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By Baek Byung-yeul
Competition has been heating up in the massage chair market, fueled by the growing wellbeing trend, as an increasing number of companies jump in to grab a bigger slice of the pie.
In particular, the business has been expanding at an explosive pace since 2009 when many firms began offering rental services for massage chairs and other household appliances.
Company officials said the market size of massage chair industry was estimated at 750 billion won ($688 million) in 2018 while it was only at 20 billion won in 2007. The officials forecast the figure will grow to 900 billion in 2019.
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| A massage chair from Bodyfriend / Courtesy of Bodyfriend |
Bodyfriend logged sales of 18.8 billion won in 2010 but these jumped to 550 billion won in 2018. Its operating profit, which remained at 18.1 billion won in 2013, also grew to 83.4 billion won in 2017.
The firm said the huge growth was possible thanks to the introduction of the rental system.
"As massage chairs are priced between 5 million won and 10 million won, the chairs had been considered for people with high incomes. However, since we started the rental business for massage chairs in 2009, things changed totally," an official from Bodyfriend said.
The official added more people are renting massage chairs as the products have become a popular gift item for parents.
"For renting a massage chair with a price tag of between 4 million won and 5 million won, a customer needs to pay a monthly rental fee of about 100,000 won to 150,000 won for 39 months. Compared to the past when they had to pay the entire amount of money to purchase the chair, a growing number of people think the monthly rental fee is affordable.
"Many people want to rent massage chairs for their parents and this is why the sales of our products peak every May, which is known as the month for the family and children here," the official said adding it sold around 130,000 massage chairs in 2018.
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| A massage chair of Coway / Courtesy of Coway |
"We are just selling our massage chairs, not engaging in the rental business. We launch rental service businesses when we are confident of profitability. For instance, in the water purifier rental business, we can make a profit by changing filters regularly. But we have not found ways of making a profit in the maintenance of massage chairs," a Coway spokesman said.
Coway said it recently began selling its latest massage chair, which won an innovation award at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show for the product's new feature that can massage the user's acupuncture points. Chungho Nais is also selling two massage chairs which are specialized in massaging the soles of the feet and calves.
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