Q1		Massage chairs are not like computers.
			Guess how many massage chairs are sold in the U.S. 20 million units? Perhaps massage chairs sell like computers every year? Well, unfortunately, this is not the case. In October 2004, 1,134,311 people were using search engines to find computers compared to just 14,052 (1.23%) shopping for massage chairs. Massage chairs are made by a small number of companies in Japan, Taiwan, China, Mexico and the U.S.A. Japan has the biggest market for massage chair products and currently their best providers are Panasonic, Sanyo, Fuji, and Family brands. Japanese companies irst real massage chairs came out on the market in the early 1950's. Taiwan started a few decades later and have tried to improve function, color, etc in recent years. But massage chairs are not like computers or televisions that can be made in massive numbers. It is still being made by small to medium sized companies, so the production is limited. Due to such small numbers, some companies are making molds and casters in few numbers meaning they basically will make a limited edition of the mold of a chair. In this case, if there is some off-fitting or mistake in the original caster whether it is in a bad part or slight defect in the chair itself, they will tend to delay modification of the mold unless it is cost effective. If someone like Dell computers have a defect, they will change mold or production line and recall the computers made with this mistake, But for a few massage chair makers, it is not cost effective to change an expensive mold. Each casting or mold can be an imperfect cast or mold at any time. So that is why we have some chairs on market that has genetic reliability issue. Check for the quality of the chair to make sure it can last more than a few months. Ask the salesman how many returns they have had in the last month, what they were for, and whether or not they have a written guarantee on the return policy. When we started our business on line in 1996, we tried to sell a brand called Takara, the chair company that went bankrupt recently. Among 5 units of the chair we sold each month, we had a average of one having some sort of problem within two months. Some chairs arrived to our customers' house broken internally so the tapping was not working or the motor malfunctioned or the circuit board burnt out at the initial stage of operation, etc . Some other problems included a lot of noise or the burning smell of lubrication oil. The defec rate was too high so we decided to cancel selling that model and researched for a higher quality chair. After we started to sell Sanyo chairs that are made in Japan with sophisticated quality control system, we have had many satisfied customers both in quality and massage technique. So we learned that customer satisfaction comes from the quality of chair design as well as the good massage that they offer. The reliability issue is important. Motor, control panels and circuit boards are essential and the need to check out the quality is imperative before you purchase a chair. It is an investment after all, it is worth your research and time to search for a quality chair.