Massage Chair Industry Update – March 12, 2013

March 14, 2013
 By Dr. Alan Weidner
March 14, 2013
 By Dr. Alan Weidner

Massage Chair Industry Update – March 12, 2013


Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – March 12th, 2013”

Alan: Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and today we are doing our bi-weekly massage chair industry update. Today is March 12, 2013, and we’ve got a few fun things to go over. Before I begin, though, I want to confess to you that I have an addiction and I’ve been feeding that addiction all morning. And this is my addiction: Cadbury Mini Eggs. I can’t stop eating them. They’re like sunflower seeds; once you get going, there’s no stopping, and it’s just chocolate and sweets and it just messes up your life. I am an addict of these eggs, and I love them. But anyways, that’s neither here nor there.

[SCREEN TEXT: Stock Status]

Alan: Let’s start off by talking about stock. Stock is pretty good for most companies. Human Touch was in stock on everything. Infinite Therapeutics good on everything. Cozzia good on everything. Inada’s good on everything. I believe Omega, they were back-ordered on their Omega Montage Pro except for ‘Gray’ until March, so this month they should have all the colors in. And Panasonic is good in stock. Osaki are back-ordered on the ‘Ivory’ OS-1000 for another six weeks as well as the OS-3000 in ‘Charcoal’ for the next six weeks, and the OS-7075 in ‘Ivory’ is back-ordered for the next four weeks as well.

[SCREEN TEXT: Osaki OS-6000 Discontinued!]

Alan: The Osaki OS-6000 has been discontinued altogether. They still have some ‘Cream’ and ‘Black’ in stock, but as soon as those are out of stock, that chair will be gone. And the OS-7200H, which is essentially the same chair but with heat, is going to be their primary model from those two. And that makes sense to me because it seemed a bit redundant having the exact same chair except for one feature like heat, so they’re phasing out the OS-6000 and the 7200H is going to be chair choice or model of choice for them.

[SCREEN TEXT: iRobotics 6 from Luraco Technologies]

Alan: Now, exciting stuff: iRobotics 6 is the name of this American-made chair I’ve been talking to you about over the last number of weeks. And the chair – I told you that the chair was made in the United States. It is a chair that is 61% domestic-made and 39% foreign parts, primarily frame, upholstery, and body, the structure of the chair. But all the internal mechanisms, the guts, the mechanics, the electronics, is all designed and conceived and manufactured here in the United States. The company is called Luraco Technologies.

[SCREEN TEXT: www.Luraco.com]

Alan: You can check them out at ‘Luraco.com,’ L-U-R-A-C-O dot com. And this is their chair, the iRobotics 6 that just launched last week. I discussed it on my blog, we have it up on our website, you can check it out on the website under the Luraco category. And it’s a very nice chair. I really like it. I know that they’re working on some other things with the chair to make it even better, as far as some functionality to it. But the massage itself is very good, a nice firm massage. The styling of the chair looks like kind of a Sogno-esque type of design, and apparently it is their own design but they had it made in China because they couldn’t get it within a reasonable cost I suppose here in the United States, so they outsourced that to China to company called Dotast. And Dotast has that design there, and because it was an iRobotics from Luraco design, they have to give permission to Dotast to use that design on their chairs, and they are using it in China. However, that model, that style cannot be imported from Dotast to the United States. Luraco has – I don’t know if that’s copyright or trademark on that or whatever on that design – the patent on that design, so that’s the only chair that will have that particular design. But it’s a nice chair, it’s got the zero gravity, it has a music system in it, it has a nice remote that’s very – very easy-to-use remote. There’s a lot of lights on it, but it’s very easy to use. I will be making some videos here in the next, I believe it’s this Thursday we’re probably going to be recording some videos about it and I’ll start to introduce those.

[SCREEN TEXT: Panasonic MA70 Videos]

Alan: Speaking of videos, I’ve been posting videos on the Panasonic MA70. The more I sit in this chair, the more I like it. It’s a wonderful massage, easy-to-use remote control, and it’s a great chair to sit in just as a regular recliner. You don’t have to – some chairs, the arm rests are high, like some of these Sogno-esque type styling, which a lot of chairs are coming out with now, the armrests are so high if you just want to sit on it with your arms resting on the armrests, your arms would be up here. But Panasonic’s just a really – it was really engineered well, not just to be a great massage chair. It’s got a very nice, firm massage. I love the way it massages the top of the shoulders. It’s the only chair I know of that the rollers actually come up and kind of over on top of the shoulders and dig in to the traps a little bit. I really like that, and then it moves up the neck. But it is also designed and engineered to be used as a regular chair. The ottoman rotates under, the armrests are lower and flat, and it has a big back pillow that, when you’re using it as a regular recliner, you use that back pillow and you can lean up against it. It’s got lumbar support, neck support. But if you want to get a massage, you just lift that thing up and over the back of the chair and, bang, you’ve got yourself a full-blown massage chair with a very intense roller system. But anyways, those videos – we’re starting to bleed those out every week, so more and more of the MA70 chair videos will be out and you can learn more about that.

[SCREEN TEXT: iRobotics 6 – $4990]

Alan: But anyways, getting back to the iRobotics 6, I’m excited about this chair. The price on it is $4990, which is kind of a – I think it’s a good price. It’s less than the Japanese Sogno, which is $7999; it’s more than the Chinese-made chairs; it’s a US-made chair for the most part, the majority of it is US made, and you know what, I think $4990 is a good price for it. I will admit, though, there’s not a big profit margin in it. It’s more costly than the Chinese chairs, but you know it’s made in the United States, our costs are higher here; that’s one of the reasons why everybody has outsourced to China because the costs for labor and whatnot are less expensive there. But for an American-made chair, I think this is a big deal and I think people are really going to gravitate to the US manufacturing of it.

I will be going down there I believe in April; they’ve invited me to come down and see the manufacturing plant. I’m going to go down and get some video. I’m going to be posting if not this week it’ll be early next week some pictures from their plant so you can see the actual assembly of some of the electronic components and some of the chairs. But I’m kind of excited about this chair, I think it’s going to be a good one. They’re going to have a 2-year warranty parts and labor in-home, and then another year parts beyond that, and two more years structure. So it’s a very, very good warranty. They swear by their customer support, and I have not had experience with it yet so we’ll find out about this, but they say their customer support’s fantastic. If there’s a problem with the chair and you call in with a problem, the chance of you getting a live person are very, very high, and you may even be speaking to one of the engineers if it’s an issue that they’re maybe having difficulty resolving. So it sounds like they’re really eager to make a good impression in this market, and I think they will.

They actually started – they’re a defense contractor, they actually started this company as a defense contractor for the US government, and then they branched out to other products and one of the products they branched out to is these massage chairs for salons. So if you’ve ever been to a salon, ladies and some men, getting a pedicure or whatnot, you sit in these massage chairs. Well, apparently they began in that industry, and their chairs became quite popular and well known. And now they’re branching out into residential and business massage chair production, which is what this iRobotics 6 is all about. So, they do have some history, it’s not they’re just brand new. They’ve been working for a couple years with this other salon chair, and now they’ve parleyed that into a home and business model. So, we’re excited to see how it works, we’re excited to see how their customer support is, we’re excited to see what people think about the chair. I actually have someone flying in on Saturday to try it out from San Francisco, and you know it will be interesting to get some feedback. And maybe we’ll record that, post that on our blogs so people can hear what the opinions are. Anyways, that’s that about that.

[SCREEN TEXT: Panasonic Chairs with Threshold Delivery (not curbside)!]

Alan: Oh, getting back to Panasonic, one thing I wanted to mention. Panasonic, they offer – they don’t do regular curbside delivery on their chairs now, when we order Panasonic from the Panasonic people, their options are white-glove or threshold delivery. So, we know the white glove on our website is a $200 option. That remains the same, nothing has changed there. But if you order a Panasonic chair, whether it’s the MA70 or the 30007 or the 30005 or whatever, the chair will not be delivered curbside. It will be delivered threshold, which means they will bring it into your house or into your apartment. And that’s fabulous, and that we will offer free, we will not charge additional for that. We get charged a little additional for that because curbside versus threshold, there’s usually a dollar differential there. But all Panasonic chairs will be delivered at minimum threshold delivery and they’re bring it into your house, which is I think a wonderful, wonderful feature. So, when you order your MA70 or your Panasonic 30007, you can expect to have the chair brought into your home.

[SCREEN TEXT: Recent Blog Posts on www.massage-chair-relief.com]

Alan: Let’s see what else have we got. We talked about the discontinued OS-6000. Oh, just some blog posts I posted this week, I thought I’d tell you about. I posted one today that I wrote. It’s a good article I think, it’s something that I’ve been thinking about. You know, a lot of these chairs, these Chinese-made chairs are claiming to be like the Inada Sogno but for less than half the price. And so, I have a lot of those chairs in my showroom including the Sogno. I must say, even those these less-expensive chairs are good chairs and they have nice features – and even some features the Sogno doesn’t have like foot rollers or head airbags or whatever the case may be or zero gravity – those features that they have tried to mimic from the Sogno are not the same. My general experience, and I talk about this in more detail in the blog post, my general experience is that the features that are imitated from the Sogno and integrated into these other less-expensive chairs, they’re similar but not as refined or discriminating or nuanced or as good as the feature in the Sogno. So, I just felt like I needed to talk about that, because if you get the impression that these other chairs that are less than half the price are exactly like the Sogno, exact type chairs with all the same features – as a matter of fact I don’t even know of one chair that has all the same features as the Sogno has. They’ve only been able to integrate one or two in a model, but to integrate all of them in concert the way that Sogno has? Nobody’s done that, and I don’t think anybody will. It’s a very nice chair. But anyway, I talk about that in detail in that blog post, so take a look at that and read up on that.

I also had a question from a dentist who had upper back pain and neck pain and shoulder pain, and dentists have a lot of this because they’re hunched over bodies working on mouths, and their backs are like this a lot. So, this is not new to me, and when I was a chiropractor I heard this a lot from dentists: You know, “I’ve got mid-back pain, shoulder pain,” whatever. So, he was interested to know what chair he could look at other than the Sogno, because the Sogno for some is quite expensive. Others, it’s no problem. By the way, it is our top-selling chair by far, so people do lay the money out for it. But some people don’t want to spend that kind of money on a chair, and I understand that. So, I made four recommendations in that blog post of other chairs that are very good that would really work well on his upper back and neck pain. So you can maybe take a look at that. I also have a couple of blog posts on the iRobotics 6, so you can take a look at that. There’s some pictures there, pictures directly from iRobotics – or from Luraco – but there’s also some of mine in the showroom that I just took. Not as good a picture of course, I took them with my cell phone. But you can take a look at those images and start to get a little feel for what the Luraco iRobotics 6 is all about.

Well, I think that’s about it for this week. It is springtime, the weather is great, it’s fun to play outside again and get outside and enjoy the nice weather, but if there’s anything I can help you with as far as massage chairs, please feel free to give me a call. Call the showroom at 801-417-8240. Call us toll free at 888-259-5380. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’ll be able to answer those calls because I love to talk to the customer; it’s my favorite part and I enjoy it thoroughly. And people don’t believe it when sometimes they’ll call, they’ll think it’s a voice mail, they wait for a minute and then they realize it’s me on the phone – pleasantly surprised. And you know what, I love talking to you, so please feel free to call. If you like this video or any of the videos we’ve put on our YouTube channel, please feel free to subscribe to the channel and then you’ll receive updates; every time we do a new video, you’ll be notified of it. ‘Like’ this video if you found it helpful, and share us and ‘Like’ us on Facebook, share us on Twitter, or on Google Plus, ‘+1’ us on Google Plus. We appreciate you helping us spread the word about massage chairs, we really truly do. Again, I am Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and we look forward to seeing you in two more weeks. Bye bye.

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