Text: Interesting Business Zhang Hanjing
During the National Day holiday, scenic spots and shopping malls are in a state of "people from the crowd", and these places always have to queue up; In the interval of waiting, many people will choose to use a shared massage chair to relieve fatigue and charge their mobile phones by the way.
The shared massage chair was supposed to provide people with a moment of "relaxation", but many tourists complained on social media that they were "beaten" and "humiliated" by the shared massage chair.
Some netizens bluntly said on Xiaohongshu that they wanted to find a massage chair to rest at the airport, but they were "beaten" by the chair for nearly 20 minutes, and the whole massage process was like "Wolverine's skeleton was carried up and beaten by Deadpool". Some people in the comment area also mentioned that they were once thrown to the ground by a massage chair like being "taken out of the garbage"; For a while, the "victims" of shared massage chairs from all over the country "showed up" in the comment area, and at present, the number of comments on this post has exceeded 10,000.
Source: Screenshot of Xiaohongshu
Shared massage chair is a product of the "sharing economy" boom, the industry has gone through eight years of growth, why is the experience of sharing massage chairs still uneven? When the industry boom fades, is sharing massage chairs still not a good business?
01. Some people "decompress", some people "go to punishment"
Shared massage chairs are businesses that rely on the flow of people, and office buildings, shopping malls, and other areas with a large flow of people are often the places where shared massage chairs are placed.
Lin Rui (pseudonym), a member of the shared massage chair business of a brand, mentioned that when franchisees choose a place to put it, he usually recommends going to a movie theater, near a parent-child paradise in a shopping mall, or a place with a leisure water bar and coffee shop on the first floor of an office building. "Providing services in waiting, leisure venues is easy to generate consumption, many people stand in line and just play with their mobile phones, at this time they may think when they see a massage chair, it is not bad to lie on the chair and wait."
Source: Canned Gallery
In the products of the sharing economy, the most "polarizing" user experience is probably the shared massage chair.
Chen Lu (pseudonym), a mother living in Beijing, is a "senior" massage chair user, and every time she waits for her children to play in the mall, she will go to the shared massage chair to lie down for a while, feeling very relieved; Chen Lu said that she has a massage chair at home that costs nearly 10,000 yuan, but when she goes shopping, she still uses the massage chair outside to kill time, "It is very comfortable, and the massage chairs in Beijing shopping malls rarely have hygiene problems." ”
However, not everyone who lies on the shared massage chair can enjoy it as much as Chen Lu; After many users try to use it psychologically, they are ushered in by "being beaten" and "social death". Many netizens on social media said that they had been injured by the "massage chair assassin", "I chose the most soothing one, but the strength was still too great, and it hurt even more after the massage." "I pressed the butterfly bone where I should have pressed the ribs, and for the first time I felt that 15 minutes was a long time." ……
Source: Screenshot of Xiaohongshu
Some practitioners said that the feeling of use mainly depends on the individual's physique. "Massage itself is a body item with large subjective differences, and each person's feeling after massage will vary greatly according to the different degrees of body force and the sensitivity of body organs."
Lin Rui also mentioned that different physiques and physical states will have different massage feelings, "Sometimes the same person massages at different times in the morning and afternoon of the day, and the body feels different." ”
However, the experience of using a shared massage chair varies from person to person, but the embarrassment of being "flying" after exceeding the paid time is the same. When the user lies on the shared massage chair for more than a few minutes without paying, or does not leave after the paid service ends, some brands of massage chairs will automatically adjust the seat angle to "bounce" the person sitting on it, this setting is called the "eviction system" by the industry.
Source: Screenshot of Xiaohongshu
Not all massage chairs will be fitted with an embarrassing ride-off system, though. The staff of the shared massage chair brand "Shuangke" mentioned that the chairs they put in the high-speed rail station and the airport can be sat for free, and the massage can be paid separately. "Whether other places are installed or not, mainly depends on the requirements of the venue, generally the chairs in the mall will be set up to catch up with the reminder to prevent people from occupying seats for a long time. However, places that are more afraid of noise, such as educational institutions and hotels, will not set up to catch up with passengers if the venue is not needed, and the decibel of voice reminders will be smaller. ”
Another place where shared massage chairs are complained about is the problem of hygiene, cleaning and maintenance. Many netizens mentioned that when they were about to sit on the massage chair, cockroaches would be seen when the folds of the chair cushions were lifted, and sometimes food residues appeared.
Source: Screenshot of Xiaohongshu
"Fun Solution Business" learned that the cleaning of the shared massage chair is usually responsible for the venue, and the after-sales maintenance is managed by the brand.
The staff of "Shuangke" said that only in places with a high amount of equipment such as high-speed rail stations and airports, they will be equipped with a guide service team dedicated to hygiene and customer complaints, but like theaters and shopping malls with a relatively small amount of investment, they will ask the venue to do daily maintenance. If some places are not willing to take care of the cleaning work, the brand or operator will usually give the cleaning a red envelope privately, and ask them to take care of the massage chair during their daily work.
In addition, many netizens said that shared massage chairs often have problems such as not being able to use and not refunding after scanning the code and paying, not being able to contact customer service, and not being refundable after recharging.
02. The "business experience" of sharing massage chairs
The market for shared massage chairs is gradually growing up with the boom of "sharing economy".
In 2016, the shared bicycles represented by ofo and Mobike opened the first year of the domestic sharing economy, and companies focusing on the concept of sharing sprung up.
According to Tianyancha data, the number of newly registered enterprises in the shared massage chair industry in 2017 was 5 times that of 2016, and the total number of shared massage chairs in 2018 has exceeded 1 million. Among them, not only unicorns such as "Lemo Bar" have emerged, but also Gujia Home Furnishing (603816. SH), Ao Jiahua (002614. SZ), Rongtai Health (603579. SH) and other listed companies have also opened relevant sub-brands to lay out the market.
Until now, "Lemo Bar" and "Shuangke" under Gujia Home Furnishing, as well as "Momoda" under Rongtai Health, are still the top brands in the market share of shared massage chairs.
However, in recent years, with the "cooling" of the sharing economy track, the voice of shared massage chairs in the capital market is also much less than before; Wind data shows that the last public large-scale financing of the shared massage chair industry dates back to 2018.
Source: Canned Gallery
Some start-up companies favored by capital have withdrawn from the market, such as the "first-class interconnection" that has been financed by a number of star investment institutions such as Zhen Fund, China Growth Capital, and Meihua Angel, and its official public account will stop in 2021, and its mini program can no longer be opened.
From the shift in the focus of the layout of listed companies, it can also be seen that the "cooling" of the shared massage market.
Aojiahua and Gujia Home Furnishing have not separately disclosed the performance of the shared massage chair business in their financial reports for a long time. Rongtai Health created the "Momoda" brand through its subsidiary Xiaoxi Technology, and the revenue and gross profit margin of its shared massage chair business declined year-on-year as early as 2019; According to the financial report data, in 2022, Rongtai Health's experiential massage service revenue will be about 5.5673 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 90.73%.
Source: Screenshot of Rongtai Health's financial report
The investment promotion personnel of "Momoda" revealed that in the past, there were two modes of rent and sharing in cooperation with theaters and other venues, but the rent model has been canceled due to the poor market in the past two years, and the sharing model is mainly based on the sharing model; At the same time, Momoda began to shift from the sharing market to the home massage chair market, and has opened offline stores in Wuxi, Harbin and other cities.
The "coldness" of the shared massage market is related to the sluggish overall demand of the massage chair industry. According to data from Huajing Industry Research Institute, the compound growth rate of the domestic smart massage chair market from 2018 to 2022 is only 9.00%; Moreover, the market penetration rate of massage chairs in Chinese mainland is 2.9%, far lower than the 11.6% in Hong Kong and Macau, 9.6% in Singapore and 8.1% in Taiwan.
Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Consulting, once mentioned that public massage chairs are a non-essential choice of "icing on the cake", and the demand for home retail is relatively weak, and whether the market rigid demand for massage chairs is large enough is the next challenge for the industry.
Source: Canned Gallery
At present, the shared massage chairs on the market are divided into two types: direct and associated; Direct sales means that the brand directly brings the equipment to find a place to discuss cooperation, and joint operation requires the franchisee to purchase equipment in advance, or to order massage chairs from the brand after negotiating the venue cooperation.
Among the listed companies that are still accepting shared massage chairs, there are "Momoda" under Aojiahua and Rongtai Health; Among them, Aojiahua needs franchisees to find a good venue before ordering seats, and the number of orders is not limited.
"Shuangke" and "Lemo Bar" both adopt the model of direct brand sales; Some employees who have worked in "Lemo Bar" said that the company is preparing to go public. Lin Rui believes that listed companies and companies preparing to go public insist on direct sales and do not join, probably because they are worried that the franchisee's external data will be too much and affect management and information disclosure.
03. Who is "lying to earn"?
Once, sharing massage chairs was called a "lying to earn" business, however, the reality is not so rosy.
Franchisees who share massage chairs cooperate with the venue, usually using the method of "pure share" or "guaranteed rent + share", if it is the latter, the rent expenditure is a big burden.
According to "Fun Interpretation Business", the highest conversion rate of massage chairs is often in high-speed rail stations, shopping malls and other places with dense crowds, but it is difficult for such places to accept the pure sharing model.
Source: Canned Gallery
Some practitioners said that shopping malls with high foot flow will generally require rent cooperation, and some shopping malls can rent a massage chair for 500 yuan a month. Lin Rui believes that on the one hand, there is no shortage of massage chairs in shopping malls, on the other hand, the sharing model usually involves monthly or quarterly reconciliation.
Non-commercial places such as high-speed rail stations, airports and hospitals generally screen suppliers through bidding, and the bidding information also indicates that cooperation will be carried out in the form of rent.
According to the information of the "China Bidding and Bidding Public Service Platform", the terminal area of an airport in Nanning is ready to introduce 80 massage chairs, and the rent of a single one is 1,510 yuan per month. Based on this calculation, if it is not included in the sharing income, the venue can also get a guaranteed rental income of more than 120,000 yuan a month; It can be seen that the "rent" of shared massage chairs can become a considerable source of income.
Source: Screenshot of China's public service platform for bidding and bidding
However, the enthusiasm for shared massage chairs in public places has also attracted the attention of relevant departments.
In August last year, some netizens complained that "the number of shared massage chairs in the waiting hall of Tai'an High-speed Railway Station in Shandong is much higher than that of ordinary seats", and related topics caused heated discussions. After that, the official blog of China Railway issued an announcement, saying that the railway department had notified and criticized the operation and service of massage chairs at Tai'an Station; The announcement also put forward specific requirements for the management of massage chairs in the station, stipulating that the number of massage chairs in stations with massage chairs shall not exceed 20% of all waiting seats.
Source: Weibo screenshot
In addition to the station, the most common place to share massage chairs is also the cinema; At the beginning of the prosperity of shared massage chairs, many theaters placed massage chairs in the best viewing position in the theater.
In the past two years, with the serious decline in the number of moviegoers in theaters, massage chairs have become a "sideline" for theaters to increase revenue and venue utilization.
Many netizens mentioned that they were watching a movie, and the chair behind them suddenly began to sound, and they were very awkward when they didn't start; Some netizens even said that their tail vertebrae were fractured by the massage chair in the theater.
Source: Screenshot of Xiaohongshu
The staff of "Shuangke" mentioned that this summer, the monthly income of a chair in the Hangzhou Joy City store of Bona Cinema can reach 1,300 yuan. A cinema employee in Anyang City, Henan Province, said that last year, the theater and small and medium-sized manufacturers cooperated to place massage chairs in the form of rent, and the price of rent this year has risen slightly compared with last year, and the 1,100 seats in the audience are laid at a rate of 15%, and the annual rental income is about 40,000 yuan.
For shopping malls, cinemas and other places, although shared massage chairs cannot create high revenue for them, it is a relatively worry-free "side business"; However, for operators, whether the shared massage chair can become a long-term "lying and earning" business, I am afraid there are still many problems to be solved.