Massage Chair Industry Update – September 4, 2019 (Video)

September 6, 2019
 By Dr. Alan Weidner
September 6, 2019
 By Dr. Alan Weidner

Massage Chair Industry Update – September 4, 2019 (Video)

Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – September 4, 2019”

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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 4th, 2019. Thank you so much for visiting. We’ve got a number of things to discuss today, some interesting stuff actually.

[SCREEN TEXT: Ogawa Smart 3D Discontinued]

Alan: OK, so, there’s a couple thing I’m not quite sure – well, OK, let me just get in to the beginning – first of all, the Smart, the Ogawa Smart Chair, sorry, Smart 3D, the Ogawa Smart 3D has officially been discontinued. They’re out of stock, and they are, and the chair has been discontinued. So, there’s still the Ogawa Touch 3D, which has the same silhouette and a lot of the same features. It’s just kind of a stripped-down version of the Ogawa Smart 3D, but anyway, I just wanted to let you know.

[SCREEN TEXT: Some New Ogawa Models Coming Out Before Year’s End]

Alan: Also, Ogawa is coming out with some new models. I got a phone call from my contact over there about a week or so ago, but apparently, they’ve got a couple of other models coming out. One would be – well, anyway, I’m not – I was supposed to receive like an email with an update on all the information of these new models. I think there’s two new models, or one upgrade, or something like that, but I will get that to you hopefully by the next industry update. I don’t want to say too much right now because they may not want me to say anything until I get the spec sheet. But anyway, so Ogawa is discontinuing the Smart, has discontinued the Smart 3D.

[SCREEN TEXT: DreamWave M.8 Price Going Up to $9799 in February 2020]

Alan: Also, the DreamWave, I just learned that the DreamWave is going to go up in price in February, the DreamWave M.8. It’s already $9499, but it’s going to be going up to $9799 in February of 2020, and then later in the year, it’s going to go up to $9999. So, the DreamWave obviously must be selling well because they’re jacking the price up on it. I don’t know how much any of that has to do with tariffs or whatnot. We haven’t seen a lot of effect from the tariffs on the massage chair industry up to this point. We have seen some, but not a lot, but anyway, the price on that chair will be going up, so a popular chair, optimizing the price on it.

[SCREEN TEXT: Osaki, Positive Posture, and Panasonic Sales]

Alan: Now, also, I wanted to mention that Osaki, both Osaki and Furniture for Life have some sales coming up this month, or they are here now for this month, and I’m just going to read these to you, the Osaki Admiral, which we don’t have on our website yet, but should be up – oh, I keep saying I’m going to get it up, but I – this week after week, but the Phoenix store is, has been, and the revamp of the website have been quite time consuming, so I’ve kind of slacked with that, I apologize. But anyway, the Admiral, the Osaki Admiral and the Osaki First Class are coming with a – the Admiral’s $3999, sorry, yeah, $3999, and the First Class has dropped down to $5999, it’s usually $8999 – and they both will come with a two-year extended warranty. And then also, Furniture for Life, which is the parent company of Inada USA, and I have talk about that as well in a bit, Inada USA, also the Positive Posture, the DreamWave, and Panasonic USA, they are have a sale right now, and this is good until the end of the year, where if you buy a Panasonic MAJ7, or a Positive Posture Brio, you will also get a Positive Posture Sol, S-O-L, Sol, free, and that chair is retailing at $1999. We call it a gamer chair, it’s kind of one of those chairs that are a little lower to the ground, it’s a small massage chair. It has calf airbags, no arm airbags, not many more airbags than that, other than the calves, and the, where, I’m not even sure if it has any other airbags on the seat or on the back, but that chair, it retails for $1999. That is included for free when you buy a Positive Posture Brio, or a Panasonic MAJ7, and also, for this, part of this sale, they have dropped the price of the Panasonic MA73 to $5999. By the way, I have my floor model MA73 for sale on our website, on the pre-owned directory for $3999. So, anyway, lots of good deals coming from Osaki, and from Furniture for Life. If you’re expecting a discount on the DreamWave M.8, don’t hold your breath. The, you know, the old DreamWave, what they call now the DreamWave Classic, when that chair was really, really popular, the pricing was never discounted, and you know what, that’s not their way to go, that’s not their way. What they’ll do is they’ll you know, maybe offer a free chair like this, or they’ll offer, you know, a free extended warranty, or a free you know, white glove, or whatever. Those are the kinds of perks that they will throw in with a chair purchase. They’re not real big on discounting chairs.

[SCREEN TEXT: A New Inada USA Distributor Soon to be Announced]

Alan: Also, let’s see, what else have we got cooking? Oh, I mentioned I’d talk about Inada. The Inada USA distributor, right now, the Inada USA distributor, it has been, until recently, under the Furniture for Life banner, or umbrella. That’s going to be changing, and I know, and one of the current distributors that we have right now will be the new Inada USA distributor. I know that they’re going to be, last I heard was that they are going to be a pretty, they’re going to be a, the people that can sell Inada through this company have to be some of their top producers, and so, we will see if we will be considered a top producer by them, to be able to sell the Inada chairs, here in the USA, but they will be moving, a new company will be taking over the distributorship, and I confirmed that yesterday. I’m just not sure if I’m allowed to say anything just yet, but they’re kind of working on, they’re kind of working on the final details. Also, let’s see, yeah, there are some other things going on too. I wish I could tell you, like there’s another new model coming out from one of these companies. I can’t tell you about that yet, and another company is going to become a distributor for another company. It’s like we’re seeing a lot of different things changing in the industry as far as, you know, who’s carrying what, and who’s going to be representing what models, but I will, I’ll divulge all that to you as time goes on.

[SCREEN TEXT: Now Carrying the New Infinity Aura Chair]

Alan: Now, I had a question about – oh, by the way, we added the new Infinity Aura – which is kind of a low-price Infinity model that they just recently introduced. The price on the website is $3999. It’s an L-track, not 3D, it’s a 2D L-track, it’s got foot rollers, space saver, Bluetooth, all the regular stuff. Infinity makes a good chair, and Infinity’s got a great customer support, so I’m afraid to you know, recommend an Infinity chair, and we’re getting this new Aura in our showroom in Utah, so that I can test it out and see how it works, but I suspect we’ll probably put that in all of our showrooms, as a way to, as a low cost, you know, in the $3000 to $4000 price range bracket.

[SCREEN TEXT: “Massage Chairs for Bigger Bodies“]

Alan: OK, I wrote an article, I wrote an article in August, since the last industry update, that talks about massage chairs for bigger bodies. I’d written an article quite a few years ago about, you know, if you’re big and tall, what chairs would fit you, because that is an issue. A lot of people have trouble fitting in chairs because they’re either too tall or you’re too wide, and this is, and I’m not saying fat, I’m saying like too wide. I had a guy in from Idaho, he’s a potato farmer from Idaho, and this guy had shoulders like Schwarzenegger, but you know, but like huge, broad shoulders, and he had trouble fitting between the shoulder airbags of some chairs. And so, I’ve been reminded by a couple of people that I need to update that article, so I wrote a new article called “Massage Chairs for Bigger Bodies,” and there are some things that you need to be aware of, and I cover this in the article, but you can go to my blog to read it, but the most important thing is that a lot of the chair, a lot of the chair companies will say ‘Oh yes, our chairs will fit people up to 6′ 5″,’ and that may be true, people may fit in a chair that’s 6′ 5″, but then their neck will not get massaged, and their knees will not be, their legs won’t be completely extended in that chair, even though they could still fit in it. You know, that’s like saying, you know, Shaquille O’Neal could fit in a smart car, but you know, it’s going to take maybe a few shoehorns, and you know, maybe a broom handle to get him in there, but so these chairs, the specs are not always, they don’t really portray the reality of the fit, just through the numbers of the specs, and that’s one of the issues I have with my ‘Chair Finder’ software. My ‘Chair Finder’ software, which is a software we developed to help people pick and get chairs that fit them, with the specs that they want, with the features that they want, with the budget range that they want, but you know, I had to put a qualifier there saying ‘This chair says it can fit up to 6′ 5″,’ but really, it’s not always true, so you need to call to find out to be sure if a chair will really fit you. And of course, the ultimate way to do that is by sitting in the bloody thing, but not all of you can do that. I get that, it’s tough to find these chairs to sit in. But anyway, this article, I qualify that, you know, and I make a list of all the chairs that we carry, and I think there’s over 50 of them, but I list, of those 50 some odd chairs, I list the ones that say they can fit someone that’s you know, up to 6′ 1″, 6′ 2″, 6′ 3″, whatever, and then I tell you based on our experience in our showroom, and through our customers’ feedback, if that is really legitimate. Like for example, I think the Human Touch ZeroG 5.0, I think they say that it can fit people over 6′, or 6′, and it can, but someone that tall is not going to get their neck massaged, or like the Japanese chairs that Osaki sells, they’re good chairs, very well-built chairs, good quality Japanese-made chairs, but they say they can fit up to 6′ 4″, 6′ 5″, and we’ve had a couple of them in our showroom in California, and they didn’t, people that were that tall did not get their necks massaged. And also, you have to understand, there’s people that are 6′ 5″, but they’re all torso, or they’re 6′ 5″, and they’re all legs, short torso, like I’m 5′ 9″, I think, still, I have shrunk, I will say that, I have shrunk, but I’m, you know, on a good day, I’m 6′. In the morning, I’m 5′ 9″, let me put it that way. Well, anyway, I have a longer torso than I do legs, so I sometimes have trouble fitting in a chair that says it’ll fit someone 6′ tall, because my torso is longer, so my neck kind of goes a little bit above and beyond where the rollers go, but all the legs, all the chairs fit me in the legs, no doubt about that because I’ve got shorter legs. But anyway, so I, but I write an article about that, and I go in to it in great detail. So, you might want to read that article if you’d like to get an idea of what chairs would fit you if you are tall, or big. And by the way, most chairs, between the shoulders and, between the shoulder airbags and the hip airbags, most of them are about the same, you know, around 20 inches for both. I think the shoulders are usually a little bit wider, I can’t remember if the seat or the shoulders are a little bit wider, I wrote an article about that sometime ago too, but you know, it’s usually anywhere from 20 to 22 inches I think in the seat, and you know, 19 inches or so in the shoulders, or the opposite, I can’t remember, but that’s pretty standard. But some have airbags in the shoulders that are, that flip out pretty easy, like the Luraco iRobotics 7 doesn’t have any hard-shell casing around the shoulder airbags, so there’s no restriction, like a lot of the chairs do, they have like a hard plastic shell, and so when the airbags inflate, your shoulders have no way to go but in, and if you’re really broad shouldered, it’s going to squeeze the dickens out of you, and you’re going to feel it. Others like the, like the iRobotics 7, has kind of loose, a loose shoulder airbag, so when it inflates, it has some give to it, so a wider body can fit in there. Anyway, I’ve probably given you way too much information in too short a period of time, but read the article, it’ll explain a lot of that stuff to you.

[SCREEN TEXT: Warranty Registration for Your New Massage Chair]

Alan: Also, warranty registration, this is actually a question I had from one of my staff members, and it’s a great question. Do you have to register your new chair to get the warranty? The general rule is no. The receipts that you have, and you know, having the chair in your home with the serial number, that’s all you need. The serial number, and your receipt, and then we can verify, as can the massage chair company verify that you have a warranty, whether it’s a factory warranty, or, or and, or I should say an extended warranty and/or the factory warranty. I think some of the chairs, like I think some of the, I think the Infinity chairs, they come with a card, a registration card, you can go ahead and fill that out, and I would encourage you to fill it out and send it in, but you are covered. And if you ever have any question, like let’s say you have to file, or open a ticket for a problem with your chair, and they need to see your receipt and you can’t find it, because maybe you deleted it, or you threw it away, let us know, we keep a record of all of our receipts back years, like I think I’ve got them back 10 years, and you can call us and let us know, or email us, and we’ll send you the receipt as we have it. As long as it’s under the same name that you originally bought the chair from, some people had it under a spouse’s name, or a kid’s name, or a parent’s name, and then their name is a little bit different, so as long as we can figure out what the name is on the order, we can find it for you. But anyway, you are covered, your warranty is covered on, and then, and that’s on the factory warranty, and the extended warranties. But if you have a card that comes with a chair, fill it out and send it in anyway.

[SCREEN TEXT: Our Very Own Lifetime Labor Warranty]

Alan: And speaking of warranties, we have a Lifetime Labor warranty, and you don’t need anything, other than the proof of purchase from us that, and you’re covered by that. And you know what, I’m going to talk a little bit about that, and I’ve talked about this before, and it kind of pisses me off, and excuse my vernacular, but I get phone calls from customers that have spoken to our competitors, and the competitors say that our Lifetime Labor warranty is bunk, that it’s a joke, that it’s not, it’s just a marketing ploy to get people to buy chairs from us. I, nothing is farther from the truth, we stand behind every chair we sell, and every customer that has need of a warranty. Now, there are some places, like we just had a phone call from a guy in some corner of Texas that is only serviced by a tech, and we have three or four networks that we tap in to, and the only tech that’s close to this guy is a, like I think it’s a 400-mile trip from New Mexico. So, even Dallas or Houston is not close enough, or San Antonio, it has to go to New Mexico, and then this guy’s going to have to pay like $400 for travel, you know, and we have, if it’s over 25 miles, if you’re over 25 miles from a tech, you pay a $1 a mile, and they charge us that, and we charge it on to the customer. But the service call is free, and if you’re under 25 miles, which 99% of the cases are, there’s no charge to you at all, and we fulfill it, and this is not, I’m not lying about this, and if any of my customers are watching this that have benefitted from it, please feel free to leave, please feel free to leave a review or a comment. But my name, my reputation, my business, I talk about these things on my video, like this is not something I’m hiding like, you know, we don’t talk about this on our website, it’s just kind of a word-of-mouth thing, like some people do with these kinds of, well, nobody has this kind of a warranty, but it really bothers me that people will, my competitors, and thing is is my customers will believe that, and so they call me to verify it and say ‘So-and-so said that it’s a sham.’ Well, nothing is farther from the truth, and you know, most of those cases, they deal with me personally. So, anyway, I just had to get that off my chest, but this Lifetime Labor warranty, this is no joke, we do it, and we honor it, and we actually promote chairs that have a low recurrence of breakdowns and failure rates, and have good customer support because we, I want to keep the cost low, you know what I’m saying, and there’s some chairs that have a high failure rate, so we sometimes will move people away from those chairs, in to chairs that we know have a lower failure rate, and have good customer support, where they will take care of our customers immediately. And so, I mean, we will certainly try to minimize our costs because it’s not cheap to send out a tech. I’ve got one customer right now that has a chair, they sent them the wrong parts three times. Well, two times, and now the third time, he just got his part. It has cost me, I think at the end of this visit, it’ll be $340 that I have spent on techs because the company keeps sending the wrong parts to my customer, because they’re not diagnosing the problem right. I’m trying to avoid stuff like that because that’s expensive to me, that affects my bottom line, and it’s not cheap. But anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox, but oh my gosh, if you have a, if someone feeds you that line, that we’re just putting this up as a sham, please call me, you know, I’ll hook you up with customers who have received Lifetime Labor warranty support from me, and we’ll show you that what we’re doing is legit. And if you have a question about whether you’re covered in an area, call us and give us your zip code before you buy the chair, and we’ll tell you ‘Yes, there’s a tech, as of this moment, yes, there is a tech in your area,’ and we can let you know. So, if you have any qualms before you buy the chair from us, call me and I’ll tell you if we have a tech in that area. Anyway, ah, I’m all hyperventilating, I’m probably twitching pretty good too. My kids ask me ‘Dad, well, why do you twitch so much when you get fired up?’ and I say ‘I don’t know, man, it just, ever since I was a kid I was that way.’ You should see me playing hockey, man, I look like a washing machine out there, or not a washing machine, but a laundry, yeah, a washing machine out there, just twitching and going. But anyway, enough of that, I’ve kind of gone off on that soapbox for a bit, I apologize if I’ve gone on too long.

[SCREEN TEXT: Update to Our 90-Day Return Policy]

Alan: OK, and I, by the way, speaking of our policies, I just made a change to our return policy. Our return policy in the past has been 90 days return from the date of purchase, OK, and so, it was, from the date that you bought the chair to the date that we should have the chair back in our property, back in our premises, in our possession, 90 days. If it’s longer than that, you get charged a 25% restocking fee. If it’s over 110 days, no returns, and before anybody complains about that, having those limits, just know that nobody else has a 90-day return. The only other company that has a longer return than that is Costco, and they’re not a massage chair company, and there’s no telling what kind of support you’ll get from Costco. Oh, well, I’ll tell you, you won’t get any support from Costco, you’ll have to go to the massage chair company to get the support, and then if you don’t have any support there, you’re screwed, because you can’t go back to Costco and say ‘Hey, they’re not helping me, they’re not sending me the parts,’ but you can come back to us and say that, right, got that? So, a 90-day return policy, we pay for the return shipping. Anyway, I have changed the, so we’ve run in to some issues, we had some issues with chairs that were, they weren’t on back-order, but their, but they had been on back-order for 10 days, I think it was some Luraco chairs, and they, and we had orders that went in, and it took 10 days before they shipped them out, 10 days, and they were not on back-order. They had been on back-order, so they were trying to catch up on getting their chairs assembled for orders that they had while they were on back-order. Well, that held up my customers chairs, and they waited 10 days, and were still waiting for them to be delivered, and it’s nothing against Luraco. Sometimes that happens, sometimes you’re waiting a week for a shipment, and it comes in, this happens frequently, but it made me realize that 90 days from the date of purchase, that customer just lost 10 days from the date of purchase to the date of delivery. So, we changed it to the date of delivery, so, not the date of delivery, sorry, the date of shipment. So, when your chair ships, that is when your 90-day return policy begins. So, if it’s two days later, and then we have record of when it ships, they keep pretty stout records of all of this, but if it takes two days before that chair ships out, your 90-day return begins on that day that it ships out. And I’ve changed it all on the website, I’ve tried to make it very clear. It’s not the delivery date, because I, mark my word, I will get phone calls from people saying ‘It wasn’t delivered until this day.’ I know, but that is not when it was shipped, but they say ‘It should be when it’s delivered.’ No, it’s shouldn’t be, not on our policy. We have 90 days, you have 90 days, there was no excuse to be calling me at the last day saying ‘Hey, I need to return my chair.’ Well, dude, it’s due tomorrow, you’re not going to get to it to me by tomorrow. ‘Yeah, but it was delivered a week later,’ it doesn’t matter, that’s our policy, and we have to stick by it. If we just give in to every gripe about our policies, because the customer was not completely aware of our return policy, I cannot be held accountable for that, and there are some situations where we help out, if there’s you know, issues with a chair that’s never worked, or whatever the case may be. But anyway, that’s our new policy, not 90 days from the date of purchase, it’s now 90 days from the date that it ships out. And then so if it’s back-order, and this has always been our case though, our policy, it always has been, if the chair is back-ordered, you will not, the return policy doesn’t begin until it ships, once it’s in stock. Well, now all chair deliveries, for all chairs, the 90-day return policy begins the day that it ships out. Alright, enough of that. Now, let’s see if I’ve got everything covered.

[SCREEN TEXT: Please “Thumbs Up” Like This Video!!]

Alan: I think that’s just about it, I covered a lot of stuff. Sales, models being discontinued, prices going up, new models, being falsely accused of shamming people with my Lifetime Labor warranty, and our new return policy updates, and an article about bigger bodies and massage chairs. Well, I hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please feel free to thumbs up ‘Like’ us on our YouTube channel.

[SCREEN TEXT: 888-259-5380]

Alan: And if you ever have any questions, or you feel like you need to talk to me about anything, you can call the store at 888-259-5380, and if I don’t answer it, I can get the message, and I’ll call you back. But oh, and as far as the Arizona store goes, we are, I’m going there on Friday, two days, to do interviews with people. So, we’re in the process of hiring. We are going to be picking out the flooring then, and the paint colors, and I think that’s what we’re doing this week. So, things are progressing along, and I don’t know if we’ll have it done, I’m still hoping we can have it done by the end of this month. Oh, and we’re placing the order for the sign, the outdoor sign this week as well. So, anyway, if you have any questions, of course, give me a call. If you found the video helpful, like I said, thumbs up ‘Like’ us, and of course, share this video with your friends and family if you found it beneficial. And if you’d like to help us spread the word about massage chairs, we do appreciate that as well. Well, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner at ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ and I will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.

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