Massage Chair Industry Update – October 30, 2014

November 4, 2014
 By Dr. Alan Weidner
November 4, 2014
 By Dr. Alan Weidner

Massage Chair Industry Update – October 30, 2014

Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – October 30, 2014”

updateAlan: Well, hello, this is Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com’ and today is our biweekly massage chair industry update, and today is October 30th, Thursday, October 30th, 2014.

[SCREEN TEXT: Happy Halloween!]

Alan: Tomorrow’s Halloween, happy Halloween to everybody that’s going out to trick-or-treat. I’m not a big – I mean, I love Halloween, I got kids, I got grandkids, I love Halloween – but I’m not a big fan of the season of Halloween, and the scary movies, and all that stuff, I’m a real, I’m a real wimp when it comes to horror movies, and Halloween movies, I don’t watch any of them, I’m a chicken. As a matter of fact, well, I’m just too wimpy, I’m a wimp, that’s the bottom line. Anyway, happy Halloween to those of you that celebrate it, or go out and have fun with it, and be safe. Well, you know, we’ve got some things to cover this week, we have some good things to cover, and a bunch of it has to do with some new models, and whatnot, or some new updates on existing models.

[SCREEN TEXT: Stock Status]

Alan: I think I mentioned to you last – well, you know what – let’s talk about stock status. As far as I’m aware, the ‘Crème’ Inada DreamWave and the ‘Red’ Inada DreamWave are supposed to be in stock this week, or next week, and everything else is good. Human Touch is in good shape, except for the AcuTouch 8.0 Bali, which is on back-order. We’ll talk a little bit about that chair in a few minutes.

[SCREEN TEXT: Black Iyashi Coming in November!]

Alan: Infinite Therapeutics is in good stock, I believe. Now, I mentioned the ‘Black’ Iyashi has been announced, and I just received an update that it’ll be out, middle of November, it was supposed to come out the, like the end of October, but it’s going to be more middle of November, toward the end of November, but you know, we’ve got pictures up on the website of that ‘Black’ Iyashi, I’ve put it up on the website. It’s really a beautiful looking chair, and I don’t know if those images have been doctored at all, or if that’s directly from the manufacturer, from Infinite Therapeutics, but man, that ‘Black’ is a good looking, glossy, black plastic-shelled chair. It’s pretty, I like it, and it comes in black on black, and black on the caramel, there’s not a black on red option. OK, so ‘Black’ Iyashi, we mentioned that. I did a – oh yeah, I did a – oh, and by the way, the Panasonic MA73 is on back-order until November as well. I just found that out by trial-and-error because I have a customer that ordered one, and Dan’s been chomping at the bit to get his MA73, and it’s been taking a while for them to ship it out of the Panasonic warehouse. Well, I received notification that it’s back-ordered until November, hopefully by the middle of November, at the latest, I don’t know, we’ll see, but anyway, the Panasonic MA73’s back-ordered, but the MA70’s in stock, and I think, as far as I can I remember, that’s about it, all the other chairs, I think, are in good supply.

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

Alan: We have – oh, Make-A-Wish Foundation, you know what, I think I have a little bit more – we have some more donations to make, but we’re over $9000, we’re going to hit $10,000 by the end of the year, there’s no question about that. $10,000, you know, our goal was $7500 for the year, and we started a year ago November, and so, we’re at $9000 something, and it’s almost November. November starts, of course, on Saturday, but we’ve, you know, we’ve exceeded our goal by probably $2000, which is fabulous, and for those of you that don’t know, I donate a portion of every chair, every chair sale, goes to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. We’ve already supported one child’s wish, that was Samantha, and now we have a new child that is being granted a wish through our efforts, through your efforts, and every time you, every time a chair is purchased, we donate. Also, if you don’t, if you’re not buying from us, or not buying a chair at all, but you still want to donate, you can go to our website, and look at the Make-A-Wish link, and you can go and you can donate through there. It’ll take you directly to the Make-A-Wish, Make-A-Wish.org website, and it’ll have our little corner of the website there, and please feel free to donate, we love donating to kids. You know, well, again, I think I’ve talked about this before, but I’m very, very – I love children, I’ve got six of them – I didn’t plan on six, I’ll just have you know. We planned on, I think, four, but then, you know, a number of years later, we had a couple more, and to be honest, you know, I’m 55 now, I was, I think, yeah, I was 42 when we had our last one, and you know, and I’ll be honest with you, my wife and I fell in to as close – like I’m not a depressed person, I’m a pretty upbeat dude – but the closest I ever came to depression was when we found out we were pregnant with the sixth one, and we were depressed with the fifth one, which happened, which came along seven years after our fourth one. So, anyway, don’t talk to me about planned parenthood. I am the antitheses of planned parenthood, we ended up with six kids, but you know what, they’re awesome, and I love them, and the two younger ones, they say have kept me younger. I don’t know, I think they keep me up at night, maybe a little bit more, and I probably twitch a little bit more now than I used to, but love the kids, and now, my youngest kid’s best friends with my oldest grandkid. Again, it makes no sense, planned parenthood, we are not. Anyway, I don’t know where I was going with this, but kids love Halloween, and we love having the kids, and having fun – and was that even where I was going with this, I don’t know, but anyway, there’s a tangent that – and that’s what happens to you when you get over 55, you start to go off on tangents, and you don’t really even remember what you were talking about before. Anyway, OK, so we have – oh, I was talking about the Make-A-Wish, duh, yeah, I was talking about the update on the Make-A-Wish – but anyway, thank you for those of you who have purchased from us, and for those of you who have donated through our website, thank you for the Make-A-Wish contribution, I am so grateful. You know, if you ever have a chance to go to a Make-A-Wish office, or a headquarters, or anything, we have one here in Utah, and there’s, I know there’s other ones around the country, it is a very, very emotional experience to go there. You’ll see little written testimonials of kids, and where they’ve been, and what they’ve done, and what dreams have been wished for, and reached, and some messages from family members after some of the children have passed on, talking about how much they loved the experience, and how it changed their lives – and you know, it is, Make-A-Wish is a good, good, it’s a good organization, it’s a good mission, you know, it’s just, it’s for kids who are not well, and you know, who wants to see kids suffer, who wants to see anyone suffer, but little kids – it’s just a great organization. Anyway, enough of my soapbox.

[SCREEN TEXT: New Titan TP-8300 & TP-8400]

Alan: OK, we added the Titan TP-8300, and 8400. Now, I haven’t gotten anything written up on it, I’m still accumulating all the feature sets to make my comparison chart updated, and I’m getting everything ready to write the content of the pages, but you can go look at the pages on our website. Go look under the Titan category, we have the Titan category up on the nav bar, and you can take a look at the TP-8300 and the TP-8400. The 8400 has an S-track, or L-track, so it comes down the S-track, and then it goes down to the butt, for the L-track portion, and that’s kind of neat. They both have foot rollers, they’re both zero gravity, nice chairs and decent prices too. They’re both under $4000, good additions to our repertoire of chairs.

[SCREEN TEXT: New AcuTouch 8.0 Bali]

Alan: I’ve also finally added the AcuTouch 8.0 Bali, I don’t know what has taken us so long to get this up, there’s been, not an overabundance of information about the chair, so we’ve tried to get some information. I still don’t have much, I don’t have much on the – well, again, now, we haven’t done the actual writing of the content for the website yet, or the product page – but you can go look at pictures, it’s a nice looking chair. I think it’s an upgrade from the AcuTouch 6.0, which Human Touch sells through Costco, only. I have never been able to sell the 6.0, and I’ve never sat on one, so I really don’t know much about it, but I think the 8.0, we’re going to get one in our showroom, and I think it’s going to be a – it’ll be nice to have one – and we can write reviews on it, and do videos, and all that sort of thing. Also, let’s see, what else we got cooking, oh, by the way, yeah, the AcuTouch 8.0, I told you that that was out of stock, and you know what another interesting thing is, on their website, on Human Touch’s website, they say the AcuTouch 8.0 Bali only comes in ‘Black,’ but if you download their brochure, about the Bali, the 8.0 Bali, the brochure says there’s a ‘Bone,’ a ‘Butter,’ a ‘Brown,’ and a ‘Black.’ So, it looks like there’s an option for more colors, but Human Touch obviously doesn’t have it on their website, all they have is ‘Black,’ and that’s out of stock. Of course, watch our website, as those colors are announced, if and when they become announced, to the public, or to us, I’ll post it up there.

[SCREEN TEXT: Inada Flex 3S Price Increase December 1, 2014]

Alan: OK, the Inada – you know what, OK, well, I’ll just mention, the Inada Flex 3S, which is a very popular new model from Inada, it looks like a mini Inada DreamWave, but very different chair, very different chair, ideal for stretching, for posture correction – anyway, sorry about the interruption there, the Flex 3S price will be going up to $6799. It is not an Inada DreamWave, it looks like a small version of the DreamWave, but aside from the body styling, that’s about it, but it’s a great chair for stretching, for posture correction, and whatnot. Anyway, that chair’s going up on December 1st to $6799, it’s currently $6499, so just be aware, and that leads me to my next topic.

[SCREEN TEXT: My Interview with Cliff Levin, President of Inada USA]

Alan: I interviewed Cliff Levin again, and every year, every year, or year and a half, I try to interview the people, the principals in the companies that I, for whom I sell chairs. It’s hard to get ahold of some people, like – well, I won’t mention any names or companies – but some of the companies, they don’t really make anybody available for me to interview, that’s, any of the principals, or the major players in the company, and it kind of disappoints me. I did an interview with Cliff Levin, who’s the president of Inada USA, who’s always very available to talk to, and very open, and very – well, for the most part, transparent, of course, he’s only going to tell me as much as he wants me to know – but we had a great interview, it was about an hour long, we did that on Monday morning. I’m having the video broken down, or the interview broken down in to three videos, so that we can post them on YouTube, and you know, you can get them in bite-sized chunks of 20 minutes apiece. It’s a good interview, we talked a lot about, a lot in detail, about the upgraded DreamWave, we talked about the Flex 3S, because these are, you know, these are new models they have, and Inada doesn’t come out with models, new models, very often. We talked about the Duet, which is a chair that a lot of people ask about, which the US distributor, you know, Inada USA has chosen not to import, and we talked about why, and you know, it’s just a great conversation. Cliff’s always good because he’s knowledgeable, he’s not afraid to talk about certain issues in the business, and I love hearing his input on what’s going on in the industry, what’s going on with Inada, and anyway, watch that interview. I don’t know if it’ll be up, I hope to have it up, maybe, part one, by this weekend, I know my editor guy’s working on it, but if not, it’ll be up by next week, and we’ll have all three parts up for you. Anyway, great interview, listen up, and see what he has to say.

[SCREEN TEXT: Panasonic MA73 – What Does It Really Have?]

Alan: Also, let’s see what else we can chitchat a little bit about. Oh, you know, I wrote a blog, a couple of blog posts, and one of the things I wrote about – and you can go to my article gallery, or blog posts, to read these – but I have been getting conflicting stories about what the MA, Panasonic MA73 really has – what features does this chair have? When you read the initial press release, and the initial brochure, online brochure – and I’ll have to qualify my comments by saying that I have an MA70 in my showroom, and I know that the MA73’s an upgrade to the MA70, but I wasn’t quite clear what – and I wrote a, I’ve written a couple of articles about updates of the information that I’ve received, and my – maybe, my own interpretation of what it really meant. Like, they were talking about sole, or sole and palm massage and roll – well, how did they call it – well, heated, dual heated rollers, in the soles and in the back. So, I was kind of wondering, does it have foot rollers, and then I was wondering if it had hand rollers because it was talking about palm massage. I thought ‘Wow, maybe this thing’s got palm and sole, foot, sole, you know, soles of the feet massage.’ Then, I thought, and then it talked about, talked about – what else did it have – well, it has, it’s better for taller people, it can go up to 6′ 4″, 6′ 5″, which is great. The MA70 went only up to 6′ 2″, and the EP 30007, which is the precursor, or the other model before the MA70, could only go up to like, about 5′ 11″, 6′, tops, and that was if you had a short torso, and longer legs. Anyway, this MA73, it looks like, and I’ve done some digging, and I even contacted Panasonic, and they weren’t even sure what, exactly what the features were. So, I emailed one of – and then they were saying it has undulating massage in the palm, they would come out and say things, but it still was not definitive, like does it have foot rollers, they didn’t know, does it have hand rollers, don’t know – they would say things like, it has an undulating, or a pressure massage in the hand, so I’m thinking ‘Well, maybe it’s airbags.’ Well, anyway, I’ve had a few customers that have purchased the chair, I emailed one of them, and he wrote back a letter, and emailed it to me, which answered all my questions. I posted it on my blog, you can read about it, it does not have foot rollers, it does not have hand rollers, you can understand the confusion when you read my updates on the blog. Anyway, it is an update to the MA70, but I don’t really know, still, completely, how different it is from the MA70.

[SCREEN TEXT: Panasonic MA70 Floor Model for Sale – $3499 with Full Warranty]

Alan: I’m selling my MA70 floor model for any of you that you care to look in to it. It’s regularly $6999, we’re selling the floor model, and it’ll have a full factory warranty, a full three year, parts-and-labor warranty, and another two years of parts, for only $3999. It’s the white, or ‘Ice’ colored MA70.

[SCREEN TEXT: 888-259-5380]

Alan: So, if any of you are interested, give me a call at the number above, 888-259-5380, and we can get this chair sent off to you in no time. Anyway, I wrote, go ahead and read about the MA70, what I’ve written in the blog post, and in another blog post, I just wrote this morning, it talks about options – OK, I’m getting more and more questions from people saying ‘Doc, I want a massage chair, but I don’t want it to look like a massage chair’ – and of course, a massage chair, a full-blown massage chair is a massage chair, you know, and when you walk into a room, you go ‘Massage chair.’ You don’t think ‘Hmm, that might be a recliner, maybe, you know, hiding massage features, you know, you don’t think that. You look at a massage chair, and it’s like ‘Massage chair, seen it at the mall,’ or whatever.

[SCREEN TEXT: Massage Chairs That Double as Recliners]

Alan: Well, there are some chairs, and some of the companies – like Human Touch has been great at this, Panasonic’s now trying to do this, Osaki is doing it with a model, but they’re coming out with models that kind of double as – they’re massage chairs, but they double as recliners, so they can look, maybe a little bit more the part of a recliner, and not be so ostentatious when you walk in to a room, like when you walk into a room and you see a massage chair, like I said, bang, you see it. Well, a chair like the Human Touch HT-9500, you know, that chair looks like a recliner, it does not look like a massage chair. It’s a beautiful, leather, big, classic looking massage chair, but you’d never know it was a massage chair to look at it. Of course, there is a trade-off between aesthetics, you know, the looks, and the feature set, and if you’re going to have a chair that looks exactly like a recliner, well, you know it’s not going to have arm airbags, and it’s not going to have shoulder airbags, and in some cases, you’re not going to have a big, old remote pedestal sticking up because that is like ‘Duh, this looks like a massage chair.’ So, I’ve talked about, I think, six different models, six or seven different models that are like a nice blend of the aesthetics and the feature set, trying to find that happy medium for the interior decorator, and the person who has back pain and needs therapy.

[SCREEN TEXT: www.Massage-Chair-Relief.com/Blog/]

Alan: So, anyway, that’s another article I just posted on my blog, and you can feel free to take a look at that, and see what chairs we recommend. You know what, I think that is it for this week, I will be back in a couple weeks, and we’ll talk some more about anything else that’s cooking. Watch for more information on the TP-8300 and the TP-8400, the two Titan chairs on the website. It should have all the data up in the next few days, as well as the AcuTouch 8.0 Bali from Human Touch. I am Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ thanks for watching my massage chair industry update, we will see you again in two weeks. If you have any comments, feel free to leave them, you can call me at 888-259-5380, you can go through and visit with me through our chat software on the website, or you can email me, whatever, if you have any questions, I’m always available. Well, see you in two weeks, have a great day. Bye bye.

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