Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – September 12, 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 12th, 2018. I’ve had some computer problems lately, and I haven’t been able to get the update done for the last couple of weeks, and I apologize for that. There’s some good information that needs to be shared with you today, and we’ll get right in to that. OK, now, a couple of – or the last broadcast, the last two broadcasts – I mentioned how the Elite massage chair company apparently has shut down, and they were the US distributor for the Casada massage chairs. And Casada is a German company that imports Chinese chairs, and one of the models that we carried was the Alphasonic, which we have in our showroom, or have but were selling in the showroom, we don’t have it there any more as a sales piece. But that company – well, I had a customer that needed some help with his Casada AlphaSonic chair, and since Elite shut down, he took it upon himself to try to contact Casada directly in Germany, which he did – and they actually did send him the parts that he needed. So, of course, you have to speak German. Apparently, this customer knew enough German to communicate with them, but they did actually send the parts to him that he needed, and so they did stand behind the chair. The problem is, number one, if you don’t speak German, number two, if you’re unable to figure out exactly what’s wrong with your chair through conversations with Casada, because of the language barrier, and maybe because they can’t, they may not be able to tell exactly what’s wrong with your chair, from a distance, without a tech looking at it. But I just wanted you to know that if you do have a Casada chair, and you are having some problems with it, try contacting Casada in Germany. I don’t have a contact number for you. I’m sure you could do a Google search for ‘Germany and Casada massage chairs,’ but I just wanted to let you know that even though the company has, the US distributor has shut down, you can still get help from Casada in Germany, if you need some parts, or need some help, but you might want to have someone that can speak German translating for you. OK, the new iRobotics 7 i7, we were not allowed to mention anything about this chair until the Labor Day weekend, and of course, my computer was down, so I couldn’t do a massage chair industry update at that time, but just to let you know, the iRobotics, the Luraco iRobotics, which has been an extremely popular-selling chair for us, it’s an American-made chair, one of the quietest, if not the quietest chairs that we have, good quality, good build, three-year parts-and-labor warranty, with two extra years of parts, they have come out now with their iRobotics 7 Plus. And the Plus, it’s going to, it’s priced $500 more, it is going to be, it has the same colors, it looks exactly the same, it has a few different features. It’s got better speakers, it’s got a more durable, and quicker remote control, it’s got a calf-airbag adjustment, intensity adjustment, as opposed to just calf and feet in the past, but now they’ve got a separate adjustment for the calves. I’m trying to remember the other differences between them. Let’s have a look here. They’ve got a, they’ve got the Bluetooth speakers, which are – oh yeah, you’ve got Bluetooth now – so the speakers are better, and you can tell the difference in the quality of sound right away. When we got it in the showroom, and we turned it on, you know, it has the voice command, where the woman’s voice on the chair will walk you through what you’re going through if you have that option on, and boy, it’s a lot clearer now. The old speakers on the iRobotics 7 were weak at best, and kind of cheap, but these new ones are much better, a lot deeper sound, and you have Bluetooth connectivity, so you can you know, pair your phone with, or your tablet with your new iRobotics 7 Plus, and listen to the music from your device, and on good speakers. You have new percussion tapping modality. There wasn’t a lot of tapping on the iRobotics 7, the iRobotics 7 Plus has a few more options for tapping and percussion, and those are the main differences. The iRobotics 7 Plus is available now for $8990, and the price of it went up $500. We have it in both of our showrooms. The remote control is definitely – oh, and it has a pause feature – so on the remote control, you can pause whatever program you’re in, and then have it start up again. So, and this is going to sound weird to say this on video, but if you have to go to the bathroom, and you’ve got to stop the chair, but you don’t want to start all over again, with the scan, and start the program from the start of, you know, from minute one, or second one, you can just press pause, get out of the chair, and do your thing, and then come back, press pause again, and it’ll start the program right where you left it, and that’s a pretty convenient feature to have. Not a lot of chairs have that, believe it or not, just a few chairs have a pause, but this is a feature now on this chair. Now, we’ve had a few calls from people that have asked ‘Well, Doc, we’ve got the iRobotics 7, and we want to have the features of the iRobotics 7 Plus, can we get that?’ And you know what, you can, they are working on a conversion package, which will allow you to have the newer features, the new remote control, and you’re going to probably need a new motherboard. So, they will sell that packaging, that package, and I don’t know what the price will be. It’s supposed to be coming out soon, but just so that you know, the iRobotics 7 Plus is now their flagship chair. Nothing’s been done to the Luraco Legend, but the iRobotics 7 Plus is now the flagship chair, and you can get a conversion kit if you have the iRobotics 7, and so that’s one thing I wanted you to know about. Number two – and by the way, the iRobotics 7 has been discontinued, it’s not even on our website anymore, we just have the iRobotics 7 Plus, period. OK, the Novo XT2 is also new, and I think I probably mentioned this to you before, the Novo XT, which has been a very, very popular seller for us, was discontinued at the first of July, and so we put up our floor models for sale, and they’ve been sold. Now they’ve come out with the XT2, which has a few changes as well. It has better speakers, it has a new remote control, we have these in the showroom, in both of our showrooms, by the way. The new XT2 has a more, I would say, a little – oh, what’s the word to describe it – it’s a more simple remote control to use. You don’t have to go through as many buttons and up-and-down arrows to get to where you want to go in the menu. It’s a pretty intuitive remote, instead of having the black LED screen-looking remote that the old one had, it’s a silver, a nice-looking silver remote, and you know, with a simple screen at the top. But anyway, the Novo XT2 has these Altec Lansing speakers, so the speakers are fantastic. And when I got in the chair, my son, Rob, who manages my Utah store, had already been playing on it, you know, playing around with the chair, and getting used to it, and I, when I came last week to sit on the chair for the first time, I turned it on, and he was sitting there next to me, and right away, his Bluetooth music came on over the speakers while I was sitting in the chair, and it was very good quality sound, like the speakers are pretty dang awesome on that chair. But like I said, there’s a different remote, there’s a few programming differences, I can’t remember them at this time, but I think I wrote an article about the differences between the two, you can see that on my blog. Oh, and here’s another thing that’s interesting, when that chair first came out in July, they had the price set at $8499, so the price went up $500, from $7999 to $8499. We just received notice this week that the price is going back down to $7999, so the same, the upgraded chair now is available for $7999, and just so that you know. Alright, we also added another chair to our showroom, not to our showroom yet, but to our website Johnson Wellness is a massage chair company that we sold chairs for a few years ago when they wanted to, when they kind of came here, and were marketing their chairs through their own brand and their own label. They canceled all those models and then relabeled them, or repurposed them as an Osaki chair, there was a Human Touch chair, there may have been one other one, but they started private labeling them through these other companies. Well, that has stopped, and now they are back to selling their chairs again. So, the old J6800, 5800, and 5600 are now available again, but they’ve also begun selling the Synca Wellness chairs, and they’ve added a couple of new models. The Synca JP1100 is a Japanese-made chair with foot rollers, it’s the first Japanese-made chair with foot rollers. The Panasonic J7, which we don’t have on our website yet, is not Japanese made, but it’s Japanese designed and engineered, but made in China, and that has foot rollers, but this new JP1100 has foot rollers. But Synca has now come out with a new chair called the Kagra, and I’ve talked about this chair before. Well, it’s up on the website now. The Kagra is basically the same chair as the Johnson Wellness J6800, but as they explain it to me, it’s on steroids, it’s got more programs, it’s got Bluetooth, it’s got more programs, and it has a more elaborate body-scanning feature. It is still Japanese and American designed, but built in China. It does not have foot rollers, and it does have zero gravity, and most massage chair from Japan, and I believe including the new JP1100 and the Panasonic J7, do not have zero gravity still, and none of the Inada chairs have zero gravity either. So, that chair has got some zero-gravity features as well, and so be aware of that. Now, listen, one thing I said on the last broadcast was that Synchrony Bank, who is the company that we use for our financing massage chairs, so if you want to buy a chair and finance it, we do it through Synchrony Bank, if you want more than, 6 months or more. If you just want under 6 months, you can do it through PayPal Credit, but if you want longer terms, you got to go through Synchrony Bank. Well, they had sent us a flyer saying that they were going to be offering, from September 21 to September 29, 60-month financing, 5-year financing, because the most they’d ever had before was 48 months, now they’re offering 60. Well, we received a notification a week ago that that was a mistake. So, there is no 60-month financing. I’m still getting flyers on it, saying that it is, but we received a notification from them saying that for these massage chairs, not 60 months, that it’s not going to be available from September 21st to 29th. If you want to call during that time, and check with me to make sure that that hasn’t changed, and it’s still a no-go, do it, and I’ll find out for you. But I just wanted you to know that that 60-month financing is not on the table right now. Osaki has discontinued their 8400, and – or maybe that was the Titan 8400, it’s the Titan TP-Pro 8400 – and I just thought you should know that, and also, the Osaki Maestro, that chair has been a real hot-selling chair for Osaki, and for us, it is a chair that has probably – no, not probably, definitely – the strongest roller massage with the 3D, they call it 4D, but and I’ve got a video, by the way, on YouTube that you can check out, I just posted it a few weeks ago, but it talks about the difference between 3D and 4D, which really isn’t that much of a difference, if at all. It’s basically speed and rhythm is the fourth dimension, which really isn’t a dimension, it’s just a feature to make the three existing dimensions work a little bit different, and if that didn’t make any sense, go check out my video, and I’ve also written about it on my blog. So, anyway, but anyway, the Osaki Maestro has got a 3D or 4D-roller track that you can move forward, in the third dimension, and boy, can it dig in deep. That chair has probably, not just for L-tracks, but for all tracks, has one of the strongest roller massages of any chair we’ve seen, and that chair is, it’s regularly $8999, call us for in-store specials, but I will tell you that we have a two-month old ‘Beige’ one on our website for $5499. So, if that’s a chair that you’d like, take a look at it. It’s an awesome chair, it’s become quite popular. It has an app, I’ve tried to use the app, I haven’t been able to figure it out yet. I’ve got to call Osaki to get a little coaching on how to use it, but the remote control takes, it’s got a little bit of a learning curve, but the overall feel on the neck and the traps, better than any chair we’ve probably seen, aside from maybe the Panasonic MA73, which has a trap roller, but this thing is fantastic. The foot massage is great, and it’s got calf kneading. Boy, oh boy, it’s a pretty dang good chair, and for $5499 for that pre-owned one is a phenomenal price. One thing I forgot to mention about the new Synca Wellness Kagra is that it is a dual roller. I thought about this as I was telling you about the intensity of the rollers on the Maestro. The Maestro, like 99% of the chairs out there, has four rollers, what we call quad rollers, and those four rollers go up and down your back and dig in to your spine. Those four rollers disperse the energy coming from the massage arm through those four heads, so typically, those four, those quad rollers are not as intense as a chair that dual rollers, and that reminded me of the Kagra. The Kagra has got dual rollers, and the Luraco iRobotics 7 has dual rollers, the Ogawa Smart 3D, and Touch 3D have dual rollers, and those dual rollers can dig deep. They can dig deeper than pretty much all quad rollers, but I will tell you, the quad roller on that Maestro, it rivals it, it is strong, especially on the neck and shoulders, just so that you know. OK, you know what, the last thing I want to – OK, alright, one thing again, I want to touch on briefly, and I do this almost – it’s become regular now at the end of almost every one of my videos, of my massage chair industry update videos, is for you to be careful of scams out there in the massage chair industry. There’s a lot of chairs that are way overpriced, that have virtually no warranty, that have a very, very dismal return policy, at best, are way overpriced for cheaply-made chairs, and do not have a network, or they’re not distributed through retail networks, which it might cost a little bit more to go through a retail network, because there’s kind of a middle man that helps sell the chairs. But as far as recourse, if you’ve got a problem with the chair and the company’s not helping you, and all you’ve got is them to communicate with, it’s you know, buyer beware, because sometimes if you’ve got a problem, and you’re not getting it taken care of, you’ve got no other recourse. With a retailer, at least you can go to the retailer, and say ‘Hey, you know, so-and-so company is not helping me with my chair, I feel like they’re just giving me the runaround, the retailer can get involved, because the massage chair company doesn’t want the retailer, they want us to continue to sell their chairs, and be happy with their chairs. So, anyway, but well, I’m going a little bit off on a tangent there. I talk about this quite a bit because I see so many rip offs, and so many people upset with the way they’ve been treated that I just have to mention these things from time to time, and I want to talk about that FakeSpot app. I downloaded it on my cell phone, and it is an app that will help you recognize fake, paid, or real reviews on Amazon and Yelp. And if you go to, on the app, if you download the app, and you get it set up, you can plug in any vendor on Amazon or Yelp, and it will review all their reviews, and it’ll tell you if those reviews are legitimate, or if they’re paid, or fake. And holy cow, it is shockingly, it’s embarrassing is what it is to see how many fake reviews, or paid reviews some of these massage chair companies have, and it’s almost like, ah, anyway, I have some opinions about that because I’ve had some customers that have written some negative reviews for one of these companies in particular. And boy, oh boy, did they get crapped on, if you’ll pardon my vernacular, for writing a negative review, they were accused of being shills for other massage chair companies, they were called out for being dishonest, they were called, in a kind of an underhanded way, threatened, that if they didn’t take off their review, that you know, that things would go bad. Like it’s bad, it’s embarrassing, it’s embarrassing for me as a retailer, and as a resource in the massage chair industry. So, anyway, download FakeSpot, F-A-K-E-S-P-O-T, download that app, and if you’re checking out reviews, and you have maybe a gut feeling that you know, geez, everything is positive about this chair, there’s not one thing that anybody ever says is wrong with this chair, that’s a red flag. And if all those reviews are saying the same thing, this chair is great, best thing ever, yadda, yadda ya, and you got to remember, I sell some of the best chairs in the world, the Inada DreamWave, the Panasonics, the Luracos. I sell some of the best chairs in the world, and even the best chairs in the world have something about them that people don’t like, you know, whether it’s too strong, or not strong enough, or they don’t like how the airbags work, or they don’t like how the chair fits, or they don’t like, the rollers are too hard on the feet, or there’s always something that someone doesn’t like about a chair, and that is normal. That’s human nature, but when you find a chair that has no negative reviews about the chair, that every feature is wonderful, that is a red flag, and use FakeSpot. Use FakeSpot to take a look at those reviews, and see what you find, it’s quite revealing. As a matter of fact, it’s kind of shocking. So, anyway, I guess that’s about it for me. If you have any questions, feel free to give me a call at 888-259-5380. In the meantime, you can also reach out through email, and our chat feature on our website, or through our Facebook page, or anything. There’s lots of ways to get a hold of us and reach out, but we’d be happy to answer any questions for you, and help you make the right choice for a massage chair. Well, if you found this video helpful, please feel free to thumbs up ‘Like’ us on our YouTube channel, and of course, if you found it helpful, feel free to share it on your social media platforms with your friends and family to help them learn a little bit about the massage chair industry, and the benefit of a massage chair. Well, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and I will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.

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