Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – August 19, 2019”
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Alan: Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com‘ and today is our biweekly massage chair industry update for Monday, August 19th, 2019, and we have a few good things to go over with you this week.
[SCREEN TEXT: Luraco iRobotics 7 + and DreamWave M.8 Chairs are Now Back in Stock – All Colors]
Alan: I will start, first of all, by mentioning to you that the Luracos, all the Luraco iRobotics 7s, and the DreamWave colors are all, DreamWave M.8 are all in stock now. Those were on back-order for quite a while, as a matter of fact, more than a month, but they’re all back in stock. So, if you want to get one of those chairs, order them soon, you know, before the next back-order status turns to red alert.
[SCREEN TEXT: Good Pre-Owned Models Available]
Alan: But anyway, and we do have some good pre-owned chairs right now on our pre-owned directory, we’ve had a couple of returns. One is an Infinity Smart Chair x3, it’s regularly $6299, we have it on sale for $4799. It’s only one month old, it was a local customer in Southern California that it just didn’t fit him right. It’s a very popular chair that we sell. It’s part of the family of the old IT-8500 and the old 8500×3. The Smart Chair x3 is the upgraded version of those, and it’s a very nice chair, great stretch program, good firm overall 3D-roller system, good foot massage, just a great chair, a very popular chair. The 8500 family has been popular for, ever since we started carrying it back, I think, in ’09 or ’10, something like that, but very, very good chair. And the other one is an Infinity Overture, which is one of our top-of-the-line chairs, it’s regularly $8999, and we have it on sale for $6999, and it’s the champagne exterior with the brown interior. We have that one in our showroom, in both of our showrooms, it’s a very, very handsome chair, but the Infinity Overture is the top-of-the-line Infinity chair. It’s got calf rollers, calf airbags that knead your calves, foot rollers, it’s got a voice-response system, it has a wireless remote control. Anyway, it’s got all the bells and whistles, air ionizer, and whatnot, USB port charger. Anyway, so we’ve got that one on sale for $6999, and I believe we have a Luraco, I think it’s a, I think we have a cream-colored Luraco coming back also. So, anyway, that one will be going for $6990, this is a Luraco iRobotics 7 Plus, so that’ll be $6990, $6990, so that’s a $2000 discount, and that chair is about, I think it’s two months old.
[SCREEN TEXT: New Massage Chair Relief Store – Mesa, Arizona]
Alan: Alright, we have officially signed the lease for our new store in Arizona. This’ll be in Mesa; this is our first time in Arizona. As you know, or may not know, we have a chair here in Utah, and a chair in Southern California – or not chair – we have a store here in Utah, and a store in Southern California, and this is our Arizona store, and it’ll be in Mesa, on the corner of, on a strip mall, on the corner of Dobson and Baseline, and we’re very excited about it. Right now, they’re, so far, they’ve built the walls, and they’re taping today. We’ll be, we need to pick out the, you know, colors, and the flooring, and all that stuff in the next couple of weeks.
[SCREEN TEXT: Wanted: 2 Massage Chair Sales Consultants for New Arizona Store]
Alan: We’re also hiring people in the next few weeks, so if you know of anybody in the Arizona area who would like to work, we’re going to be hiring two part-time positions anywhere from 20 to I’d say, anywhere from 24 to 25 hours a week, and it’s just being a massage chair sales consultant, and it’s not, it’s a very, it’s a very stress-less job, a very enjoyable job. Most of the people that come in are, of course, are interested in chairs and they’re there for the purpose of shopping for chairs. So, we basically need people who are decent enough at educating about the chairs, not afraid to learn about all the different chairs we have in the showroom.
[SCREEN TEXT: 801-651-2026]
Alan: But anyway, if you know of anybody that is interested in working in the showroom, please have them give me a call at 888, actually, 801-651-2026, that’s 801-651-2026, that’s my cell number, and they can reach me, or text me at that number any time. Let’s, what else have we got cooking?
[SCREEN TEXT: My Visit to the Make-A-Wish Foundation Headquarters]
Alan: Oh, and while I was in Arizona, I was in Arizona last week, or a week and a half ago doing, signing the lease, and while I was there, I took the time to visit the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and as you know, or I hope you know, that I’m a big supporter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. This business has been involved with the Make-A-Wish Foundation since before I started it because I did it when I was a chiropractor. We did fundraisers in my chiropractic practice before I started the massage chair business, and we’ve been affiliated with them so far for all these years. We’ve donated, I think, $60,000, around $60,000 to them, and a portion of every sale that we make, I donate a portion of that money to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Anyway, as you’ve probably seen on my blog posts, or on my Instagram, or whatever, Mark Simonson, who is my liaison there, he comes by and visits me and gives me updates on what’s going on with Make-A-Wish. When I reach certain thresholds of donation, I receive little gifts, and they’re just wonderful gifts, and brings me books written by – as a matter of fact, they just gave me a new book when I was there – this is a book written by a Wish child named Jamie Heath, and it’s a beautiful book with his own, I think it’s, no, it’s a girl, a girl, with Jamie, you don’t know if it’s a girl or a guy. But anyway, it’s a young girl who wrote this book with all the text and the pictures, but anyway, I’m kind of going off on a tangent here. But anyway, I went and visited the Make-A-Wish Foundation and got to meet the CEO of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Richard Davis, very nice man, took time to visit with me. They’re in a beautiful four-story building in Phoenix, and it’s a new facility for them, and I learned a lot about the Make-A-Wish Foundation. I learned about, you know, like the WWE is the single largest donator to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which I had no idea about. They’ve granted, I think they said, over 600 wishes to Wish kids that want to see their, you know, their wrestling superstar heroes, or be involved in a WWE event. It was pretty cool. There’s a Michael Jordan room there that Michael Jordan paid for the buildout of that room, the equipment in the room, it’s a conference room, all the electronics for that room, he’s a big supporter also, as are Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith. It was just cool to see all the people that are a part, that are a part of supporting the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and they gave me a tour of the place. It was just awesome, and I learned about the very first Wish child, a boy named Chris Gracious, who had leukemia and he was, he turned out to be the, his wish was to become a police officer in Phoenix, and so the mother, his mother got a hold of the local police department, and they made him an honorary police officer, and just a couple days, I think it was two days later, or four days later, he passed away after that wish was granted to him. And so, after that, they decided ‘Hey, maybe this is a good idea to involve other children who have life-threatening illnesses.’ They’re not terminal illnesses, of course, some don’t live beyond their, you know, very much beyond their wishes, but many of them live long and healthy lives, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation is, I feel, in granting wishes is a big part of the longevity of these kids because, based on my experience with wish kids, it really changes the demeanor and disposition of the child. We had an amazing, our very first experience was we sponsored a particular child here in Utah – and the child, I can’t even remember the details, so I won’t go in to it – but the child was pretty much nonresponsive, in a wheelchair, not able to do much, but the mother, after the wish was granted, we don’t know who the wish child is, we just know their first name, but the mother wanted to come and meet us at our clinic, at my chiropractic clinic, and they brought they daughter along with them, and the daughter was very lively, was playing with my staff, and you know, kind of poking everybody at the office, and playfully, was just playfully interacting with everybody in our staff. And they said that that happened after she had her wish granted, which I think it was Disneyland, and it completely changed the child, and that was extremely moving for me, and I’ve been an advocate ever since. So, anyway, where was I going with this? I don’t know, but anyway, I visited the Make-A-Wish Foundation in Arizona, their main headquarters, international headquarters, and it an awesome experience, fantastic experience, and if you are interested to donate to my Make-A-Wish page, you can find it pretty much anywhere on my website, on any product page, I believe I have it on the homepage if you scroll down a little bit, there’s a place there where you can donate if you’d like to, or if you just want to go see our page, and see, you know, kind of follow us as we raise more money, please, you know, feel free to do so. Anyway, oh by the way, in the Arizona store, we hope to open in September. My schedule is crazy, but we’re hoping to open in the middle to end of, the last couple of weeks of September.
[SCREEN TEXT: International Massage Chair Orders – What You Need to Know]
Alan: Anyway, OK, a couple of things I just wanted to kind of make you aware of. International orders, now this is something I used to advertise on my site, but I decided to take down the page. We still do international orders, but I don’t promote it as much because of the risks involved, and when I talk about international, I usually, I typically mean outside of North America, but we’ve shipped chairs all around the world over the years that I’ve been in this business, and here is the risk of shipping chairs overseas. So, if you’re an overseas customer, and you’re thinking about getting a massage chair, you need to be aware of a couple of things. Number one is, the warranty is not going to be, the warranty will be void once it leaves US soil. Now, most of the massage chair companies will send you the parts. They’ll, well, I should say they’ll provide you the parts, and they’ll send them to you at your expense, so if you need parts for your chair, they will provide the parts to you, but you’ll have to pay for the shipping and handling of that part. Also, and they, and most of the companies are pretty good about that, they’ll honor the parts warranty for the length of their warranty here in the US, their parts warranty here in the US. You will not get labor included on anything, and also, there’s risk of, you know, the chairs being damaged on route. Most of the chairs ship by ocean freight, some of them by air freight, but you know, there’s always a risk of something happening to the chairs. We, of course, insure the chairs, so if something happens to the chairs, you know, we’re, we don’t lose out, and you can still eventually get a chair, but I just want you to know that there are risks involved with it, and of course, there’s conversion issues, from 110 to 220, you want to make sure you get a really good conversion, or transformer, converter. And then also, the other risk, and it’s not so much a risk as it is a main pain in the rumpus, is you’re going to have to deal with the customs and duty officials when the chair gets to your country. Now, usually that’s not too much trouble. You’ll have to pay the duty, or any customs or duty fees that are accessed by your country, the country of, the destination country, but sometimes there’s, you know, there’s hands that get in the pie that want to get money for this, that, or the other, and so we shipped a chair to, I think, it was Kuwait, and oh my goodness, the runaround they gave him, and they kept asking the customer for more money for this, more money for that. And so, just make sure that you understand the protocols for importing something out of the country, from the United States anyway, in to your country, just be very, very much aware of that, and I would say that we have not had a lot of problems with the chairs, they usually get to where they’re supposed to go, but sometimes there’s some damage, or sometimes there’s something that goes wrong with the chair, or they get the chair, and there’s a big dent in one of the boxes, and part of the chair is damaged, and that becomes a real bother. That is a real nuisance because number one, the parts, we’ve got to get the parts replaced, and it might take a month to get the parts to you. There’s, usually, and if it’s done, if there’s damage from shipping, the company doesn’t pay for that, I mean the massage chair company doesn’t pay for that replaced part. You are responsible for that, but we have insurance so that usually will cover that, but then to get replaced, you know, filing a claim with a, filing a claim with a, an insurance claim with a shipping company is kind of like, you know, I don’t know, what would be an analogy of something that, you know, you rarely get, you rarely get. So, I have three outstanding shipping claims from April of 2018 that still haven’t, you know, beginning as far back as April 2018, I still haven’t got them, haven’t been reimbursed. So, anyway, there’s risks with the overseas shipping, so just be aware of that. Shipping to Canada is a little bit easier, but you don’t want to step on any toes because there’s distributors in Canada, and if there’s a distributor, let’s say for a Human Touch chair, or an Inada chair, or a DreamWave chair, then you shipping, and you’re ordering a chair from us, we will not, we will not ship a chair if there is a distributor in Canada because we’re advised against it, and we don’t want to create issues between the two, the distributors of the two countries. So, but there will be still customs and duty, for the most part, you have to get a freight forwarder, which we help you with, but also, warranty issues can be, or warranty problems can be an issue as well in Canada. I’m from Canada, I know how sparse the populated cities are in Canada, and so if you order, if you’re, if you live in you know, Slave Lake, Alberta, or you know, I don’t know, some obscure town up in the middle of nowhere, you will not get warranty support as far as labor goes, you will still get the parts sent to you, as with most overseas orders, but you will most likely not get labor support. Labor support is primarily in big cities like Toronto, and Vancouver, and Montreal, and things like that. And again, that is dependent on the company that is sending you the chair, and what access they have to techs in that area. So, anyway, just buyer beware if you’re an overseas or international order, or buyer, just know that there’s these risks that accompany an order to another country.
[SCREEN TEXT: 888-259-5380]
Alan: And you know, I think that’s just about it for this week, I was going to talk a little bit about my Lifetime Labor warranty, but I think I’ve taken enough time, and we’ll talk about that next time. But anyway, if you have any questions, feel free to give us a call at 888-259-5380, we’d be happy to answer any questions you might have, and if you’re interested in the Arizona store, and coming to try out chairs there, you know, keep an eye on our blog, and on this industry update every two weeks to see what the latest is on the store. And of course, you can always call and ask me too, I sent you my cell number, I gave you my cell number earlier in this broadcast, and you can call me anytime. If you know of somebody that might be interested to work for us, please have them get ahold of me, and I think that’s about it.
[SCREEN TEXT: Please “Thumbs Up” Like This Video!!]
Alan: I hope you found this video helpful. If you did, 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 with your friends and family on your various and sundry social media platforms, whether it’s Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Google Plus – well, they don’t do Google Plus anymore – or Instagram, or whatnot. Oh, and by the way, if you want to see pictures of the progress of our store, you can go on to our Instagram, the Massage Chair Relief Instagram account, and you can see pictures. I’ve posted some this week of the walls, and the drywalling, but it’s nothing exciting, but at least it shows you the progress. Alright, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and I will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.
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