Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – February 25, 2020”
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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 Tuesday, February 25th, 2020, and not a tremendous amount to go over now. You know, after the holidays, and you know, Black Friday through you know, Christmas and New Year’s, things do slow down somewhat in terms of new models and whatnot. I did go to the Furniture Market, and I think we mentioned it, and the CES in January, and I think we mentioned the new models that have come out of there, including the new Brio Sport, and the Brio Plus. Also, the new OHCO R.6 is out, and let’s see what else we’ve got cooking. I think that’s about it in terms of the newer models, oh, Osaki came out with their Master Drive, or sorry, not their Master Drive, their Maestro LE, which is an upgrade to their old Maestro, which is a very popular chair, but we found that this is a, that we had some issues with it early on, with the squeaking rollers and whatnot, but they have since fixed that and now the LE has all these new upgrades. Well, not a tremendous amount of upgrades, but upgrades that, including a new remote control, and a, not a revised, but an upgraded roller mechanism. So, anyway, those are the new models that are out, but not too much has gone on since then. Of course, there’s always things behind the scenes and we’ll find things out as the year wears on, but it always, when you get close to the holidays, that’s when a lot of the stuff starts coming out as it did last year.
[SCREEN TEXT: Panasonic MAJ7 Purchase Comes with Zcomfort Queen-Size Mattress]
Alan: But anyway, right now, we’ve got the Panasonic MAJ7 has a promotion for the remainder of this month, I believe. So, that’s not too much longer, but when you buy a Panasonic MAJ7, you get a Zcomfort queen mattress from Positive Posture, and so you know, Panasonic is part of the FFL family, the Furniture for Life family, and that includes OHCO, the new D.Core line, the Panasonic USA, and Positive Posture. And so, when you invest, their promotion is when you buy a, the Panasonic MAJ7, you will get a Zcomfort queen mattress for free. So, that’s a good deal, and that’s available until the end of this month.
[SCREEN TEXT: Current Sales Until the End of February]
Alan: Let’s see, also, oh there are, there continues to be some other sales going on. I can’t remember them all. What comes to my mind is the Luraco iRobotics 7 and the Legend Plus both have $700 off until the end of this month, which is this week. And also, the, oh for heaven’s sake, oh, the Osaki First Class is on sale for $4999 until the end of the month, and I believe the Ogawa chairs also have their sales, which are I believe it’s $1000 off the Master Drive AI, it’s oh I can’t even remember, and I’m going to throw out the wrong numbers, I know, but if you want to go on the website, on our website, Massage-Chair-Relief.com, you’ll see the discounts of the Ogawa chairs. But these sales are going on until the end of this month, and so if you want to get a chair, and there’s pretty good deals. These are pretty decent deals, and I think that’s a representation of how much some of the business has slowed down after the Christmas rush, and I think this is a good time, again, also another good time to get a chair.
[SCREEN TEXT: Register All New Cozzia/Ogawa/JPMedics Chairs at www.CozziaUSA.com/Register-Product/]
Alan: OK, now, I also wanted to mention that Cozzia, which is the same company that Ogawa chairs, and the JPMedics Kumo chair, those chairs, that company, and I don’t know, I think they’re called, I can’t remember, there’s three different companies, there’s Cozzia USA, Ogawa World USA, and then JPMedics, but they’re all under the umbrella of the Cozzia/Ogawa family. I believe the factory in China used to be called East Pau in Xhao Ming, China, but I believe they’ve changed the name to Ogawa. So, that is the name, the overwriting name of the factory, and the chairs come directly from that factory. Anyway, I got off on a tangent there. Now they are asking that all customers who buy a new Cozzia, Ogawa, or JPMedics chair, register it, and the website that you register it at is CozziaUSA.com, Cozzia is C-O-Z-Z-I-AUSA.com slash Register hyphen Product, black slash, or slash, so yeah, back slash, CozziaUSA.com/Register-Product/, or is it a slash, forward slash, oh I don’t know, it’s the one that goes this way. But anyway, if you get a new Cozzia, Ogawa, or JPMedics chair from here on out, make sure you register it, and so they can have you on record there.
[SCREEN TEXT: Positive Posture Brio vs. Brio Sport]
Alan: Also, I mentioned that the Brio, the Brio is a chair that we’ve had in our showroom from Positive Posture, or the umbrella company, Furniture for Life for, we’ve had it for a couple of years, it’s a very nice chair, it’s a more gentle chair, the original Brio. It’s perfect for people that don’t want an intense massage, perfect for people that are really sensitive to massage, or older folks, who are, who can’t handle too much beating from the massage rollers, the Brio is a great option for those folks. Well, they’ve upgraded it now to two new models called the Brio Sport and the Brio Plus. The Brio Sport is what we’re going to carry in our showrooms, and the primary difference, I sat on it CES, and you can see the video of their sales rep talking about it with other people in the chairs, but it’s definitely a very much more aggressive massage than the original Brio. So, Brio is a good brand, and the Brio, the original Brio, from what I was told by the staff there that they had a near-zero failure rate, which is very rare in the massage chair industry. So, it’s a very, very well-built chair, I believe from the Kang Tai factory, under the auspices of the Furniture for Life family, headed by Cliff Levin. Anyway, that’s a very, very well-built chair, and the Sport, of course, is a brand-new model, so we don’t have a track record, as much of a track record as the original Brio yet, but I suspect that it still has the same quality build since it’s still made in the same factory. But some of the changes they have now is a 4D-roller mechanism, which definitely digs deeper, and it is a strong massage. So, if you want a gentler massage, you might want to go to something like the Luraco Legend Plus though, that’s the chair that we typically will use in our showroom for someone who needs gentle. The Brio used to be also an option for that, but now that we’re going to be, we have sold those floor models, and we’re going for the Brio Sport now, and the Brio Sport will definitely be more aggressive. I believe the Brio Plus is also more aggressive, but as far as the Brio Sport, which is what we’ll have in our showroom, it has a 4D-roller track, more intense design, I mean, more intense massage. It has, it also has heated rollers, which is something that the original Brio did not have, and I think that those are the primary differences. Oh, I think the calf, hmm, it says here on their literature that the calf is expertly massaged by rear and side mechanical and air massage units. So, I cannot remember when I sat on it if I felt a calf roller, but it says mechanical units, which usually refers to rollers, but you know, we won’t know for sure until we try it, and when we will, of course we’ll let you know, and it also has a USB charge port, which the current, original Brio does not have. So, those are the primary differences between the Brio and the Brio Plus, or the Brio Sport.
[SCREEN TEXT: Coronavirus Implications in the Massage Chair Industry]
Alan: Now, the one last thing I want to talk a little bit about is this Coronavirus. Now, of course it’s on the news everywhere, the stock market reflects the Coronavirus outbreak, and continuing spread of it, and of course, this virus comes from China, and so you know, people in our industry had wondered if this is going to affect production of chairs, not in that it would, you know, Coronavirus would come in on the chair, but because of decreased productivity from the workforce, and as it turns out, the workforces have, you know, they just got over Chinese New Year, which lasts a week or two, and all the production pretty much stops during Chinese New Year, but we’ve noticed that some of the production has slowed up and with one model in particular, the Ogawa Master Drive AI, which is a very popular model, but they are out of stock on the Graphite and the Burgundy, and we were told originally that the stock would be here by March 15th. Well, now we’re being told it could be as late as May 7th, and this is a direct result of the Coronavirus, and again, not because of the chairs, they don’t want to send chairs with Coronavirus, or send the Coronavirus with the massage chairs, but it’s because the workers are, there’s a tremendous fear in China about contracting the Coronavirus, so work productivity has decreased. I understand that work schedules have decreased, and so they’re just now putting out as much production as they had in the past, and we’re seeing this now with the Master Drive AI. It’ll be interesting to see if we see that with other chairs, even though there’s chairs that are made in Japan, or quote, unquote, made in Japan, their components are made in China. So, it’ll be interesting to see how even the made in Japan chairs are affected. The one chairs I would see not being affected would be the Luraco chairs, because their chairs are American, and Taiwanese made. Now, I don’t know if the island of Taiwan has, you know, Coronavirus outbreaks, like the mainland China does, I don’t know, but we’ve not heard of anything about that from Taiwan. But anyway, just a little heads up for those of you that are interested in buying chairs. You may want to, you may want to, or may brace yourself for a decrease in inventory amongst the different massage chair companies, depending on how much inventory they have in stock here already. And so anyway, and speaking of that Ogawa Master Drive, you know, we only have the Blue and Sand in stock, Blue/Sand color, it’s a Blue exterior, but beautiful, we have it in our showrooms, very, very pretty color, and then a Sand, light brown-colored interior, but we also have, we do have a pre-owned one. I think it is the Graphite one that we have available. So, there still is a market for pre-owned chairs out there, because they are here already in the States, and they’ve just been returned to us, or they’re floor models, or whatnot. So, anyway, just so that you know the Coronavirus does affect Chinese production. We will see how it affects inventories and shipments to the US over the next number of months. I know they’re working frantically, I just read an article this morning that one of the pharmaceutical companies have come up with a vaccine test for the disease, well, how does it, national something disease control. And so, they’re going to be testing that, but they say that even if it is, and they rush it through, it’ll still be at least a year. So, it’s an, this Coronavirus is an interesting development. It does affect Chinese products, because it does affect the Chinese workforce, and the Chinese productivity level. So, anyway, interest current event that is affecting us directly, or has, or is affecting us directly, and probably will affect us even more as time goes on, unless of course, they get an answer. Oh, I heard also that there is a medication that seems to be treating the Coronavirus quite well. I can’t remember what it is, but Resmedivere, or something like that, I just read about that this morning as well. But anyway, that’s pretty much it for our update for Massage-Chair-Relief.com. Of course, I’ll probably remember something I forgot to mention and write down as soon as I say goodbye.
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Alan: But if you do have any questions, feel free to give us a call at 888-259-5380, we’d be happy to answer any questions for you. Our new website should be up, it’ll hopefully be up in March. I’m pretty sure it will be up in March. We’re still tweaking it on a regular basis, but I’m quite excited about it. It’s a real departure from what we’ve been doing in the past, and our emphasis is not going to be on, you know, sales and deals, our emphasis is going to be on education, and so I’m quite excited about the new design. It’s a more simple, a more simple, bright design theme, but with still the same tools that we have on the current site, but just deployed a little bit differently, and so I hope you will find it interesting, and especially helpful in your search for a massage chair. But anyway, that will come out, hopefully in March, like I say, we’re still working on things. There’s so much work that goes in to a site redesign. I mean, converting all the pages, and we have thousands of pages. I think they told me that we have over 4000 pages that need to be converted to new pages. We have, you know, shopping carts for each of our different stores. We have, of course, our My Chair Finder software, the massage chair comparison chart, we have just a lot of things that need to be converted over, and so it’s no small task. I think we’ve been at it for, now for, September, October, November, December, January, five months, yeah, almost six months. So, anyway, but we’re excited to have it going, and we’re taking our time to make sure we get 99% of it right. Of course, we’ll find out some things after we open the, until the, you know, after we deploy the site, or you know, launch it. So, there will be some things that’ll need to be changed, I’m sure. But anyway, we’re very excited about it, and we’ll keep you posted on that on subsequent massage chair industry updates.
[SCREEN TEXT: Please “Thumbs Up” Like This Video!!]
Alan: Well, if you found the video helpful, please feel free to thumbs up ‘Like’ us on our YouTube channel, and of course, as always, help us spread the word about massage chairs by sharing this video with any of your friends and family through your current social media platforms, you know, whether it’s, and they change all the time, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, whatnot. There’s tons of them out there, but we appreciate you helping us spread the word. I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from Massage-Chair-Relief, and I will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.
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