Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – August 14, 2018”
Alan: Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com’ and today is our biweekly massage chair industry update for Tuesday, August 14th, 2018. Things are getting a little busy now in the industry. We’re seeing some changes, or some things happening that are going to help encourage sales of massage chairs, of course, and a couple of other items of information that I think you’ll need to know about, and that you’ll want to know about.
Alan: First of all, Elite Massage Chairs has apparently shut down, and I’ve tried calling the phone number that they have listed, and tried contacting our fellow there who is our contact there, and there has been no response. The phones have been disconnected apparently. So, Elite Massage Chairs, who is also the US distributor for Casada massage chairs, a German company that have their chairs made in China, they are now shut down. So, the company that does the RoboPad and the AlphaSonic chairs, that company apparently has been shut down from sources close to me, and also from my own attempt to contact them. So, just so you know, and of course, what effect that has on you, it depends on where you’re at, so if you have a chair that needs servicing, that might be a problem. If you are, want to try to sell a chair, an Elite chair, or an AlphaSonic, or a Casada chair, that might be a problem too, because you know, there’s not going to be any support for that chair either, if you sell it. But just so that you know, and you’re interested in Elite chairs, or if you’re interested in shopping, and you see that on Google, or in any of your searches for massage chairs, be aware of that.
Alan: I wrote a couple of blog articles over the last couple of weeks. I wrote ‘The Novo XT Versus the Novo XT2,’ and as I mentioned before, the Novo XT is being discontinued. We have sold our floor model, or we’re selling our floor models, two ‘Dark Gray’ Novo XTs in perfect condition, great shape, still have the warranty. The XT and the XT2 are, there’s not a tremendous amount of difference between them, except price and a few features, but they’re essentially, the functionality’s essentially the same.
Alan: So, if you want to read the differences between the XT and the XT2, go ahead to my blog, visit my blog or my article library, and you’ll see my article article about that.
Alan: And then last week I wrote a review, it’s about 3000 words, I probably need to do a condensed version, but I did a fairly thorough – or not a fairly – a very thorough review of the Osaki Maestro, which is a new chair from Osaki. It’s been fairly popular. I talk about the pros and cons of the chair in that article, but take a look at that. It’ll go in to some detail, especially about the remote control. I found that that chair was not a very intuitive-functioning chair. In other words, the remote control was not really clear, or completely clear, and the owner’s manual did not augment it very much. So, you’re kind of left to try to figure out what things are, and what things mean, and how to get certain things done. So, and but that chair, and also, in the literature, it mentions that the Maestro has heated rollers, and we had mentioned earlier that the literature had said – or some people had thought that the chair had calf rollers – which it doesn’t have, and it does not have heated rollers, it has just heat in the low back. So, take a look at that article, it’s fairly long, I’m going to do a condensed version so that, for those of us that are, tend to attention deficit disorder, which I think I probably do, you don’t have to read quite as much to get the main points of the review.
Alan: I thought I’d also mention that, you know, we do all of our financing through Synchrony Bank, and we have anywhere from 6 months up to 48 months financing options, 0% interest or deferred interest, but Synchrony Bank is throwing out a 60-month financing option, for a test, between September 21st and September 29th. So, if you buy a chair, and you want 60-month financing, that’s 5 years, you can try it from September 21st to the 29th. They’re giving us a special promotion where we can offer that without it breaking the bank for us, because they charge us a processing fee. So, like for example, on 48-month financing, they charge us over 17% of the purchase amount toward their processing fee. They get paid for allowing us the privilege of doing business with them, and so that’s expensive. And so, they’re giving us a promotion for the 60 month, which is invariably going to be more than that probably, it’s probably going to be over, probably over 20%, and a lot of merchants aren’t going to go for that. But they’re giving us a promotional merchant processing fee, and so from the 21st to the 29th of September if you want to try 60-month financing, go for it. I’ve always heard people say ‘My goodness, for the price of this chair, you can get a small car,’ well, now you can get the same financing as a small car.
Alan: I had mentioned earlier that we had the Novo XT floor models available on our pre-owned directory on our website. These are our floor models that are in great shape, both our Utah and California showrooms, but we also have some other – we’re selling also our Luraco iRobotics 7 floor models – and these chairs have also been taken good care of. All the chairs that come out of our showrooms are in good shape, and they’ve been taken good care of, you know, we’re pretty anal about making sure they get taken care of so that people have a good experience sitting in the chair. It’s not some kind of defective chair that’s going to shed a lousy light on the chair itself. We also have, and by the way, we’re selling the Novo XTs for $4999, we’re selling the iRobotics 7s for $4499, or sorry, for $4990. So, that’s like $4000 off, $3500 off on both of them, we’re also offering, or $3000 off on the XT, $3500 off on the iRobotics 7. We are also offering, we have an Infinity IT-8500X3, which is one of our top-selling chairs, it’s regularly $5995. We have one that’s come back, it’s only about a month-and-a-half old, we’re selling that for $3995, and you may ask, why are you selling them for so cheap, because they’re inventory, and inventory costs me money. I want to get some of my money back out of those chairs, because I’ve had to refund the customers, or I’ve already paid the money to buy the chairs for the showroom, I’d like to get my money – if those chairs just sit there, that’s costing me money, and I don’t know if that’s completely clear, but to someone that has a business, and has inventory, you understand what I’m talking about – and we also have an Ogawa Active L for $1999, and that chair’s usually $2899. So, we have fantastic savings on our pre-owned directory, and they all come with a warranty, a factory warranty, and our Lifetime Labor warranty, free shipping, etcetera, etcetera.
Alan: There’s also, Osaki has their Summit, the Osaki Summit, for $3799, on sale for a limited time.
Alan: And Inada and Positive Posture, which is basically under the umbrella of the same company, which is called Furniture for Life, they are offering a $400 rebate on the Positive Posture Brio. The Positive Posture Brio is a nice chair. It’s a quiet 3D L-track that is not terribly intense, even at its highest settings. This chair is an ideal chair, and a lot of people like it, but it’s ideal for people who are older, who are sensitive to the massage, and don’t want too much. It comes with a great back pad that really attenuates the massage, and you know, doesn’t make it feel so strong to someone that wants it even less intense. And the DreamWave, of course, is the iconic chair that’s been around since, I think, 2009, 2008, but that chair has revolutionized the whole industry, and it is still a very popular chair, and we have, you can get a $450 rebate on that chair. So, you get a $400 rebate for the month of August on the, $400 on the Brio, and $450 on the DreamWave. And I think as far as the news and notes go, that’s about it. I just want to, oh, and we’re also talking with a couple of companies about carrying their chairs. I will keep you posted as I learn more about that. Two companies, in particular, have approached me these last two weeks about carrying their chairs and being a retailer for them, and I will let you know. They’re, one company is a fairly popular company outside of the United States, but they’re trying make their presence felt here in the US, and the other company is a company that is a familiar name, and they’ve been around a while, and they sell a lot of chairs that are reasonably-priced chairs, they’re not excessively expensive. So, they’re kind of like an Osaki-type company, where they have lower-priced chairs and higher-priced chairs, but a good spectrum of options for you, or like Infinity. But anyway, and I don’t know much about their customer support, I’m learning about that, and those are some of the things that we look in to, you know, how good their customer support is, you know, how the pricing is, etcetera, etcetera, but I’ll let you know as I learn more about that. I don’t want to say anything now because it’s still a bit premature.
Alan: And then, I saw on one of the websites, for one of the massage chair companies, they talked about being FDA approved, FDA approved, and I talked about this on another video in quite a bit of detail, and I want you to understand, if you see a site that says ‘This chair is FDA approved,’ that is a bit of an embellishment. They are all FDA registered, but to get FDA approved, you have to go through a particularly long process. Well, maybe not really long, but a long process of getting their chairs approved by the FDA, and there’s three different categories of approval, you know, medications and drugs are like category three, so those are very important. Massage chairs fall under category one, which do not require approval, but most companies, if not all of them, I believe, register their chairs with the FDA. So, when you see a site that says FDA approved, uh, it’s kind of like 4D massage chairs, or chromotherapy. These are the kind of terms that are thrown out there to kind of get you to feel like that you’re getting something special, and you know, I guess those things are special, but you know, tons of chairs have them. 4D is an exaggeration, there is no 4D in our universe, there’s 3D. 4D is the speed, but they call it 4D to make you think you’ve got something. And you know, like I said in another video, we’ll probably hear 5D before we know it, and you’ll probably get, you know, a chair that smells, you know, has a different smell to the leather, they’ll probably call that you know, rhinotherapy, or you know, nose-sensory therapy, who knows what? But anyway, some of these things are just malarkey, if you ask me, and this FDA approved is just a marketing thing, in my humble opinion.
Alan: Anyway, that’s about it for this week. I hope you found this video helpful, interesting. If you have any questions, feel free to give me a call, over here, at 888-259-5380, and I’d be happy to answer any questions for you, or my staff. You can always reach out to us through our chat line, or through Facebook, or any of our social media platforms, or email. I, or someone in my company, is always available to answer you if you have an inquiry.
Alan: If You found this video helpful, please feel free to thumbs up ‘Like’ us on our YouTube channel, and of course, help us spread the word about massage chairs by sharing this video on your social media platforms. I’m Dr. Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and I will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.
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