Sharing massage chairs everywhere, who is using them?

author| Jingzhe Institute Xiaoman

If the topic of making 100 million yuan in nine months had not been on the hot search on Weibo, no one would have realized that massage chairs in cinemas and shopping malls could make so much money. Another overlooked fact is that as one of the sharing economy tracks still in operation, the shared massage chair is still in the expansion stage.

In fact, in addition to cinemas and shopping malls, in recent years, airport terminal halls and train station waiting rooms have also begun to be occupied by shared massage chairs. However, the specific development of the market and enterprises is rarely reported, including consumers ‘true comments on shared massage chairs.

The huge contrast between hot searches and realistic perceptions is also even more curious. From the unpopular equipment in shopping malls to the profit-making tools that impact listed companies, what kind of business is behind sharing massage chairs?

From unpopular equipment to standard scenarios

As a member of the sharing economy, the shared massage chair was born in 2016, known as the first year of the sharing economy. Along with the enthusiasm of the sharing economy and the capital investment boom, the shared massage chair track attracted many entrepreneurs and investors to join in 2017, promoting the rapid expansion of the entire industry.

Sky Eye data shows that the number of newly registered companies in the shared massage chair industry in 2017 reached five times that of 2016. By 2018, the total number of shared massage chairs nationwide had exceeded 1 million. A number of shared massage chair brands, including Le Moba, Ao Jiahua, Yunxiangyun, and Qira, have successively received financing.

* Photo source: Le Moba official Weibo

At the beginning, the main position for sharing massage chairs was only airports, banks, cinemas and other places in first-tier cities, because in these scenarios, users needed to wait in a fragmented manner, such as arriving at the airport 30 minutes in advance to wait for a waiting time, or waiting for a call at the bank to handle business, or waiting at a movie theater to open for entry.

At this time, shared massage chairs are a better choice than ordinary seats in the waiting area, or even without seats, so they can attract some new users ‘attempts. After receiving the support of capital, the rationality of the launch scene is no longer the reason for the expansion of shared massage chairs.

As a result, everything from the waiting hall of the train station to the limited space at the corner of the escalator in the mall was rationally utilized. Shared massage chairs, like ordinary seats, have become standard equipment in various travel and consumption scenarios as hardware facilities, and have penetrated into different scenes, large and small, in consumers ‘daily lives.

According to the prospectus of Le Moba, as of now, it has established more than 45,000 service outlets for smart massage services and launched more than 500,000 smart massage devices, covering 31 provincial administrative regions and 339 cities in the mainland of China. The cumulative number of identifiable services exceeds 150 million, and the number of registered members exceeds 28 million.

* Screenshot of Le Moba’s official website

It should be pointed out that although the scope of shared massage chairs is constantly expanding and the number of shared massage chairs is also increasing, the money-making efficiency of shared massage chairs in different scenarios is also different due to differences in audience groups and frequency of use.

Data released by Ai Media Consulting shows that among the main places where consumers use shared massage chairs in China in 2024, 36.08% of consumers will choose shopping malls and supermarkets, 25.49% will choose cinemas, 24.71% will choose stations, 22.35% will choose entertainment venues such as KTV, and 21.18% will choose airports. The reason why consumers ‘choice preferences differ is that there are differences in demand strength in different scenarios.

* Le Mo Bar massage chair in the mall (Photo by Jingzhe Research Institute)

At airports and train stations, the waiting time is usually controllable, and the supply of seats in the waiting area is sufficient, so sharing massage chairs is not a better option. As for the few users who choose to share massage chairs in entertainment venues such as KTV, the reason is that consumers are in a social scene in entertainment venues, and sharing massage chairs requires independent time. It cannot be said that there is no such situation as leaving friends to go to massage themselves., but it is difficult to become the choice of most people.

Real needs or shared myths?

Compared with shared economic star projects such as shared bicycles and shared charging treasure, shared massage chairs have always lacked a sense of existence. This is because the last mile from the subway station to the office building, and the lack of mobile phones when shopping and the inability to make payments are all real emergency needs in specific scenarios. Sharing massage chairs essentially creates new demands for waiting scenarios, so it takes a longer process for market expansion. Moreover, the demand for such scenarios, which are not just needed but not urgent, also tests the brand’s ability to expand from niche markets.

It can also be seen from the initial positioning of airports, banks, cinemas and other places that the core group who shared massage chairs at first were young white-collar workers and urban middle class.

For example, after working at their desks for a long time, office workers in an office building can spend 10-30 minutes enjoying temporary relaxation in a shared massage chair while going downstairs to buy coffee. Or business people who frequently travel to airports and high-speed rail stations can also use a shared massage chair to get a moment of rest during business trips.

However, with the expansion of the launch scale, the service scenarios and service objects of shared massage chairs have shifted from business scenarios and middle-class elites to ordinary users in daily life scenarios. The primary purpose of business expansion is also to scale.

At present, the operation of domestic shared massage chair brands is mainly divided into two modes: direct sales and joint ventures. Direct sales means that a brand rents property (including shopping malls, cinemas, stations, etc.) venues and puts in shared massage chairs, with all the income owned by the brand. In the joint venture, the property provides the venue, the operator is responsible for the placement and daily maintenance of massage chairs, and the final income is shared by both parties.

Therefore, the core operating costs of shared massage chairs are venue rental fees and hardware costs. According to the New Retail Business Review report, when a shared massage chair is put into second-and third-tier shopping malls, the mall needs to pay an entry fee of 100 yuan to 300 yuan per unit.

According to the Red Star Capital Bureau, if each shared massage chair is used by an average of 5 consumers per day and charges 10 yuan each time, the single-day income of a shared massage chair can reach 50 yuan, and the monthly income can reach 1500 yuan. If you give half of the venue, there will be about 750 yuan left. Excluding cleaning and other expenses, you can earn about 700 yuan a month.

If the cost of each equipment is calculated at 5000 yuan, operators that put in shared massage chairs will be able to recover their costs in less than a year. The service life of a shared massage chair is usually 3-5 years, so after returning the capital, you can still lie down and earn 2-4 years. But the core question is, aside from user complaints caused by health hazards, high damage rates, untimely maintenance, and free seat occupation, are there so many people using shared massage chairs every day? A set of data in Le Moba’s prospectus may be used as a reference.

The prospectus mentions that as of September 2024, the number of transactions in Le Moba has reached 604 million, and it has put approximately 402,100 massage equipment in commercial complexes, cinemas, airports and high-speed rail stations. After simple calculations, it can be concluded that the average number of transactions per massage device per day is approximately 4.1.

Although there is still a certain gap compared with the threshold of five times a day, it seems that there is not much problem to cross the return line to achieve lying profits by increasing the unit price of customers and increasing the repurchase rate. But it should also be noted that compared with the vibrant market environment of the shared economy track in 2017, shared massage chairs are facing more challenges now.

The sharing economy cannot lie down and win”

As a way to implement the sharing economy, the business model of massage chairs is essentially time-sharing leasing, and its profit limit comes from the increase in utilization. Therefore, major brands have continued to expand their launch scale since 2017. However, simply expanding the scale does not mean that the business can be bigger and bigger.

In August 2023, as the shared massage chairs at Tai ‘an Station occupy a large amount of public space, the number of ordinary seats provided in the waiting hall is obviously insufficient. China Railway issued an announcement criticizing the operation and service of massage chairs at Tai ‘an Station, and required that the total number of seats in the waiting area should not decrease, and that the proportion of multi-purpose seats should not exceed 20% of all waiting seats.

For companies, as the scale of massage chair launches expands, the business of sharing massage chairs has also become a heavy asset project. The financial report of Rongtai Health, the parent company of shared massage brand Momoda, shows that from 2017 to 2018, Momoda’s revenue increased from 233 million yuan to 366 million yuan, but due to the increase in equipment, the cost soared to 280 million yuan., gross profit margin fell sharply to 23.38%, down 18.65 percentage points year-on-year.

After 2018, Rongtai Group’s investment in the shared massage chair business has gradually decreased. In May 2020, when answering questions from investors, Rongtai Health stated that about 90% of the shared massage chairs had been transferred out in 2019. From this point of view, Le Mo Bar may have achieved business growth precisely because of the exit of competitors, but this also makes people wonder whether Le Mo Bar has found a profit point from its asset-heavy operation.

In addition to the business operation itself, the mismatch between the service model of shared massage chairs and the needs of the crowd has gradually been exposed. From a macro perspective, the massage chair market has indeed grown in recent years with consumers ‘attention to health and wellness, but careful analysis reveals that sharing massage chairs is neither the only solution nor the optimal solution.

First of all, the popularity of home massage equipment and the corresponding market growth in recent years have met the needs of young white-collar workers and urban middle class to relax anytime and anywhere. Industry research data shows that the number of massage chairs used in China has increased from 2.37 million in 2018 to 6.013 million in 2022, maintaining an overall compound annual growth rate of 26.21%. According to data released by Qianxin.com, the size of the small massager market in China has shown a steady upward trend from 2018 to 2023. It is initially estimated that the size of the massager market in China in 2023 will be approximately 10.81 billion yuan.

* Photo source: Ao Jiahua’s official Weibo

Secondly, the rapid growth of offline physical massage stores and door-to-door massage platforms has also formed strong competition with shared massage chairs. Especially based on the experience advantages of real massage compared with massage chairs, physical massage shops can diversify their service items and develop massage services from traditional pedicure and massage to foot care, foot beauty, traditional Chinese medicine physiotherapy, etc. Diversified services.

At the same time, with the help of the hybrid business model, offline massage stores have also emerged hybrid business formats such as pedicure + buffet pedicure +KTV, which can not only meet the individual needs of different consumers, but also expand their own business scope, thus having a more comprehensive competitive advantage.

Le Moba also expressed relevant concerns about the possibility of user loss due to the gap in service quality. It wrote in the prospectus that if our products fail to resonate with consumers, or if we fail to keep up with changing consumer preferences in a timely and continuous manner, revenue from smart massage services may decline in the short term. rdquo;

Looking back at the development of the track of shared massage chairs, it is not difficult to find that this shared economic format has survived to this day because it has found scene advantages in response to large market demand, and replaced manpower with 7*24-hour machines to complete the establishment of new channels.

However, only the scene itself is a limitation. With the popularization of massage equipment and the development of offline massage stores and online massage platforms, shared massage chairs all over shopping malls and train stations are no longer favored by consumers because of their distance advantages in physical space. On the contrary, the service is limited due to the improvement of the experience and limited development.

Perhaps with the launch of competitors and the expansion of their own launch scale, shared massage chair companies will still be able to deliver a performance report with outstanding data on this sharing economy track. However, under the shell of the sharing economy, it is still difficult to win in shared massage chairs that meet personal health needs.