Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – October 24, 2018”
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Alan: Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com’ and today is our biweekly massage chair industry update for Wednesday, September 24, 2018, and we are getting close now Black Friday/Cyber Monday, which is – well, the whole month of December is busiest time of the year for the massage chair industry – so you’re going to start to see more specials, and deals, and whatnot. But most of those, we have in our showroom already, we just can’t advertise them until Black Friday/Cyber Monday, but anyway, I thought you would be interested to know that there are a couple of sales going on right now.
[SCREEN TEXT: Ogawa Sale!]
Alan: Number one, Ogawa has – and these are good – I think these are good throughout the holidays – but the Ogawa Refresh Plus has $300 off. It’s regularly $2599, and it’s on sale for $2299. The Active L is regularly $4299. It’s on sale for $3299. The Ogawa Touch 3D, regularly $5499, is on sale for $4499, so $1000 off, and the Smart 3D is regularly $6999, on sale for $5899, which is also, well, it’s $1100 off, over $1000 off.
[SCREEN TEXT: Osaki/Titan Sale!]
Alan: Osaki has some sales as well. They have their popular Osaki Maxim on sale for $2899, regularly $3299. Their Dreamer is on sale for $4999, and their Ultra is on sale for $2399. The Summit, also on sale for $3999. The Ultra, the Maxim, and the Summit are all L-track chairs, the Dreamer is a regular S-track chair. So, those are the sales that we have going on right now that we are aware of.
[SCREEN TEXT: Price Increase Nov. 1, 2018 of Human Touch WholeBody 7.1]
Alan: Now, I should mention also that Human Touch – and by the way, these Chinese tariffs are going to start to come in to play a little bit more – that you’ve probably heard about on the news, some of these chair’s prices are going up, and one of those, effective November 1st, is the minimum advertised price for Human Touch WholeBody 7.1 is going to jump from $1799 to $1999. We have already seen some prices in the past on some of the Infinity chairs.
[SCREEN TEXT: Holiday Shipping Deadlines]
Alan: And also, we’re starting to get some shipping schedules for the holidays, and so, you know, a lot of people want their chairs by the 25th of December, and so there’s going to be some shipping deadlines, and we do – and of course, the shipping deadlines are every year, but Human Touch has already come out with theirs. For Thanksgiving Day – sorry, not Thanksgiving Day, for – oh, just a minute – OK, for massage chairs for, the cutoff date for massage chairs at Human Touch, for what they call threshold delivery, or you know, standard curbside delivery is December 7th, and December 3rd is the cutoff for the white-glove delivery, and these are all to be delivered prior to December 24th and the 25th. So, just be aware of that if you are wanting to get a chair. Osaki came out a few weeks ago, and I mentioned it on that update, at that time, that you know, it’s projected to be a very busy season, and there’s going to be a shortage of trucks and shipping vessels, if you will, available to get the chairs shipped. So, the cutoff times for most of these companies are going to be a little earlier this year. So far, we’ve seen that with Osaki, and now Human Touch, so just you know, buyer beware, if you want a chair by the holidays, you know, by Christmas, you know, order ahead of time, and no, order now, for heaven’s sake, don’t, I wouldn’t even wait until Black Friday. If you’re worried about sales, you buy a chair from us, and then there’s a sale that you see on our website on Black Friday, you know, I’ll reimburse you the difference, so you don’t miss out on any Black Friday sales, but please, you know, don’t delay too much if you need chairs by Christmas, you’re going to want to act soon.
[SCREEN TEXT: Pre-Owned Directory – Great Deals!]
Alan: Oh, also, speaking of deals on chairs, I’ve got like four chairs right now on my pre-owned directory on my website. If you go to the website, and you go to the ‘Current Deals’ tab on the navigation bar, you’ll see ‘New Chair Deals,’ or ‘New Chair Specials,’ and you’ll see our pre-owned directory, and we have a three-month old Inada Flex 3s that’s available for $2999, regularly $4299, and that one comes with a full five-year parts-and-labor warranty that the first customer had purchased, so that transfers over to you. We have an Osaki JP Premium 4s, which is one of the three Japanese-made chairs that Osaki carries, 100% Japanese, the chair is regularly $5999, and it’s on sale for $3999, and this is a one-month old chair. And we have two very popular chairs right now are the Osaki Ekon and the Osaki Maestro, and both of those chairs, we have two-month old black Maestro, and a two-month old brown Ekon, and those chairs are usually $8999, and they’re on sale for $5499. So, there are some great deals on the website right now, so as far as the pre-owned directory goes, and all the warranties transfer for these, so you don’t have to worry about that. You know, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but if you buy chairs, like a used chair, like on a classified ad, or something like that, the warranties do not transfer, if it’s one purchaser selling to another buyer. You know, we have these returns, these are chairs that we’ve purchased and sold to our, or not, we’ve purchased them, but sold to our customers, when they’re returned within our return policy time period, we can list them again, to resell them, with the warranty still intact. When you buy a used chair from another, you know, from a private seller, you do not get that warranty transferred. So, that’s an important thing, and when you’ve got electronic equipment that you’re dealing with, it’s good to have coverage.
[SCREEN TEXT: Human Touch Novo XT2 Additional Interesting Features]
Alan: Let’s see, oh, you know, I got an email, and a comment on my blog, and an email in my email inbox from a lady that works for Human Touch, and she is a sales rep for them, and she mentioned to me that I had neglected to mention a couple of things about the Novo XT2, which is a very popular-selling chair for us. It’s one of our top-selling, high-end L-track chairs. But she mentioned that there are eight, on the new XT2 – and by the way, the Human Touch XT was what – or it’s the Novo XT, the Novo XT came out almost two years ago, and they updated it just a few months ago to the XT2, Novo XT2, and on my website, there are some lists of some things that are the differences between the two. But a couple of things that I neglected to mention that I wasn’t aware of, is that there are eight pre-programmed sound themes to listen to while you’re on the chair. So, if you’ve got, if you’re sitting on the chair, enjoying a massage, and you want to listen to some music, there are pre-programmed sound bytes, or sound themes, that you can listen to while you’re sitting on the chair. And also, the Human Touch Novo XT2 has a Droid and Apple app, so you can download it from the Droid store, or the Apple store, the app store, to get the app for the Novo XT2, which means that you can use the app to operate the functionality of your chair, you don’t need to use the remote control. And in some cases, we’ve seen that the app can work a little bit better even than the remote control, because there’s more functionality available. So, that’s an important thing to know.
[SCREEN TEXT: Ogawa SuperTrac Model Discontinued]
Alan: Oh, the Ogawa SuperTrac is going to be discontinued. When we first opened our California store in 2015, the Ogawa SuperTrac was a chair that we purchased for that store, it was a new model at the time. Well, they’re discontinuing that chair, and now they’ve gone to, Ogawa’s gone to the Active L, which is a bumped up, upgraded version of the SuperTrac, but that chair has been discontinued.
[SCREEN TEXT: New Infinity Models Coming to Massage Chair Relief!]
Alan: And we will start, as you know, or may not know, we are a distributor for Infinity, and we are now considered not just an online distributor, but also, a furniture store because we have stores, and so that reclassifies us as a retailer with them, and so we can start carrying a few other chairs that we, in the past, have not been able to carry, like the Riage X3, which is a model that’s been around for a long time, or not, maybe, well, yeah, it’s been around a while. It’s a very, very popular-selling chair for Infinity. They sold it, originally through Brookstone stores, but those are now defunct, or at least that relationship is now defunct, or ended with, between those two companies. And so now the Riage X3 is available to all furniture stores that have an account with Infinity, and so now that we’re considered a furniture store with them, we can carry that, and we will also have available the Infinity Smart X3, which is a kind of a very similar version to the 8500X3, which is again, a very popular seller, and we will also be selling the Genesis, which heretofore, has been sold by Costco, and they have a new model coming out in the next month, called the Overture, which is one of the high-end L-track chairs. So, all those chairs I just mentioned, the Riage X3, the Genesis, and the Overture are all 3D L-track chairs, which means you can adjust the depth of the rollers to make the massage more or less intense, and it means that you have rollers going down the back in the shape of an S, and then under the butt in the shape of an L, and that’s how the word L-track came to be. So, just want you to know that.
[SCREEN TEXT: Massage Chair Tip!]
Alan: And also, finally, here’s a tip from one of my customers. This is a great suggestion, and I don’t know if I’ve seen this before, but it is something that you might want to be aware of when you’re purchasing a chair for your home. We have a customer that had a chair that was partly on a rug, and partly on a hardwood floor, and so there was a certain amount of distance between the rug and the hardwood floor. The chair was at an angle, so it was kind of like, a little bit torqued, when it sat on the rug and, you know, partly on the rug, and partly on the hardwood floor, and they found that they had a consistent problem with the rollers, with the roller track going off, and they couldn’t figure it out. I can’t remember whose chair that it was that they, what company it was that imports the chair. But they couldn’t figure it out because the roller track kept going out, the roller mechanism kept going bad, and so they figured out that it was because this chair was on an uneven surface, and it torqued the chair just a little bit, and so the roller mechanism that goes up and down a track was also a little bit off kilter, and it wore out the metal, it wore these metal shavings off of the roller track, and it created this recurrent problem. So, I guess the tip would be, and I’ve never heard this before, so this is all kind of, this is a new thing that I’ve heard, thanks to this customer, but I would recommend, when you get your chair, keep it on an even surface. So, if it’s on a rug, put it on a rug, if it’s on a hardwood floor, 100% on the hardwood floor, or if it’s on carpet, leave it on the carpet. This may not be a situation with every chair, it may have just been with this one chair, or certain models, but that might be a little word for the wise, to make sure that your chair is on a level surface, and a fairly even surface to prevent things like that from happening.
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Alan: Well, I guess that’s about it for this week for my massage chair industry update. If you found this video helpful, please feel free to thumbs up ‘Like’ us on our YouTube channel, and of course, help us spread the word about massage chairs by sharing this video, and any of our videos, on your social media platforms, you know, whether it’s Facebook, or Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, which I understand is now also defunct, you know, Instagram, whatnot. We just appreciate you helping us spread the word. I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and we will see you on the next video. Bye bye.
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