Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – July 28, 2015”

Alan: Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com’ and today is our biweekly massage chair industry update for today, being Tuesday, July 28th, 2015. Not a lot to cover today, as I mentioned two weeks ago, it’s kind of in the dog days of summer right now, and in the massage chair industry, that’s usually a pretty slow time, as it is right now. So, there’s not a lot of things going on, not a lot of new models coming out, or sales, or anything like that. It’s pretty calm, the calm before the storm, which is the 4th quarter, but anyway, there’s a few things we can chitchat about today.

[SCREEN TEXT: Stock Status]

Alan: As far as stock goes, I’m really not aware of anything that’s back-ordered right now. I think that everything is in pretty good stock. Osaki has so many models, between Osaki, Titan, and Apex, they may be back-ordered on one, but I’m not aware of anything right now that they are back-ordered on.

[SCREEN TEXT: New Osaki Japan Massage Chair]

Alan: Also be aware that Osaki has the new Osaki Japan chair, which was built by Fujiiryoki, which is the oldest massage chair company in the world, they’re out of Japan. After massage chairs were invented, back in 1960, Fujiiryoki was the first company to come along to develop an actual prototype for mass production, and they kind of pioneered the rollers, and then Inada came along, and they introduced airbags, and the development continued from there. So, Fujiiryoki has a chair now, that is sold by Osaki, called the Osaki Japan chair. I think it’s a – there may be a line of them – but right now there’s just one model out, and we should have that on our website this next week.

[SCREEN TEXT: Luraco iRobotics 7 Now Available!!]

Alan: So, anyway, I wrote an article this last week about – oh, the iRobotics 7, I may have mentioned this two weeks ago – but the iRobotics 7 is now out, it’s officially out. We’ve been waiting a long time for the software, for the completion of the software development on that chair, which is all done here in the US, and it’s done. it’s out, it’s ready to be shipped. And I think there’s a tremendous amount of interest in this chair, because it’s a Taiwanese – it’s an American-made chair, with Taiwanese-imported parts, along with American-made electronics – assembled here, quality control tested here, and it’s got the new touchscreen remote. It’s the first time we’ve seen this, where it’s like a cell phone, or a smartphone, where you can touch the remote, and you’ll get your programs chosen by these little app icons. So, it’s pretty cool, I tested it, when I sat on it back, I think, in April or March, when I visited them, and it was a pretty cool chair, I liked it, and I think it’s going to be a big hit. It’s got a 32-inch roller track, so it’ll go down to the tail bone, it’s got zero gravity, it’s got foot rollers, it’s got heat, and it’s got pretty much everything you’d want in a chair, plus the quality, the American-made quality, the Taiwanese-imported parts, and the innovations that the chair has.

[SCREEN TEXT: Apex Ultra Review]

Alan: So, anyway, I wrote a review, a two-part review, on the Ultra, last week. Now, the Apex Ultra is a new model that came out. It originally came out priced at $4395, but due to some competitor issues with the factory, Osaki’s dropped the Apex Ultra price down to $2995, which is a great bang for the buck. Now, the Ultra is a pretty vigorous chair, I mean, it massages you pretty hard. It’s not great for taller bodies. Between the foot rollers and the airbags, it’s pretty intense down there too. It’s almost a little bit too much for some people, and maybe what I – but it’s a great chair for the money – great chair for the money. You’ve got the foot rollers, you’ve got a calf roller on it, you’ve got a zero-gravity feature, airbags all over, shoulder airbags, adjustable shoulder airbag width for broader shouldered people, and narrower people, and it does have a pretty intense roller, the neck massage is pretty intense, good neck massage.

[SCREEN TEXT: Foot Massage Intensity Adjustment Tip!]

Alan: But one point that I want to address here is, a lot of these chairs that have foot rollers, have, people complain that they’re too intense. Now, there’s some chairs where the rollers are very, very mild, like the Osaki Dreamer, the Osaki Cyber, the Osaki 4000T, but on these newer chairs, like the Titan, the Iyashi, the Apex Ultra, these chairs that have the foot rollers, they can be a little intense, and especially that Ultra. And so, if a chair is too intense, you can always shut off the rollers. The rollers always have a shut off button, but then some people say ‘I don’t want to shut the rollers off, it’s just too tight, I want to keep the rollers going, but it’s too tight, it’s too tense.’ Well, the other thing that you can do is decrease the intensity of the airbags in the feet. If you lower the airbag intensity from their default moderate position, or a high position, down to a lower intensity, to the lowest intensity, a lot of times that makes it more bearable. Some people also like to put a little padding underneath the soles of the feet, so that the rollers aren’t quite as intense. Now, the Ultra, and the Titan 8400, have some adjustability to the rollers. You cannot really adjust the intensity, but you can adjust the speed and direction of one, or the other, and so there is some flexibility there, but it’s still intense. And so, putting a pad, like a little – one customer suggested those Dr. Scholl’s foot pads you can get at the store – well, that’s not a bad idea. You can put those in if it’s too intense, you can shut off the rollers, and then, again, you can also decrease the intensity of the airbags, pushing down on the rollers. So, there’s some tips for you, for the foot and calf intensity, that may be a little bit too much with these foot rollers, that’s the way that you can adjust that.

[SCREEN TEXT: S-Track vs. L-track vs. SuperTrac]

Alan: Also, you know, we’ve talked to you about L-tracks and S-tracks. All chairs have S-tracks, that just means that the rollers follow the S-shape of the spine. Well, the L-track means that the rollers go underneath the spine, underneath the seat, so now you have kind of an S-shape, and then an L-component, and that is fantastic. Ogawa came out with their chair called the Active, which they’re calling SuperTrac, which is basically an L-track that – OK, now, all the other L-tracks, the back and the butt portions are one long unit, and the chair rollers, the chair track moves like this – you can’t flatten them out. So, they’re always in this, kind of a 90-degree position, or a zero-gravity position, which is actually 120 degrees. Well, the SuperTrac now is out, where the chair – Ogawa now has this chair, where you have an L-track, but you can adjust – kind of like a railroad track, the two tracks can kind of click in, like this, when the chair is horizontal, so you get a horizontal track. The butt rollers are not quite as strong in that position, I’ll admit, but it’s a pretty inventive idea. And so, some people have differentiated L-track, from S-track, from SuperTrac, the SuperTrac is really just a very versatile L-track, but it’s a cool feature to have, that L-track. I tell you, I like that butt roller, and I think it’s the biggest innovation in this industry, in maybe a decade or more. Having the rollers down to the glutes, and the piriformis, and the top of the hamstrings, I think is fantastic, and I love it, and I think I’ve kind of expounded on the virtues of that, in previous videos.

[SCREEN TEXT: Number of Motors – Is It Important?]

Alan: And then, one little last thing I’m going to talk about, I get asked a lot – well, maybe not a lot, but I get regularly asked if – you know, how many motors does this chair have? And we’ve got chairs, I think, that go anywhere from 5 rollers, or 4 rollers, up to maybe 13, or 14, 15 rollers. Well, what is the the big deal? Well, to me, it’s kind of sixes, it’s not good or bad, one way or the other, because if you have more rollers, I’m sorry, more motors, there’s a possibility that there’s more things that can go bad, that can break down, and be faulty. And so, if you’ve got 14, 13, 14, 15 rollers, well, there’s a better chance that one of those may go. The upside of that is, more motors, means less functionality of the chair affected by that down roller, or that, sorry, roller, that down motor. So, if the motor goes, a smaller portion of the chair is affected by it. If you have less motors that affect more functionality of the chair, well, if one motor goes down, out of 3, or 4, well, a bigger portion of your chair is going to be compromised. So, it’s kind of a tradeoff, you know, more motors means, you know, maybe more functionality, but more motors means more things can break down, less motors means, you know, probably similar functionality, but a bigger, you know, less things can break down, but when they do, it affects more functionality of the chair. I hope that made sense, sometimes, in my mind, these things sound really good, how I want to explain them, but then when I actually go to explain it, with my mouth, it doesn’t make any sense. It reminds me of a story, when I was in grade 8, over in Canada, we say grade 8, but here in the United States, it’s 8th grade. When I was in grade 8, I was responsible for writing a report about the planet – well, we were all supposed to talk about a planet – so I chose the planet Uranus, U-R-A-N-U-S, and in my mind, I knew exactly how it looked, and I figured I knew how it sounded. So, I wrote the report, and then I had to go up front to the class, and talk about this planet. So, I went up to the front of the class, and I said ‘Well, my talk’ – and this was the first time I actually practiced it out loud – I said ‘My report today is on Ur-anus.’ And the moment I said that, I – and you know, of course, in grade 8, you know, it’s kind of an impressionable time, and it’s easy to be humiliated – and when I was a kid that was only 4′ 10″ tall, with zits galore, and ugly hair that had no control in it, whatsoever, I was very self conscious. So, when I said ‘My report is on Ur-anus,’ you know, the class laughed, the teacher laughed, and I guess I kind of laughed, but holy cow, was I embarrassed. Sometimes we don’t realize how things sound, while we’re reading them, or studying them, until we say it out loud, and that’s kind of, well, that’s just a tangential story about talking about this SuperTrac thing. Anyway, that’s about it for this week. I hope you have a fantastic week. Remember, you can always call me, you can reach me at 888-259-5380. You can email me at Alan, A-L-A-N, @ our website, which is Massage-Chair-Relief.com. You can chat with me online, you can go on our YouTube channel, and leave a comment, or our Facebook page. Please feel free to communicate with me if you have any questions at all about massage chairs, I’m here as a resource. Of course, we’d like to sell you a chair – and we sell all the chairs – most of the chairs that we talk about on these videos, but the important thing is that you get the information that you need to help make the right decision, but anyway, feel free to contact me anytime. If you found this video helpful, please feel free to thumbs up ‘Like’ us on YouTube, share us on your social media properties, we do appreciate you helping us spread the word about massage chairs. Well, 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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