I don't know since when, massage appliances have become the "just needed" products of many Chinese families' home life. From massage appliances in various body parts to massage chairs, massage sofas, and even massage beds, they have become common objects in modern people's life. At the same time, sedentary can damage physical skills and increase health risks. In order to avoid this risk, all kinds of massage appliances are popular among office workers. As an indispensable member, massage chairs are infiltrating into more families in 2020 driven by a healthy economy.

Market growth has stabilized and product functions have been continuously optimized

Compared with other household appliances, massage chair skillfully combines traditional Chinese medicine massage theory with modern science and technology, becoming a new entrance to family health care. According to public data, in the first half of 2019, the search index of massage chair reached 1941, ranking second in the hot products of health appliances.

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The promotion of attention has promoted the development of the overall massage chair market. Although the haze of COVID-19 pneumonia has not completely dissipated and health demand is increasing, the impact of the epidemic on the massage chair market, which is the main health preserving concept, is relatively limited. Amoy data show that in the first half of 2020, the overall market of massage chairs in China performed well. Taking the online market as an example, the retail sales of China's massage chair online market increased by 68% year-on-year to 2.77 billion yuan. The offline market also entered the stage of rapid recovery after the epidemic gradually recovered.

Compared with the development of the domestic market, massage chairs have a relatively high penetration rate in Europe, America, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian countries, providing natural advantages for product export. Therefore, the export market plays an important role in the development of massage chair industry.

At present, China has become the largest manufacturer of massage chairs in the world. According to the statistics of China industry information network, China's total export of massage appliances was US $2.197 billion in 2016 and US $2.612 billion in 2018. According to the data provided by Alistair massage chair, in 2019, the export volume of China's massage equipment products reached US $3.16 billion, a slight increase of 3.75% year-on-year, and the overall market growth stabilized.

In this development trend, the optimization and innovation of product functions has become the main means for many mainstream massage chair enterprises to improve product competitiveness. It is understood that at present, the brands in the massage chair market mainly include aojiahua, Rongtai, haozhonghao (elister), Panasonic, Fuji, OSIM, and lejin health (Lemo bar), which focuses on the commercial market. Taking aojiahua as an example, in terms of domestic massage chairs, aojiahua Ogawa series adds intelligent modules to the basic functions of massage chairs, and cooperates with professional massage small household appliances series applicable to all parts from head to foot, so as to achieve better massage effect. According to Zhou Guohai, President of Alistair, from a simple massage cushion to a simple massage chair, from only back massage to all-round massage of neck, hands, feet and legs, from 2D to 3D, from kneading to percussion, these are the exploration of product functions in the whole industry and the optimization and upgrading of massage chair functions from the perspective of users. "To develop new functional components through existing technology and meet the needs of more users through product innovation, so as to achieve more comfortable massage effect is the technical optimization goal of elister in the next stage," he said.

Household and commercial enterprises have different advantages, and the industry standard system needs to be improved

In terms of product classification, the existing massage chairs on the market can be divided into household and commercial according to the application field. According to the product function, they can be divided into basic massage chairs, massage chairs with negative ion function, multifunctional massage chairs with heating function, high-tech massage chairs equipped with VR equipment, etc. Compared with commercial products, the functions of domestic massage chairs are more abundant. Zhang Yunlong, deputy general manager of R & D of aojiahua Intelligent Health Technology Group Co., Ltd., told the reporter of electric appliance that there are differences in structural design, control mode and use mode between domestic massage chair and commercial massage chair. He said that based on cost considerations, commercial massage chairs are mostly entry-level products, with more popular configuration, more durable and simpler operation. In the control mode, the control of domestic massage chair is mainly manual controller and intelligent voice control. The commercial massage chair is started in the form of code scanning payment and controls the running time.

At the same time, due to different product functions, use scenarios and methods, there are also differences in product performance requirements of commercial massage chairs. During the interview, many business leaders agreed that commercial products have slightly higher requirements than household products in terms of safety, durability and anti pinch performance, which is mainly due to differences in product application scenarios. Taking momoda, a commercial product of Rongtai, as an example, the person in charge of Rongtai technology management said that in order to reduce the risk of pinch injury, Rongtai has reduced the "lying down" function of commercial products and integrated an electronic anti pinch injury sensor module on commercial products. When the product runs to a certain angle or there is interference under the machine during operation, the machine will stop running immediately to ensure the safety of users.

Nevertheless, from the development status of massage chair industry, with the rapid change of e-commerce environment, many small and medium-sized massage chair brands enter the market with low-cost products through online channels, there are a large number of production enterprises, few large-scale production enterprises, low industry concentration and market penetration, and the phenomenon of false product publicity is more common. The main reason is that the industry standard degree and standard system are not perfect in the early stage of market development.

Therefore, with the active promotion of mainstream enterprises in the industry, various standards related to the massage chair industry have been issued or implemented since 2005. According to the information provided by aojiahua, up to now, the number of relevant standards of massage chairs has reached 18 (including national standards, industry standards and group standards). At present, GB / T 26182-2010 health massage chairs for household and similar purposes (hereinafter referred to as the national standard for massage chairs) is being revised and has entered the stage of soliciting opinions, and the specific release time has not been determined.

According to Chen Qing, vice president of Alistair, the national standard of massage chair under revision has little change in the basic indicators of products, mainly focusing on optimizing technical indicators, such as reducing the noise value from the original 68dB (a) to 58db (a). In addition, although the revision of the national standard of massage chair has increased the limit on Intelligent indicators, it is only used as a recommended indicator because the technical application of intelligent functions on massage chair is not mature at this stage.

In addition, enterprises hold different opinions on the judgment of 3D and 4D movement. "Electrical appliances" reporter learned through interviews that 3D movement can be adjusted up and down, but also can be adjusted before and after, while 4D is a new concept put forward in recent years. There are two kinds of claims: one is to realize the telescopic function of the machine under the oblique; The second is that 4D introduces the concept of time on the basis of 3D. Chen Qing questioned the concept of time. In his opinion, if the 4D concept is considered according to the time standard, it can be applied to any product, not limited to massage chairs. For this dispute, as of the press time of the reporter of electric appliance, the industry has not yet reached a unanimous conclusion.

Keeping pace with the times, intelligence and precision have become the main technical breakthrough direction

Although China has become the world's largest massage chair production base, most products are mainly exported, and the market penetration of domestic massage chairs is still at a low level. Therefore, for Chinese massage chair manufacturers, under the trend of gradual growth of domestic demand, increasing market layout, keeping pace with the times and improving brand power has become the key to improve product penetration.

During the interview, many mainstream enterprises agreed that keeping pace with the times is a "necessary skill" for the development of the massage chair industry. This is closely related to the home attributes of massage chairs. "A few years ago, the massage chair industry was more popular in European style, and now the light luxury style is more popular. These changes are inseparable from the popular trend of the home design industry." Zhou Guohai frankly said, "the massage chair is not only a massage function, but also a chair, which is a part of the whole home decoration design, which requires that the appearance design of the massage chair must meet the trend." The person in charge of Rongtai said, "we not only keep up with the current trend, but also launched a cartoon series of massage chairs with the help of fan effect to further improve the recognition and acceptance of products."

At the same time, intelligence and precision have become the main technical breakthrough direction of massage chair industry. "The appearance and functions of massage chairs are evolving towards intelligence, home furnishing, specialization and integration. In the future, in addition to the existing technologies such as intelligent interaction, fatigue tracking, movement and control, the development of 5g technology will give massage chairs more use scenarios and possibilities." the relevant person in charge of Rongtai technology management frankly said, "In terms of intelligence, achieving higher speech recognition effect and allowing consumers to accurately control product actions through voice commands is Rongtai's technology R & D goal in the next stage."

Elister regards massage precision as the direction of product upgrading. "On the basis of strict quality control and product precision, it is my dream to be a popular product that consumers can afford and let our products enter thousands of households." Zhou Guohai said.

For the future development prospect of the massage chair industry, many mainstream enterprises recognized it. Zhang Yunlong analyzed and said: "in the future, the characteristics of networking and large user traffic will effectively promote the rapid development of commercial massage chair and household massage chair business in the Chinese market." Aojiahua will also focus on developing domestic market and online channels, further improve market share for different market segments, and serve families and individuals with health monitoring, management, intervention and protection needs.