Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – November 28, 2017”
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Alan: Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner and today is our biweekly massage chair industry update for Tuesday, November 28th, 2017. We just finished up with the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, which is always an event because it’s the kickoff for the holiday shopping season, here in the US anyway, and boy, it was pretty busy, that’s for sure.
[SCREEN TEXT: Holiday Sales Continue!]
Alan: We are still extending some sales beyond this week. Some of them have ended, from the manufacturers, or from the distributors, but we still have some things going on. If you’d like to know what they are, you’ll need to download my free report, or special report, which you can find on any page of my website. It’s at the bottom, and there’s a little picture of a report, and a picture of me, and the title of the report, which is ‘8 Things You Absolutely Need to Know Before Investing in a High Quality, Robotic Massage Chair.’ Anyway, once you download that, you’ll be on our mailing list, and I’ll let you know, over the course of the next week or two, what we’ve got cooking as far as sales and discounts. You know what, I’m not going to do stock status much anymore, because I find that every time I do a stock status, the next day, I find out that there’s another chair out of stock, and then by the time two weeks rolls around, that’s either been filled, or some other one that we’ll find out about. So, I’m not even going to waste your time, or my time with stock status. I will mention, though. that the ‘Beige’ Osaki 8500 has been discontinued, and but other than that, I can’t think of any other discontinued models, and I can’t, I know that there’s a couple of Infinity chairs that are back-ordered, or a couple colors that are back-ordered, but they’re going to be here in a week or two, and so it’s not going to help too much because the numbers will change day by day.
[SCREEN TEXT: Lots of New Chairs Added to Massage Chair Relief!]
Alan: Anyway, it has been a very busy holiday season, and there are lots of chairs to pick from, and there’s more and more models coming out. As a matter of fact, just in this last week, before Thanksgiving, we added the Legend from Luraco, the Infinity Presidential, the Casada AlphaSonic, the Inner Balance Jin, the Synca Wellness CirC, the Johnson Wellness J6800, J5800, and 5600, the Ogawa Touch 3D, and the Ogawa Refresh Plus. Needless to say, it was a busy couple of weeks for me to get those chairs added to the site, and I might make a little mention of a few of them.
[SCREEN TEXT: Luraco Legend Should Be in our Showrooms Next Week!]
Alan: The Luraco Legend is the L-track from Luraco that we’ve been waiting for. It has a 58-inch roller track, and I don’t want you to get too excited about the 58 inches, because it may not be 58 inches all the way down to the knees, it may be an additional four inches there, it may be some more inches at the top, so the neck and the buttock can get worked well. We’re still waiting for our floor model. They are supposed to have shipped out yesterday, and today was the first shipments, and so we’re expecting our floor, showroom model, floor models, to show up probably not this week, but early next week, and then we can start giving you feedback about the Luraco Legend. Anyway, and I just heard today that the Luraco Legend is a narrower chair than the iRobotics 7 from Luraco, and it’s ideally built for people up to 6′ 2″. I think there was some chitchat about it being for taller people up to 6′ 6″, but it’s really for people up to 6′ 2″ and 240 pounds, that’s important to know. The Luraco iRobotics 7 can handle up 6′ 7″ and 300 pounds, so there’s a big differential there, as far as size recommendations go. Also, the Infinity Presidential is a new chair, we just got it in our showrooms last week, it’s a nice chair. It’s listed at $8495, it’s a good, quality chair. I haven’t experienced it too much because we just got ours in our showroom on Friday, and you know, we’ve been so busy with the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales, that I haven’t had a chance to really experience the chair, but I will, and I’ll let you know how it is, but that is another high-end 3D L-track. It’s a similar chair, or the same chair as what they have at Mattress Firm, and there are different models from Infinity that are kind of similar, like there’s the Imperial, the Presidential, the Genesis, and they all have subtle differences, and I will talk about those in a blog post in the future. I have the list of the differences, there’s not many of them, but I can’t remember them offhand, and I have it tucked away for one of my blog post entries.
[SCREEN TEXT: Braintronics with Casada AlphaSonic Model]
Alan: Also, the AlphaSonic chair from Casada, that’s a chair that has a feature called ‘Braintronics,’ and it’s a little hardware box that plugs in to the back of the chair through a USB port, and what’s involved with it is synchronizing the brain waves of your brain. And they have background music that goes with it, and there’s three programs – or three 7-minute programs, or an 8, a 6, and a 6, or something – but three different programs, 7 to 8 minutes long, that together, create this Braintronics experience, and I haven’t gone through the whole thing yet, but apparently, it really enhances the way you feel, your sense of wellbeing, your sense of health. But I, you know, I haven’t experienced it myself yet, so I can’t speak to it, as far as, you know, actual experience, but it’s kind of a neat feature, and that chair, by the way, comes with a 1 year parts and labor, 2 year of parts, and 10 year structure. I don’t know how much the structure will really fall apart in any amount of time, so I’m not sure how profound that is, but it sure as heck is a lot longer than any other chair that has a structure warranty.
[SCREEN TEXT: Ogawa Touch 3D vs. Ogawa Smart 3D]
Alan: Let’s see, what else did I want to talk about? Oh, and the Ogawa Touch 3D is basically, a similar chair to the Ogawa Smart 3D, same silhouette, it looks the same, but it doesn’t have the wireless tablet as a remote control, it has a wired tablet. It is wired to the chair, so there’s no app that goes with it, no wireless downloading of information, and it’s pretty much the same chair, but with, you know, a number of less features. It doesn’t have the electronic leg extender, it does have 3D rollers, it does not have 17 auto-programs, it only has 9. There are a few other differences between that, and the Ogawa – oh, here, as a matter of fact, I think I’ve got those right here – let’s see, OK, we talked about the difference in the tablet. The shoulder airbags in the Ogawa Smart 3D are adjustable, with three width settings and you can rotate them up and down for three inches, the Touch 3D shoulder airbags are fixed. The Ogawa app is available only for the Smart 3D, not for the Touch 3D, 17 auto-programs versus 9, 12 massage techniques versus 6 massage techniques. The Smart 3D has armrest controls, the Touch 3D does not, and I talked to you about the ottoman. But you know what, it looks, for all intents and purposes, it looks like the Smart 3D, and it has the same massage, 3D, it has different, obviously, massage techniques, but the basic feel of the rollers is the same, because the roller mechanism is essentially the same. OK, let’s see, oh, and we have the Presidential in our showrooms, and we will have the Luraco Legend in our showrooms hopefully within a week.
[SCREEN TEXT: Check Out the New Massage Chair Relief Home Page!]
Alan: We finally completed the site redesign. I’d mentioned it to you a number of times before. It finally got done on Thanksgiving eve, and I’m very happy with the layout, but the layout is very simple, it’s not at all like it used to be. There’s a lot less text, but the things that make Massage Chair Relief so unique are accented in these, we call them tiles, on the home page. Tiles that talk about ‘My Chair Finder’ software, which is a software we use, that we’ve developed that you can use to kind of pick and choose the features, the price, the brands that you want, and it’ll filter out all the chairs that meet those criteria. We also have a separate tile for our comparison chart, which is a very popular landing page on our website. We also have our Peace of Mind Lifetime Labor warranty, we also have our video library, and our article library, all in a separate tile, one tile for each. And we have all of our financing, and we can do up to 48 months on certain models, at certain prices, but we can do 6, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48 months. The cost, the higher up the financing length of time you, for 0% interest, it’s going to be more expensive to us. They charge us quite a bit of interest, or not interest, but very high processing fees, up to 16 and 17%. So, we can’t discount chairs on those longer terms, but we do have those terms available. And then also now, our 90-day return policy, which we’ve had for a few years, or you know, I think three, or three or four years, and it’s the best return policy in the business, and now it’s even better because, from now until the end of the year, we’re offering free returns. So, before you used to have to pay 50% of the return shipping costs, which was still better than everybody else, and you had to pay the credit-card-processing fees from the original purchase. We’ve wiped out all that, so all you have to do is keep the box – and this is a good tip for all of you, if you’re going to buy a chair from us, or from anybody – keep the box because returning the chair, if you decide to return it, is a pain in the royal rumpus, unless it’s, and it costs a lot too, unless you have the chair boxed up in the original packaging. But we will pay for, we’ll pick up the chair, and we’ll pay for the return shipping, there’s no restocking fees, no handling fees, no processing fees, unless you finance the chair through Synchrony Bank, then we will deduct the processing fee, because like I said a moment ago, they’re quite expensive, they’re quite high. Anyway, the site redesign, take a look at it, I really like it.
[SCREEN TEXT: Donations to the Make-A-Wish Foundation]
Alan: I still donate to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. I’m not allowed to say that a portion of every chair goes to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, but we do mention on it, throughout our website, that I am, Dr. Alan Weidner, is a supporter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and between you, me, and the fence post, I still donate a portion of every chair sale to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and we’re up to almost $40,000 now, but I can’t mention that on the website, and I’ll probably get my hand slapped for mentioning it here. But anyway, thank you for your support, and buying a chair, because that helps up support the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
[SCREEN TEXT: Current List of Floor Models in Each Massage Chair Relief Showroom]
Alan: Let’s see, oh, I’ve listed the current models that we have in each showroom on the website. On our website, if you go down to the footer, you’ll see ‘Utah Showroom,’ ‘Southern California Showroom,’ and if you click on those links, it’ll take you to a page that’s dedicated to that particular showroom in Utah, and in California, and recently I added all the models that we have in those showrooms. So, if you want to check and see what models we have in the California or the Utah showroom before you come and visit us, go to those pages, and you’ll see what we’ve got going on, and what chairs we have available.
[SCREEN TEXT: New Ekon Massage Chair from Osaki]
Alan: Osaki has a new chair that’s either out or coming out soon, and apparently, it’s going to be from the same factory that the Infinity chairs come from, and the Human Touch Novo XT comes from. They’re going to call this chair the Ekon, E-K-O-N. it’s going to be retailing for $7999. If it’s coming from that factory, I know the quality is good, and Osaki’s invited me to come to their place in Dallas, and try out the chair, or just, you know, get a floor model. But it looks very similar to the Infinity Imperial, I think that’s the model it looks like, and when I was at that factory in China a couple weeks ago, that was the chair that they were, if you look at the end of my video – by the way, that video’s up now, you can go on our YouTube channel and see, but it’s about a 20-minute video, but it walks through the process of making a massage chair in this beautiful, beautiful factory – anyway, at the end of the video, you see that the actual chair that they’ve been making in the factory that day, and it looks exactly like that chair. This is an Infinity chair that was in that video, but this chair kind of looks like it, so it looks like another option from that factory. Well, I guess that’s about it, eh? We’ve got Christmas still coming up, and the rest of the holidays, and so sales are going to continue to accelerate, as people start to get a little frantic about hitting the deadlines. And I don’t know exactly yet what the deadline is for guaranteed shipping, but for white-glove delivery, before Christmas, you might want to plan on at least two weeks. So, two weeks before the 25th would be 14, would be, what, the 11th? Well, the 11th and 14 days, yeah, the 25th, the 11th, so maybe mid December, early December, you want to get white-glove delivery, do it. If you’re going to get standard curbside delivery, which is free with every one of our chair purchases, you can plan on about a week. Luraco sometimes takes a little bit longer because they assemble the chairs there, and test them before they ship them out, that usually takes a couple of extra days. But if you want the chair before Christmas, for, or as a Christmas gift, or a holiday gift, please make sure you just order with some spare time, and if you want to be reminded, again, download my free report, and you’ll be on my mailing list, and you’ll be notified of the sales, and the deadlines, and the safe times for getting a chair ordered. I’ve known people who have ordered chairs a day or two before the last shopping day, and we’ve been able to get it to them, because it’s local, like maybe someone in Southern California orders an Inada chair, or a Human Touch chair, and their facilities are right there, so we can go pick up the chair and deliver it, but around the country, it gets increasingly difficult the closer we get to Christmas. Plus, it’s just swamped right now with sales, I mean, with holiday shipping. I mean, my goodness, everywhere you go, there’s just UPS and FedEx, and Postal Service trucks, and other, unmarked trucks that are delivering things left and right. So, you can bet that right now, especially with the online sales, it’s crazy busy, and so get your stuff in early, that’s my word of advice to you.
[SCREEN TEXT: Please “Thumbs Up” Like This Video!!]
Alan: Well, I think that’s about it for this week. If you found this video helpful, please feel free to thumbs up ‘Like’ us on our YouTube channel, and of course, share this video on your social media platforms, whether it’s, you know, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn, or Twitter, or whatnot. We appreciate you helping us spread the word about massage chairs. I didn’t really get in to a rant today about anything, as I have the last few issues, or editions, but I do have some beefs in this industry that worry me, and that I will raise a warning shot for you about. And I’ve talked about them in the past, like no-name brands, and making sure, you know, the warranties are clear, making sure that you understand the return policies, making sure that you understand what you’re paying for, and what you’re not getting, understanding that low-ball pricing will get you, you get what you pay for, so anyway, I could go on and on. But anyway, I’d like to be kind of a sounding board for you if you have any concerns about anything, let me know, and I’d be happy to talk about it in this format. But again, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and I am going to see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.
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