved with that chair, but it’s more of a no-name kind of chair.
[SCREEN TEXT: Infinity Iyashi vs. ‘Ultimate’ Massage Chair]
Alan: It’s kind of sold by a single guy, you know, one guy, and not really a big distribution channel, I think he sells them on eBay, and has a website. But the name Ultimate Massage Chair connotes the ultimate chair, and this guy wanted me to review them. So, what ended up being a blog post response, or a blog comment response ended up being this 1500-word article that I wrote, comparing the two chairs. So, go in to my blog and take a look at it, it’s the ‘Infinity Iyashi vs. Ultimate Massage Chair,’ and I don’t trash anybody, or any chair, but I do try to be objective in comparing feature set for feature set and a couple of other things to consider. So, take a look at that article if that interests you. If, for nothing else, it’ll give you good feedback on the Iyashi chair, and what’s cool about the Iyashi chair – and if you’re interested in the Ultimate Massage Chair, the guy that owns the Ultimate Massage Chair can thank me for giving him some press about his chair, but I don’t feel that company’s in the same league as Infinite Therapeutics, or Inada, or Panasonic, or Human Touch, et cetera.
[SCREEN TEXT: Mail Bag]
Alan: I also, and I’ll tell you what, some of my best sources of content are emails or phone calls from my customers, and so when I get good emails, or emails with good content that I answer, I usually take those emails and put them in what I call a ‘Mail Bag‘ on my blog. So, I’ve written a few lately, a couple of Mail Bags over the last couple of weeks, and some good questions, like on one of them, someone asked me about the IT-8500 versus the Panasonic 30007. I’d never thought of comparing those two chairs, but they wanted to know what the difference was in the upper back area, in the neck and upper back area, and so I wrote about that. Someone else moved around on a walker, you know, like a walker, and they wanted to know what chair would be easy to get in to with a walker – or how to get in to a massage chair with a walker – so we talked about that. So, anyway, there’s questions like that all the time, and I love those questions, and they’re probably questions that other people are asking that I just don’t think about, so I put them in to the Mail Bag, so check my blog out for the Mail Bag. Finally, I wrote an article that – you know that I was thinking about all these massage chairs, if you remember, a month or so ago I asked people ‘Hey, what would you put in your ultimate massage chair?’ – not knowing that I was going to be writing an article about a chair called the Ultimate Massage Chair.
[SCREEN TEXT: What Makes Each Chair Unique?]
Alan: Anyway, so what would be in your ultimate massage chair, and I got to thinking through that article, what are all the cool features of all the chairs that we carry. So, what makes each chair unique – like the Inada Sogno has these features that are unique, the Infinity Iyashi has the 49-inch roller track, the Osaki 7075 has a headband, the Inada YuMe has the Thera-Eliptical-Kneading of the calves, the IT-8500 has foot rollers – so anyway, I got to thinking about all these cool features that these chairs have, and I wrote an article about it listing these features, so it’ll give you kind of a feeling for what’s unique about each of these chairs.
[SCREEN TEXT: Spread the Word on Your Social Media!]
Alan: Anyway, I guess that’s about it, so I hope this information was informative to you, this went on a little bit longer than I thought it would, I hope you found it informative. If you did, feel free to ‘Like’ us or share us, or subscribe to our YouTube channel to be updated with subsequent videos. You know, ‘+1’ us on Google Plus or ‘Like’ us and share us on Facebook and Twitter, but we appreciate you helping us spread the word about massage chairs. It’s becoming an increasingly important part of Americans’ health psyche and we like to see that. Massage has always been a big part of it, but now massage chairs are becoming the convenient therapy of choice for home care. So anyway, thanks for spreading the word and I look forward to talking to you in a couple weeks again. I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com.’ Have a fantastic day and thanks for visiting today. Bye bye.
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