[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDKHRCcqKhE[/embedyt]
Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – October 29, 2020”
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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 Thursday, October 29th, 2020, and we are heading in to the holiday season here pretty quick. It’s hard to believe that already the fourth quarter is here, and November is just around the corner, and of course, in November, with November, comes Thanksgiving and Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and of course, the crazy holiday shopping.
[SCREEN TEXT: Holiday Shipping Delays this Year (Thanks COVID) – Plan Well Ahead!]
Alan: And it’s going to be crazier this year because of the COVID factor, and it’s not because there’s not going to be stock of chairs, there will be plenty of stock of most models, but it’s the shipping that’s going to be the problem, and you know, the companies that we have dealt with, or that we do deal with, have given us updates, telling us, and I think I alluded to this, I may have alluded to this last week, but make sure you book well ahead. As of matter of fact, some of the Black Friday sales are starting this month, or at the beginning of November, not until, you know, don’t wait until Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. By then, the stock may be depleted somewhat on a bunch of models, or colors, and also, the shipping is going to be tenuous to get there by Christmas. For example, let’s see, we’ve got Cozzia, JPMedics, and Ogawa, their Christmas delivery cut-off time is, just for regular freight is December 4th, white-glove delivery, November 30th, so the last day of November. For Furniture for Life, which is, you know, Panasonic, Positive Posture, OHCO, and D.Core, for regular freight, the cut off is anywhere from December 2nd and December 4th. For the West Coast, where they ship out of, where their warehouse is, December 9th.
[SCREEN TEXT: White-Glove Delivery is Now Called “In-Home Delivery & Setup” on Our Website]
Alan: But if you’re looking for white-glove delivery, which we call now in-home delivery and set up, and by the way, we’ve changed that on our website, we used to call it just white-glove delivery, but more and more people aren’t quite sure what ‘white glove’ means, regular freight, people understand, curbside delivery, people understand, but white-glove delivery is a little ambiguous. So, we’ve changed it on our website to ‘in-home delivery and setup,’ that is white-glove delivery. But anyway, for Furniture for Life, their cut-off date is December 1st. So, right after Black Friday, that weekend is your deadline, so you know, there are still opportunities to get chairs in time. Like for example, in our Southern California store, we have access to Ogawa, JPMedics, Furniture for Life products, Human Touch, Daiwa, because they have all their warehouses in Southern California, so as long as they’ve got stock, we can access those, that product almost until maybe the week before Christmas, but don’t wait that long because products, the stock may be sold out by then.
[SCREEN TEXT: Pre-Order Back-Ordered Products]
Alan: For example, in terms of back-order right now, we’ve got you know, the Daiwa Supreme Hybrid is on back-order on all, on both their colors, the Dark Gray and Black, and the Brown and Brown. They are expecting new shipments at the end of November. The Black, black is a temporary color, they have a Black on Black, but they’ve only got 30 units coming on the next shipment at the end of November, and so if you want one of those, if you want any of those chairs, pre-order, because if you’re going to wait until the chairs are here, or they’re shipping out, like in the first week of December, you may not get it by Christmas, or by whatever you want, by the end of the year. So, make sure that you pre-order, and make sure you get your dibs on one of the chairs in the upcoming shipments. But anyway, they’ve got 30 Black on Black color, so that’s unique for that model. That’s the only time they’re going to have Black on Black, all the rest of the shipments will be strictly Dark Gray, and Dark Gray exterior, Black interior, and Brown and Brown, Brown on Brown for the other color.
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Alan: But anyway, on back-order also, you know, if you get my weekly newsletter ‘The Massage Chair Chronicle,’ which you can get simply by downloading my free report on my homepage of my website, or on any page of my website, you can download the free report, and you’ll get put on our weekly newsletter update, and anyway, Furniture for Life gave us some good stock updates last week. And so, the Black, or sorry, the M.8, the OHCO M.8LE, they announced that it was just, it just became available in stock. Let’s see, the MAJ7 has, oh let’s see, the MAJ7 is low on stock and selling fast, out of stock on the Beige, which will ship in the middle of November, which is coming up. The MA73 has been back-ordered for months, and every shipment that comes in, it has already been spoken for. So, for these popular chairs, like the Panasonic MA73, or some of the OHCO colors, you know, you, or the Daiwa Supreme Hybrid, you should order before the chairs get here, don’t wait for the chairs to show up before you order them, or else you may miss out altogether, and have to wait for the next shipment, which will probably be in January, so anyway, just so you know. Let’s see, the M.8, the OHCO M.8, the Saddle is back-ordered until the 20th of this month, and it looks like they have all the regular M.8 colors replenished by the end of November, so they will be ready for Christmas shipping.
[SCREEN TEXT: Current Sales]
Alan: Now, in terms of sales right now, there are plenty of sales. For example, the D.Core Cloud is on sale for $4999. Infinity, the Riage x3 has been dropped down to $3999. They’re discontinuing that model, but so they’re blowing out on low prices, only Brown is available. Daiwa is offering the Solace for $2995, and the Hubble for $3695. Now, we don’t have the Hubble up on our website yet. That should be up by this weekend, but that chair, these are significant discounts for those chairs. Ogawa is offering their Stretch 3D for $4999, and the Active L Plus for $2899. Osaki has the Admiral for $4299, and the First Class for $4999, and let’s see, oh, and they include the two-year extended warranty, and starting in November, Osaki is going to have the free extended, two-year extended warranty on any chair priced, retailed over $3000. So, that’s a good sale. Also, the OHCO R.6 is on sale for $7999. The Positive Posture Brio Sport is on sale for $5999. Starting November 2nd, which is the beginning of next week, the Luraco iRobotics 7 will be going, will be discounted in price by $500, and so there are lots of things coming, and notice how early these sales are coming. These sales are coming at the beginning of November, not Black Friday. There may be some other sales, of course, I assume there will be, for other massage chair companies, but they’re coming out earlier this year because of the demand, because of the logistics issues of getting the chairs delivered on time. And Furniture for Life also made a very interesting comment in passing in one of their announcements. They said, or their newsletters to their dealers, they say that the port of Long Beach, which is where all the chairs come in, it, let’s see, that there’s a delay in getting chairs out of there. So, the chairs will get there on the scheduled times, but because of the shortage of trucks available to haul the inventory, there will be, there could be up to one to two weeks of getting the chairs just out of the port to go to the warehouse of the massage chair company. So, order early, don’t wait. It may sound self-serving by me telling you don’t wait, order now, but genuinely, I’ve been doing this for 16 years, and every year, there is a stock issue with some color, or some model, because things weren’t purchased, because things, because people didn’t plan, and so they’re trying to purchase at the last minute. They should’ve purchased earlier, if there’s a shipment coming in, pre-order, get your order in on that shipment, so that you don’t miss out. And please, just take my word of advice, I’m not saying this so that you’ll go out and buy massage chairs right now. I don’t care if you buy them now or later, but if you want them for the holidays, buy them, you know, order them now.
[SCREEN TEXT: OHCO M.8LE – Only 2000 Made]
Alan: Also, now I mentioned the OHCO M.8LE a little bit earlier, did you know that that chair, the LE stands for ‘limited edition.’ The OHCO M.8LE is the upgrade of the M.8, it has leather upholstery and a plush, what do they call that? The interior is velour, kind of a velour interior, but a premium leather exterior, and it comes with a certificate of authenticity from the designer Ken Okoyama, as being one of the 2000 available models. They’ve sold 300 worldwide, but I just thought, you know, I never thought about this, but they only have 2000 of these LEs. So, once they are sold out, they’re gone, but it’s a beautiful chair. We don’t sell, obviously, we don’t sell a lot of them, they’re priced at $15,000, and but it’s a beautiful chair, beautifully upholstered, beautifully engineered chair. But anyway, I thought you’d be interested to know that they’ve sold about 300, and they sell them worldwide, of course. Let’s see, OK, so the white-glove delivery I mentioned to you, the Supreme Hybrid is on back-order.
[SCREEN TEXT: Inada Nest – “End of Life”]
Alan: Oh, the Inada Nest, which has been a chair that we’ve had for quite some time has finally reached its end of life, as they call it. That chair is done. We have one pre-owned one in our California showroom, and I think we’re selling it for $2899, or $2999. That includes free shipping, and that’s a Japanese-made chair, a very nice chair, the Inada Nest is a good, quality chair, of the ones we sold, I don’t think we, knock on wood, we’ve ever had a breakdown that we’ve been aware of, of the chair, so a very well-built, solid chair. Yeah, anyway, take a look at the Inada Nest if you can. There’s not a lot of information about it now because they’re sold out, but we do have that one at the California showroom. Let’s see, what else have we got? Oh, the California, OK, so our showroom, OK, so because of COVID, we have cut our hours down to, actually, we don’t even have regular hours right now for any of our stores. We have by appointment only, and so we’re trying to do our part to minimize the probability of COVID spread in our showroom by not have more than one customer there at a time, and sometimes, of course, people will come in while you’ve got someone there, but we encourage appointments. But on Saturdays, in our California showroom, we, our hours used to be 10 to 4, but Saturdays have become increasingly busy. So, we’re going to go 10 to 6 on Saturdays, you can come in between 10 and 6. Of course, we want you to call to schedule an appointment, so you’re not there with three or four other people at the same time, but Dominick, our salesman there right now, he is seeing customers as late as six o’clock at night on Saturdays.
[SCREEN TEXT: Pacemakers, EMF/EMI & Massage Chairs]
Alan: Last week, well, a while back, I wrote an article about pacemakers and massage chairs, and people often inquire about, you know, these electromagnetic fields and the interference they cause, that are caused by the devices that emit them, and what effect it has on the health of a person who uses a massage chair. In other words, do massage chairs emit an EMF and does it create an electromagnetic interference, or an EMI, and the answer is yes, it does emit EMFs, but the real question is does it create much of an EMI, and so the pacemaker article was written kind of because someone who happened to be a licensed massage therapist, so there may be a conflict of interest there, but they wrote an article saying that people with pacemakers should never own a massage chair. And of course, the massage chair companies, to cover their butts, have a bunch of legalese that says ‘Do not use if you have a pacemaker.’ But we have comments on the article that I wrote from customers that say that they have had ever since they’ve had a pacemaker, and never had a problem. I can think of two off the top of my head. One is a local customer, a person from Colorado that came to our local store, and actually had his, you know, had his pacemaker checked before and after coming to the showroom, and no effect. So, last week, I wrote an article where I actually measured the EMFs using an EMF meter to see how, what level of microteslas are being emitted by each of the massage chairs in our showroom, in the Utah showroom. And it’s interesting because like if a telephone emits 1.5 microteslas, the laptop, or the keyboard actually from my laptop, or my desktop at my office, it was the keyboard that emitted EMF, not the screen, which is what I thought would emit. But the keyboard was emitting about three microteslas, which is the unit of measurement for these, or one of the units of measurement. Anyway, we measured all of the massage chairs in our showroom to see, you know, how bad these EMFs were, and I want you to go ahead to the blog, to my article library or my blog on the website, and you can read the article. And it has a listing of the models and the level of EMFs, and most of them are right in a very, very normal range, akin to the computer and the cell phone, kind of in that range, many of them are. Some of them are a bit higher, but I just want you to know that these EMFs are not a huge player in massage chairs. Now, if someone is very concerned about EMFs, and they don’t want any at all, and they’ve gotten rid of their phones, they’ve gotten rid of their laptops, they’ve gotten rid of their televisions, and whatnot, then yes, I understand that they don’t want a massage chair. But if you’re using all those daily appliances, and you’re using them hours a day, the exposure to an electromagnetic field is far less than the massage chair, which you might use once a day, or once every two days, or twice a day even, is going to be less than what these other ones are emitting, and affecting your health. So, anyway, a couple of good articles, go ahead on the blog and read those, and get a little bit of education from the article about the pacemakers, but also about the case study that I did from the showroom.
[SCREEN TEXT: Our California Showroom has had a Recent Facelift – Come Visit and See!]
Alan: Oh, speaking of, I mentioned the California showroom, we’re very happy to announce that we redid the floor, we took out the carpet. I don’t know what I was thinking about, putting a carpet. I have a carpet here at the Utah showroom, and in Utah, carpets are a big, or rugs are a big deal, carpet’s a big deal. So, I figured well, I’m going to put in a nice carpet in the California showroom. Well, that bloody thing is just a disaster, it just gets messy and dirty early. It’s a lighter color with our light blue paint on the walls, and oh my gosh, every time I go down there, it’s like drops, like it looks like people have dropped drips of water, and then you walk over it, and then it creates a black spot, and oh my goodness, it drove me nuts. Anyway, I went back to cover for our staff a few weeks ago, to visit, to meet with customers while our staff was gone, and I couldn’t believe how horrible it looked, and so we found a contractor to put in a new floor. We put in new lights, new lenses on the lights, we brightened the place up. All the lightbulbs are the same, and there’s no lightbulbs that are out, or flickering, or dim, or you know, off color from a new one. We replaced it all, and boy, the showroom looks great. I’m actually going this week to move a chair, and I’m going to be going to see the showroom, but I want, you know, for those of you that live in Southern California, please come by and come visit. Of course, we have treats there, and some other things to kind of keep you occupied besides the massage chairs. But hey, come and check out the new vinyl flooring, it’s pretty dang awesome, if you don’t mind me saying so, and the staff is very happy. They are just so happy to have, you know, a nicer looking floor, and a brighter office, and it looks great. Anyway, I thought I’d just throw that in. Let’s see, well, I think that’s just about it. I still don’t have a landing page on my website for my Buyer Beware article, or brochure, that I wrote. I have requests from it, and if you are interested in it, just email me, or reach out to us through, you know, through our Contact Us page on the website, and I’ll send it to you. We should have, should, knock on wood, we should have the landing page up within the next few days, and you can just download the report. But it’s a very helpful report, helping you see the red flags when you’re buying a massage chair, and there are a lot of red flags out there, and it’s taken me a couple years to kind of put my thoughts together, and accumulate bullet points of all these different things that I think people should be aware of, and I finally put it down on paper, if you will, or digitally, and that PDF file is available. And just, until it’s on the website, feel free to reach out to me, and I’ll send it to you.
[SCREEN TEXT: Shiatsu (Manual Mode) = Rolling]
Alan: OK, and kind of in closing, I just wanted to make a couple of observations about massage chair that come up in the showrooms when I’m talking to customers, but don’t really come up a lot just in regular conversation because if people call me on the phone, this topic typically does not come up, but on massage chairs, there, many massage chairs have a feature called rolling. So, when you go to the manual settings, and you want to create your own program, you can either have, do kneading, the rollers can do kneading and tapping at the same time, and then a couple of other modalities, but then there’s one called rolling, where the rollers don’t do anything, they just roll up and down your spine, and some people love that. Well, there’s other chairs that don’t have a rolling feature. Well, guess what, after 15, over 15 years in the industry, I finally learned this last few weeks that in the manual settings, for most massage chairs that have a Shiatsu setting, and do not have a rolling setting, the Shiatsu setting is a roll. So, if you’re, if you want to get a chair that has a rolling feature, not moving, just I mean, not kneading and tapping and all that sort of thing, but just rolling up and down your spine, which does feel rather soothing, to be honest with you, if the chair does not, if you’re looking at chairs, and it does not have a rolling feature in the manual set, look and see if it has a Shiatsu mode. If it does, I’m pretty sure, based on my experience in the chairs in my showroom, that is the rolling feature.
[SCREEN TEXT: Changing Width of the Rollers]
Alan: And the second thing I wanted to mention is people, from time to time, ask about changing the width of the rollers. So, let’s say you have a big back, and you want the rollers to go out farther, or you have a really petite body, and you want the rollers to come in more narrow. People want to know if they can change that, and you can, but here is the catch, you cannot change the roller width, and most chairs, and I don’t know, there may be a chair out there, and I’m sure one of my suppliers will make me aware of this, but there are, the chairs typically do, you cannot change the width on the kneading. The kneading is fixed. If you want the rollers to knead out here, or knead more in here, you can’t do that, it’s, the kneading itself actually covers narrow and wide widths. If you want to change the width, and you can on all these chairs, it’s in the tapping mode, and it’s usually in just the manual settings. So, let’s say you go back to the manual settings, you want the rollers to go, you want the rollers to roll up and down, or tap back and forth, and they stay in one place, you can have them tap wider, or tap narrower, roll narrower, or roll a little bit wider, and so that is kind of just a little, a tip for you as you, you know, experience chairs, and sit in them, and try them out. Maybe your own chair, you didn’t even realize it does that, or doesn’t do that, these are tips that you can use on your massage chairs. So, anyway, I hope that helped.
[SCREEN TEXT: Massage Chair Suppliers Update]
Alan: I just want to see if there’s anything else that needs to be discussed. No, you know, if you, one good thing about our newsletter, which I mentioned to you, about which I mentioned earlier, or alluded to earlier to earlier, is that we have now, some of our suppliers do updates and they send us, every week, or every two weeks, an update to put in to our newsletter, so you can see what they have to say about their products, or about what’s going on, about stock, about sales, about the history of their company, or whatever. We’ve had some good contributions to my newsletter, so take a look at that, and the section is called ‘Massage Chair Suppliers Update,’ and it’s another reason for, you know, downloading my free reports, you can get my newsletter because it has that information. And of course, it has sales in there, and the latest news and notes, my feature article, it talks about, you know, our pre-owned directory, etcetera, etcetera. There’s lots and lots of good information, the last five to seven articles in our, in my article library, so you can just go to the newsletter and click on the link to read the article. Anyway, hopefully you find that helpful. Alright, so I think that just about does it for this week.
[SCREEN TEXT: Please “Thumbs Up” Like This Video!!]
Alan: I hope you found this video helpful. If you did, 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, or any of our other videos, with your friends and family through your various and sundry social media platforms. We do appreciate you helping us spread the word. Well, I’m Dr. Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and I will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.
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