Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – June 20, 2016”
Alan: Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com’ and today is Monday, June 20th, 2016, one day before the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. But anyway, and I say this every time I do one of these industry updates, I donโt have much to talk about, and I end up talking for 15 minutes.
[SCREEN TEXT: Stock Status]
Alan: Anyway, I do have a few things to talk about, and I’ll try to keep it short for you, but anyway, as far as stock goes, as far as I’m aware, everything โ I think everything’s in stock of our most common chairs โ there’s nothing really back-ordered right now. Let’s see, the DreamWaves are in stock, Luraco’s in stock, Executive, Escape, 8500s, I think they’re all in stock right now. So, I think you’re pretty safe to get a chair if you order right now. Now, all the Father’s Day sales just ended yesterday, or last night. So, the Ogawa sales โ and we got to get this all changed on our website โ but the Ogawa sale, the Luraco sale, those all end. Actually, the Ogawa sales end on July, on June, or July โ no, well, when does that end โ yeah, I think they’re all pretty much done now, so just FYI.
[SCREEN TEXT: Inada Sale!]
Alan: The DreamWave, or Inada sales, where DreamWave has the free extended warranty, and the YuMe is $500 off, and the Flex 3s is $1000 off, those sales are going on until September, so you’re still good to go on those babies.
[SCREEN TEXT: 18-month, 0% Interest Financing Synchrony Bank 06/29 – 07/12]
Alan: Synchrony Bank is again coming up with another 18-month reduced processing fees for us, on the 18-month, 0% interest financing. They’re dropping it between June 29th and July 12th. So, if you want to get 18-month financing, and you’re going to finance, you can wait until then, for 18-month, 0% interest, thatโs when we will be able to offer that.
[SCREEN TEXT: Southern California Showroom Update]
Alan: OK, last week, I flew out to my โ or was it last week, or two weeks ago, I don’t know, time flies, I think it was two weeks ago โ I flew out to my California store. I hadnโt been out there for a while, because we just went through a move here in Utah, and we moved, I mean, I moved homes. That’s our first move in 21 years, and holy monkey, was that stressful, and we only moved a block and a half up the street, and it was tough, and half the kids were in tears because we were leaving the old house, even though it’s the same neighborhood. And anyway, I donโt like moves, and for those of you that are in the military, or that are in a job where you move all the time, man, I have respect for you, and what you put up with repetitively, holy cow. Anyway, so I didnโt get down to the store for a while, but I got down last week, and it was great to get there, and the showroom is โ now, we finally got all the molding on the walls, with the sconce lighting โ and it looks beautiful. You can go on our website, go to my blog, and you’ll see the ‘Southern California Showroom Update,’ and you can see everything that we’ve done on the walls there, it’s beautiful.
[SCREEN TEXT: Ogawa Smart 3D Massage Chair]
Alan: We got the new Smart, Ogawa Smart 3D massage chair. I sat in it, it’s a very firm, very nice massage chair, it is quite quiet. I don’t know if it’s as quiet as the Luraco iRobotics 7, but it’s comparable. It runs off of a tablet, which it has a little mount, like a remote mount, that has a tablet, that you put on to this mount, and you run it from there, and I didn’t find it โ I found that the tablet, and it probably has to do with the settings, but it kept going to black, I had to keep sliding, and you know, re-opening the pad, screen, the dashboard, and I think I had to โ I think, and I never got around to it, because I was so busy in meetings, but yeah, I think you have to log in as a user to be able to get access to all the different programs it has. But once you’re on the tablet, and once you’re in, which was a little, like I say, a little laborious to get into it, and get the display, it was actually very easy to use, and it was you know, ‘Push button here, push button there,’ touching the screen. It was really quite easy, and it was kind of cool, but the massage itself felt very good, I didn’t get a chance to write a review.
[SCREEN TEXT: uKnead Massage Chairs]
Alan: I literally was in meetings from dusk to dawn, and the meetings were quite consuming. We met with โ well, thatโs neither here nor there โ but one company we did meet with is a company called uKnead, U-K-N-E-A-D, and they have three models that they carry. They’re going to be carrying a fourth one, I believe, and discontinuing one of them, but they are chairs that are made in the same factory as a lot of the Infinity chairs. They’re nice chairs, well-built chairs, built in the Rongti (sp?) factory in China, which is one of the top three, and a couple of them are L-track. And I will say, the models are called the Bella, the Adagio, and the Lavitra โ no, hold on, is it Lavita, or something, it isn’t Lavitra, I think thatโs a โ I don’t know, I think thatโs a like a Viagra kind of medication. Anyway, the chair is kind of Lavita, Lavita, I can’t remember, anyway, theyโve got nice models, and sorry, I went off on a tangent there. When you’re over 50, you recognize names like that.
[SCREEN TEXT: L-Track Chair with 3D Rollers?]
Alan: Anyway, and so, the chairs are very nice, and one thing that I noticed, the L-track chairs they had, the L-track actually went down, and massaged the belly of the hamstrings, which is something I donโt think I’ve noticed in the other L-track chairs that we have. In one of them โ they’re coming out with a new model โ they donโt have a name for it yet, but it’s going to have 3D rollers, and I think, 3D rollers in the L-track, and there’s not a lot of chairs that have 3D rollers in the L-track, it’s kind of a new phenomenon. I think Infinity also mentioned that they might be coming out with one that we can sell, as online retailers, that we can sell, that has a 3D L-track. But this one from uKnead, it was quite โ these chairs were nice โ the rollers actually went down to the belly of the hamstring. Most of the other chairs, if not all of them, will hit the top of the hamstring, where it inserts in to the pelvis, but it doesnโt really hit the belly of the hamstring. These two really did, and I was quite impressed with that. Now, maybe for a longer-legged person โ I’ve got kind of short legs โ longer-legged person, perhaps, it might not go to the belly, I donโt know, but it did on me, and the other ones didnโt. So, I was quite impressed with that, I liked that, it was a good-feeling chair, but I’m still chitchatting with Nina and John, over there at uKnead, and we will know, probably within the next week, about, you know, carrying them, and getting them on our site, and getting them in our showroom, etcetera, etcetera. But anyway, just so that you know, we tried those chairs out, and I was rather impressed with their L-track chairs, so and I will let you know more about that, nothing too much to get in to.
[SCREEN TEXT: Massage Chair Research Update]
Alan: Remember, I havenโt talked a lot about this, but the Weaver State Stress Clinic, at Weaver State University, that we have done, we supply the chairs to the stress clinic, they keep data on pulse, blood pressure, temperature, etcetera, etcetera, of everybody that uses those massage chairs, before and after the massage chair session, and we have some excellent data. As Dr. Olpin said, it’s statistically significant data, it’s not just like 1/100th of a percent difference between, you know, pre and post-massage chair usage, it’s significant. Anyway, Luraco donated a couple of chairs to the project, and the folks from Luraco are flying down this Thursday and Friday, to do a โ kind of record a video with Dr. Olpin and the Stress Clinic โ so you’ll be able to see more of it. I’ve talked about it in the past, we’re still sifting through the data, and coming up with data sufficient enough for the first study publication. But anyway, Luraco’s coming up Thursday, I’m going to go up and see what they’re doing there, what they’re recording, and then Friday, we’re going to have Robin, who’s our contact over at Luraco, come and visit our showroom here in Salt Lake, and we’ll be chitchatting with her. But anyway, it’s pretty exciting, the results we’re getting, and Luraco put out a little flyer, a little digital flyer about the results, and the pre and post-results from sitting in the massage chairs, and I think it’s specific to their massage chairs, and I will post that on a blog post this week, so you can check out our blog later this week, and I’ll have that data up there. They’re little images, nice little graphs, it’s pretty easy to read, and pretty easy to follow.
[SCREEN TEXT: Massage Chair Reviews!]
Alan: OK, now, the last thing I just want to chitchat about are reviews. Now, a lot of people love reviews on massage chairs. As a matter of fact, a lot of people love reviews on everything. I read reviews on Trip Advisor, or reviews on Amazon, and you’ll find that we have a whole lot of reviews on massage chairs on our website. As a matter of fact, some of our competitors will take my reviews off of my website, or reviews about us on Amazon, and use those reviews on their website, so we have a lot of great reviews. There’s nobody really out there that accumulates the reviews that we do, and we have a lot of them, hundreds of them, on our website. So, if there’s a particular chair that you’re interested in, some have more than others, but there are reviews on our website that read up, and find out what people are saying. And they’re not all great reviews, like ‘Oh, it’s just a beautiful chair, love everything about it,’ there are some people that have some really constructive criticism about some chairs, like you know, whatever, like, ‘This is too rough here,’ or ‘This remote doesnโt work well here,’ or ‘We had this problem with getting it repaired.’ It’s some good, objective input from people like you, who looked, and bought massage chairs. But go to any of our product pages on our website, and you can see a section called โReviews,โ and if there’s reviews on that chair, go and read them, they’re great. I also sometimes take a review, and like I just took a review from our customer, Mike, out of โ I don’t know, he’s out in the Northeast somewhere, I can’t remember where exactly heโs from โ but he wrote a nice, long review, and sent some pictures of him sitting in his new chair, and so we made a blog post out of it, so you can read that as well. But anyway, when you buy a chair, and you use reviews as a help for your decision making, please, when you get your chair, write a review. Even if you donโt buy it from us, please come to our website and leave a review, because people have come to know that our website is a wonderful, trustworthy repository of reviews and content, so please leave your reviews. We value those reviews, and other people that are looking to buy chairs value them, as do you, because it helps make a decision about which chair to get. Well, I think that’s just about it for this week. If you have any questions, you can give me a call at 888-259-5380, or you can email me, or you can chat with us on our website, or you can leave comments on our Facebook page, or on our YouTube channel. And of course, if you found this video helpful, please feel free to share this video on your YouTube โ or not YouTube, sorry โ Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Plus, social media platforms, we appreciate you helping us spread the word about massage chairs. But I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,โ and I will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.
Click on the following link to watch this Massage Chair Industry Update on our YouTube channel.