Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – May 20, 2016”

Alan: Hi, this is Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com’ and today is our biweekly massage chair industry update for Friday, May 20th, 2016, and I have some explaining to do. I missed my biweekly massage chair industry update last, two weeks ago, because we’ve been moving, and I don’t know when the last time you moved was, and I don’t know if you’ve lived in one place for 21 years, and had to move everything out, but it was crazy hectic. And the last thing I wanted to do at the end of a long day of bleeding, and sweating, and lifting, and aching, was to try to be perky, and come down here, and do a massage chair industry update, and give you the best that I had, when I was not feeling all that great, and you know, I’m 56 years old, and moving a house pretty much on my own. The boys helped out quite a bit, but they’re in school, and at work, but boy, I was pooped, and I just never got around. It wasn’t that I forgot, believe me, it was in the back of my mind the whole time, and I would’ve put one up. I actually recorded too, earlier this week, but then my hard drive went yesterday – sorry, yeah, Thursday night, it went, or Thursday afternoon – and then yesterday we had it in the shop, and had it all fixed up, and now, I am here. Everything is good now. Now, if I can just remember everything I need to talk about with the massage chair industry update for this week, but anyway, there’s a number of things to go over. I’ve missed a bit, because of my move, and kind of it seems to – some of the information is kind of backed up a little bit – so I’ll try to give you as much as I can here today.

[SCREEN TEXT: Stock Status]

Alan: First of all, as far as back-orders go, the Titan – oh, the Executive, the Pro Executive – has been back-ordered since March, but I believe those just arrived yesterday. We saw some shipments going out. So, the Titan Executive is back in stock. Also, the Human Touch Navitas Sleep, which is a real favorite of mine, I really like that chair. It’s the one that has the unique calf rollers that go up and down both sides of your calves, very cool. Anyway, the ‘Earth’ color one is back-ordered, and they did not give me a date that it would be back, so I don’t know what the restocking will be. Hopefully it’ll be within this next month, and the ‘Onyx,’ which is another one of the colors, there were five left when I got this notification, which was about a week ago. So, the ‘Onyx’ is probably close to being back-ordered, but anyway, don’t wait, the Navitas is a popular chair. Again, as with most popular chairs, like the Inada DreamWave, or the Luraco iRobotics 7, if you want the chair, and it’s back-ordered, don’t wait until the chair comes in, you know, order now, so that you can get one of the chairs when that shipment does come in, so it’s not out of stock again.

[SCREEN TEXT: $700 OFF Luraco iRobotics 7!!]

Alan: Alright, now, the iRobotics 7 has been on sale since before Mother’s Day, and the sale was supposed to – and they had $700 off on the iRobotics 7, Luraco offered that – and that sale was available until Mother’s Day, and then they extended it until Memorial Day. So, for another week, a little bit over a week, you’ve got $700 off the very, very popular iRobotics 7, which has become our top selling kind of luxury chair, high quality chair. You know, the Japanese and the American chairs are considered the top quality, and the best-made chairs. The Chinese chairs are considered a little bit less in the quality department, but they come out with some of the most innovative ideas, like butt rollers, and like the foot rollers, and like, then you know, the music systems, and things like that. That was all kind of a – you find that mostly in the Chinese chairs – but anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, i7, iRobotics 7, $700 off until Memorial Day. Also, Infinity has discontinued their IT-7800, and they came out with a new model called the Infinity Evoke. I talked about it in the last update. I have not, because of my move, I have not updated my website with that product yet, but the Evoke is priced to compete in that $2695 price point, where the Osaki OS-4000T is priced at, and any chair that comes from Infinity is, you know that the research, and their homework’s been done on it, and it’s ready to go. The Infinity Escape came out in the fourth quarter of last year, and it’s been a very popular chair. It has a little bit of a flaw in one of the body parts. It’s not anything with the function of the chair, but there’s a protect – well, you know, one of the frame plastic body parts – apparently clicks, or does something, when the chair raises up and down, but the function of the chair is great. They came out with the 8500X3, which is the very, very popular IT-8500 with 3D rollers, and that chair has just come out in the last couple of months, very popular chair. It’s a deep-tissue chair, and the 8500 was a deep-tissue chair. Now, it’s even more deep tissue, because you can adjust the intensity.

[SCREEN TEXT: Pre-Owned Massage Chair Directory]

Alan: And I actually have one that we’re just getting back next week. It’s about a month old, and I can’t even remember the pricing it is. I think it’s $5295 for that chair, and we’ll have this one off for a significant discount, because it’s open box, and we, obviously even though it’s a month old, we can’t sell it for the new price, but that will be up on our pre-owned massage chair directory, and in case you haven’t noticed, there have been some changes to our website. We’ve added our locations on the navigation bar. Underneath the header, there’s a navigation bar that tells you, you know, where you can go on the site, and we have now a ‘Locations’ tab, and we have a ‘Pre-Owned Directory’ tab, and if you go there, you can see what chairs we have that are either pre-owned, that have been returned to us, or floor models, or refurbished chairs. We don’t have a lot – and we don’t have a lot there right now – but we have a few floor models, and we’ll be adding that Infinity IT-8500X3, but if you’re interested in that, let me know. You can contact me at the phone number there, 888-259-5380, but anyway, just so that you know.

[SCREEN TEXT: Jim Coppins Interview (VP Infinity Massage Chairs)]

Alan: Alright, oh, and speaking of Infinity, I interviewed Jim Coppins again last week. Jim Coppins is the vice president at Infinity massage chairs, great guy, I had done a number of interviews with him over the years. We hadn’t done one in close to two years, I think. So, we did one this last week, especially with the three new models they’ve come out with since the fourth quarter of last year, and we had a great talk. Some of it got cut off a little bit as we talked about some of the models, but we had a great, long discussion about their customer support, which is fantastic, and I can always tell when customer support is not strong, because I get contacted by my customers, that they have a problem, and it’s not getting taken care of. If a company is taking care of my customers, which they should, under warranty, they should all be taken care of, I should never hear about it, you know what I’m saying? Because I’m not the one that does the repairs when it’s under warranty, it’s the company that imports, or creates the chair, that takes care of all the problems, but if I get calls from my customers, then I know that those problems are not getting taken care of, and we have to get involved. When I say we, I mean myself, and Dion, who takes care of all my shipping, and my logistics. We start to get involved, and we start to pester the company to make sure things get done, and they do, but it takes a little time. Infinity, I rarely get calls from my customers, same with Inada, same with Luraco, very good customer support, rarely get any calls from my customers if they have a problem with their chair, hope that made sense. Anyway, OK, now, what else have we done here? We’ve got the – oh, but check out that interview with Jim Coppins – you will enjoy that interview.

[SCREEN TEXT: Ogawa Smart 3D in Our SoCal Showroom]

Alan: OK, the Ogawa, Ogawa, you know we have that new Ogawa Smart 3D massage chair, and that’s a nice chair. We got it in the showroom, and Michael, my manager there in the California showroom, he sent me an email to tell me a little bit about the pros and cons of this chair, and he seems to be very impressed with it upfront. He felt that it was, it had a lot of the features of the Luraco iRobotics 7, but made in China, of course. Ogawa, and Cozzia, and a lot of the Osaki chairs were made in the same factory. There’s three top factories in China that you know, have probably the best reputation, and are the biggest as far as creating the most massage chairs, and one of them of is the East Pau, which is in Shao Men, China, and I don’t know if I pronounced that right, but that’s how it was pronounced to me, and Ogawa comes out with, you know, chair models, as does Cozzia, and as does Osaki, but they’re good quality chairs, for Chinese chairs. This Ogawa Smart 3D is a nice looking chair. The one that we have in our showroom is the black exterior, with the cappuccino interior, which is kind of a caramel brown color. Anyway, Michael really liked the chair, he said it was very quiet, it can accommodate tall people, it’s got a good range of intensities for the rollers, from soft to intense. What else did he say about it? Quiet, very quiet, it had a very smooth roller system, and again, it reminded him of the Luraco iRobotics 7, but Chinese made, Luraco’s an American-made chair, but he did say that the pricing was a little high, he thought, for a Chinese chair, $6999, which is high for a Chinese chair. I don’t think we have a Chinese chair that’s $6999, but he seems to think the chair is a very good chair, but I’ll be going down probably in another week. I haven’t been down, because of the move, I haven’t been down to the California showroom either, to see what’s cooking there, and to get familiar with a lot of the chairs that we have there, and I’ve sat on them when, over the, you know, when I go before, but I haven’t been there in a while, and I’m kind of forgetting about some of them. And that goes, that speaks to the idea of if you have questions about some of the models that I don’t have here in the Utah showroom, you can go to, you know, give the local store a call in California, and you can call our toll-free number during work hours, and they will answer, or you can just dial direct, at 562-865-4607, and that will take you directly to the local line, at the showroom, and they can answer any questions you have, like for example, the Titan Executive, the Infinity Escape, the Ogawa Smart, the Ogawa Active, the Osaki 4S, and the 4D, and you know, those are chairs I don’t have in my showroom here, so my experience of them is based on my infrequent visits to the showroom in California, but it’s also based on what my staff tell me.

[SCREEN TEXT: Ogawa Warranty Update PLUS Memorial Day Specials]

Alan: So, anyway, I don’t even know where I started with that – oh, well, Ogawa Active, so, oh, and Ogawa Smart – but anyway, I made a mistake on my last update, when I was talking about their warranties. They’ve upgraded all their warranties, or updated all their warranties, and the Refresh, and the Active, have one year, parts and labor, with a second year of parts, and five years structure coverage. The Ogawa Smart has three-years, parts-and-labor coverage, and two extra years, so a full five years of structural coverage, and for Memorial Day, Ogawa’s offering a free Ogawa Foot Therapy Plus device, which massages your feet. It’s a couple hundred bucks, retail, that’s free if you buy the Ogawa Refresh. If you buy the Ogawa Active until Memorial Day, or June 1st, you will get their extended warranty for free, which is two more years, which is valued at $399.99, and the Ogawa Smart 3D, if you buy that chair before Memorial Day, or before June 1st, you will get the two-year-extended warranty for that chair, which is valued at $499.99. So, that’s what Ogawa’s allowing us to give away, and we appreciate that very, very much. Let me see, what else? Oh, the Ogawa Active, the price of the Ogawa Active when it came out, was $4999, and then they would periodically give us promo codes to drop it down to $4499. Well, they’ve just now gotten rid of the promo code, and they’ve lowered the price of the chair to $4499. So, the Ogawa Active, which has that SuperTrac extended roller track that you can flatten out, and it’s the only chair that does that, all the other extended roller tracks, or L-tracks, are affixed – well, I don’t know if I can – but it’s a fixed L-shape, and you know, and you can’t flatten it out when you incline it, or recline it, it’s always that same L-shape. Well, now, with the Ogawa Active, you can extend it down a little bit, or you can flatten it out during extension, so the chair flattens out in to a horizontal position. It is not as long a roller track as some of the other ones, I think it’s 40 inches maybe, but it’s not as long as like 47 inches, or whatever, 48, 49 inches, of some of the other chairs, but it is an L-track that can flatten out, which we haven’t seen before. Next, we expect to see an L-track that has 3D rollers to adjust intensity. OK, enough of the Ogawa business, let’s move on to Synchrony Bank. Synchrony Bank, from May 25th to June 7th, will lower our processing rates, our processing fees, for the 18-month financing, and as I’ve mentioned many times before, we always have 6 and 12-months financing through Synchrony Bank, but certain times of the year, usually a week or two, here and there, like Memorial Day, like Independence Day, like Labor Day, like, you know, around Christmas time, they will give us the lower fees. It’s still 6%, for heaven’s sake, but it’s not 10% anymore. That’s why we don’t offer 18 months, because they charge us 10%, which eats up all of our profits. So, we will give you, they give us, they give it to us for about 6% on those special days, and May 25th to June 7th is the availability of that 18-month, 0% interest financing. So, if you’re going to finance, and you want a little longer term, wait another few days, and you can get it.

[SCREEN TEXT: Make-A-Wish Foundation Update]

Alan: Also, let’s see, oh, I’m going to end on this one, because this is probably my favorite thing that I want to talk about today, and it has nothing to do with massage chairs, but it has everything to do with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. And I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I donate a certain portion, or we as a company, donate a certain portion of every massage chair sale, every chair, every chair sale, to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and I have a real soft spot in my heart for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. I began, I became really familiar with them when I was a chiropractor, when we did a fundraiser with my practice for a young gal that had a very significant terminal, or life-threatening disease, and through our efforts, she went to Disney World, and she came back a different person, according to her parents, and we got to meet her, and it was awesome to meet her. And then I started this business, this Massage Chair Relief business, and I went, and as I became involved with Massage Chair Relief, I wanted to – you know, I went down to their headquarters here in Salt Lake – they’ve got like an office here in Murray, Utah. They’ve probably got one near you too, especially if you’re in a bigger city. I went down there, and it was one of the most emotional things I’ve ever been to, and I think they knew that it was emotional, so they – when I got there, I said ‘I need to speak to so-and-so,’ and they said ‘Well, can you just wait in the foyer, or the lobby there? And she’ll be out in a moment.’ Well, I think that was strategized, because I went out there in to the foyer, or the foyer as they say in the United States, but the foyer, and there were all these testimonials on the wall, of all these precious children who had had their wishes granted, and I’m telling you something, I am a real soft guy. I mean, I cry easy, I cried when Wayne Gretzky was traded, from the Edmonton Oilers. I cried when Guy LaFleur retired from hockey. As you can tell, I’m from Canada, and a lot of my emotional things are linked to hockey. But anyway, here I am, reading these beautiful testimonials, and I started sobbing. I mean, not just like tear in my eye, down the cheek, I was like sobbing, and I was doing everything I could to hide my emotional outburst there, and eventually, the woman does come out, that I was waiting for, and she says ‘Oh, are you doing OK?’ And I said ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen anything more emotional in my life,’ and it was very touching to me, and they had me, they had me there, and so I’ve kind of committed to donating a portion, and our goal is to reach $100,000. No time frame to that, but in the year and a half we’ve been doing it, we’ve raised over $22,000, and if you go on to my website, you’ll see the Make-A-Wish page, and then you’ll get a link from that page to our page on the actual Make-A-Wish site. It’s an official page, I’m not just saying we’re raising money, and we’re donating money to some, you know, cloud, you know, pie-in-the-sky thing, I’m just saying that it’s legit. You can go on the Make-A-Wish site, and find us. It’s under my name, Alan Weidner, and you’ll see where we’re at. We’re at – I think that we have, the graph, the gauge, or whatever you call it – the scale shows $21-something, but I know we’re over $22,000, and that just needs to be updated. So, anyway, when you buy a massage chair, know that a portion of it goes to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and know that you’re doing something good when you buy a massage chair through us. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart, because if you’re watching this video, and you are a customer of mine, and you’ve already purchased a chair from me, you have donated through us, vicariously, to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and I love it, and kids, I mean, who’s got a beef with kids? I could see if I was maybe donating to a political party, or to you know, something else, but for children, there’s no malice with kids, there’s no ulterior motive with kids, there’s nothing. It’s just children, who are suffering, and for whom these donations help realize dreams. And you know, I’ve got six kids of my own, and I’ve got four grandkids, and my second oldest daughter has type 1 diabetes, and I’ve seen sadness, and suffering, because of health in own family, and I’ve seen it in these kids. And I think they’re special, and I think they’re awesome, and I think kids are, I think they’re the closest thing to heaven that we have on earth, and I love them, and I think it’ll be great when you buy a massage chair, and you know, when you lie your head down on your pillow at night, that a portion of that went to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. OK, enough of my soapbox, I apologize, I get kind of passionate about that. Alright, well, you know, I think that’s just about it, eh? So, if you have any questions, feel free to call me. Again, there’s the number, 888-259-5380, or chat with me online, or you know, make a comment on Facebook, or YouTube, or whatnot. If you found this video helpful, please feel free to thumbs up ‘Like’ us on our YouTube channel, and of course, share us. Share anything about massage chairs from our website with your friends and family on YouTube, or maybe not YouTube, but Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Plus, etcetera, all those social media platforms that our kids are so good at. Anyway, it’s been fantastic visiting with you. Again, I apologize for the long delay for this industry update, but I will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.

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