The despised shared massage chair earned 600 million yuan in 9 months

Wen| Tech Planet Lin Jing

The shared massage chairs scattered in shopping malls and cinemas have finally revealed their family background to the outside world.

But for many consumers, spending a cup of milk tea to experience a massage usually involves a psychological struggle between relaxing and worrying about the hygiene of the massage chair.

But unlike the intuitive impression of the outside world, where you will only get free seats and dust, in fact, sharing massage chairs has been making money silently. In 2022, 2023 and the first nine months of 2024, Le Mo Bar’s revenue continues to rise, reaching 330 million yuan, 587 million yuan and 615 million yuan respectively. In the first nine months of 2024 alone, Le Mo Bar earned nearly 100 million yuan.

At a time when the sharing economy has long become a chicken feather, has the shared massage chair really become the rare survivor?

Young people spent 600 million yuan in 9 months on massages in shopping malls and theaters

In the past few years, shared massage chairs have been launched crazily and have become ubiquitous in people’s lives. At the end of 2022, the total number of equipment in Lemo Bar was still only 167,100 units. By January this year, this number had reached 500,000 units.

Shared massage chairs need to be laid in scenes with enough traffic and fragmented waiting time. Shopping malls and theaters are the main force, but brands have to spend money to enter the market. In addition, trains, airports and other areas are mainly conducted through public bidding.

Da Mao, regional partner of Lemo Bar, told Tech Planet that shopping malls with good revenue capacity in the early stage will adopt a rental model. In Beijing, the monthly rent for laying a massage chair has been rolled up to 1000 yuan. For twenty or thirty sets of equipment, the rent will reach two to three hundred thousand yuan a year. If it is estimated that the revenue capacity of the mall is poor in the early stage, such as shopping malls in the county area, a sharing model will be adopted, and the brand and shopping mall will be divided according to the actual monthly income of massage chairs of 6:4.

According to the prospectus data, among the large commercial complexes with a total construction area of more than 30,000 square meters in China, Le Moba has settled in 4757, accounting for more than 70%.

“There are also extremely high costs behind this. Xiaoxiao, a retired employee of Le Mo Bar, revealed to Tech Planet that on the one hand, Le Mo Bar will hire employees with high salaries with mall connections, and the basic salary at its Fujian headquarters can reach 50,000 yuan. The internal management is full of wolf and will regularly eliminate employees who do not generate expected revenue. On the other hand, Le Mo Bar is also very good at taking advantage of shopping malls. For example, if Wanda Group has pressure from the capital chain, Le Mo Bar can pay 20 months ‘rent in advance at one time.

It is not easy for other brands to conquer mall channels. Usually, after a brand enters, it will sign an exclusion agreement. Another massage chair sharing agent introduced to Tech Planet that when consulting with the investment promotion personnel of a large mall, the other party’s reply was extremely arrogant. There were no bidding channels, only us (the mall) chose one-way channels.

According to him, the larger the customer flow, the stronger the say. When launching, the first competition is for personal resources, and the second is for the highest bidder.

Different from the agency model of the shared charging treasure, 70% of Le Moba’s equipment is laid through the direct sales model, and the brand is responsible for a series of tasks such as equipment launch, operation, and maintenance.

Shopping malls also contribute the most revenue to it. The prospectus shows that Le Moba’s retail massage service transaction volume from commercial complexes reached 608 million yuan in the first three quarters of 2024, accounting for 67.26% of the total transaction volume. Secondly, the transaction volume from theaters was 174 million yuan, accounting for 19.28% of the total transactions, while the revenue contribution of other scenarios did not exceed 100 million yuan.

This is not the same as the proportion of the number of equipment laid. According to consumption scenarios, as of the first three quarters of 2024, Le Mo Bar has 69,000 massage devices in commercial complexes, 320,500 in theaters, 2484 in airports, 1338 in high-speed rail stations, and 8752 in other areas.

This means that massage chairs laid in theaters account for about 80% of the total, which is about 4.6 times that of commercial complexes, but only contribute less than 20% of revenue.

Da Mao, regional partner of Lemo Bar, told Tech Planet that based on background data, 60% of the people willing to pay for sharing massage chairs are young people. Judging from the income from a single massage, airports are definitely the most profitable, but the disadvantage is that the number of venues is limited. There are only two airports in Beijing. In contrast, in hundreds of shopping malls and cinemas, more equipment can be laid.

Judging from the payment probability, users stay longer in the shopping center and have more needs for massage and relaxation after walking tens of thousands of steps. Although Le Mo Bar has expanded many theaters in the past year, one of the reasons for the poor results is that, except for “Nezha 2” during the Spring Festival, the box office of theaters was cold last year, and the number of people watching the movie dropped. The number of users using massage chairs naturally decreased. According to Da Mao, many higher-cost theaters that entered last year ended up losing money.

You can recover your capital in half a year. Who is making money lying around?

Sharing massage chairs has long been considered a win-win business.

This is because, according to rough calculations, the average cost of a Le Mo Bar shared massage chair is 5000 yuan, the equipment serves an average of 5 to 10 people per day, the customer unit price is 10 yuan, and the average monthly income is 2000 yuan. If we calculate that rent accounts for 30% to 40% of the cost, and the single-machine payback cycle is 6 to 10 months, then the rest is to lie down and earn money.

Having been a regional partner of Lemo Bar for many years, Da Mao enjoyed a dividend that would allow him to recover his capital in three or four months in the early stage of industry development. However, sharing massage chairs is ultimately a business that tests the flow of people and relies on site selection. As competition intensifies, high-quality venues are often accompanied by high rental and operation and maintenance costs.

The operation and maintenance costs are different from what the outside world imagined. Da Mao said, for example, replacing the leather cover of a massage chair costs more than 300 yuan, which may exceed the monthly income of a massage chair. At present, his operation and maintenance team has more than a dozen people, and they cannot dispatch orders every day.“”

Therefore, even under the franchise model, these Le Moba partners do not need to purchase equipment, but need to bear rent and operation and maintenance expenses. Le Moba will draw a certain service fee based on the proportion agreed by both parties.

The prospectus shows that in 2022, 2023 and the first nine months of 2024, the expenditures related to Le Moba service outlets (including venue usage fees and operation and maintenance costs) will increase year by year, to 159 million yuan, 230 million yuan and 257 million yuan respectively. This expenditure accounts for a high proportion of revenue, accounting for 48.18%, 39.25% and 41.86% respectively.

Correspondingly, as of September 2024, Le Moba’s gross profit margin dropped from 45.76% a year ago to 40.04%. The prospectus shows that in 2022, 2023 and the first nine months of 2024, Le Moba’s revenue was 330 million yuan, 586 million yuan and 614 million yuan respectively, and the corresponding net profit was 6.481 million yuan, 87.34 million yuan and 93.11 million yuan.

In the revenue structure of shared massage chairs, although it also includes services such as advertising in the APP and direct sales of massage equipment to the C-end, more than 95% of the current revenue relies on users ‘scanning fees when using shared massage chairs.

Therefore, the launch strategy becomes extremely important. Da Mao introduced that before entering the venue, the maximum probability of users using equipment must be calculated. For example, in theaters, massage mats usually occupy the golden viewing area. This is because this area has the largest number of users to watch movies, and the equipment used for massage chairs is naturally the largest probability.

But whether it is a theater or a shopping mall, they are truly winning in the business of sharing massage chairs. No matter how users are paying propensity and frequency, they can always obtain a steady stream of stable rental income.

A staff member from the Beijing Theater told Tech Planet that massage mats are laid in the eight movie halls, distributed in different locations in the golden movie viewing area, so the theater cannot give seat options on how to avoid massage chairs. In the past, when users reported their dislike of the massage mat, the staff could assist the user in removing the massage mat. However, now the massage mat has been upgraded and is directly embedded in the chair and can no longer be freely loaded and unloaded.

Business peaked, sank and expanded, and then rolled overseas

According to Frost and Sullivan data, Le Moba has ranked first among smart massage service providers in mainland China for three consecutive years (2021 – 2023), with its market share rising from 29.4% to 37.3%, which is twice the number two in the industry.

An agent of shared massage chairs revealed to Tech Planet that by 2024, Lemo Bar, which has been spending money crazily all the way, has successfully killed batch after batch of opponents.

There are mainly two types of companies among the gold diggers sharing massage chairs. One is a listed company in the category of massage chair manufacturing. For example, Rongtai Health created the Momoda brand through its subsidiary Easy Technology, and Aojiahua launched the shared massage chair brand Enjoy Time. Second, non-manufacturer brands, such as Le Moba, First Class Internet and other brands.

“After Momoda exits in 2023, 80% of its main theater venues will be replaced by Lemo Bar, and first-class interconnection has stopped operating after there is no capital transfusion.

“There is also a clear gap between Moxiang Time and Lemo Bar. The above-mentioned agents said that in the Beijing area, Lemo Bar has launched about 5000 units, but the number of Moxiang Time equipment is only 1000 units. In addition to competing for market share in areas not covered by Lemo Bar, such as hospitals and universities, Moxiang Time will also sneak attacks on the B1 floor of the mall to launch it.

But even if it has become a quasi-leading company in the industry, Le Moba does not sit back and relax.

Da Mao, regional partner of Lemo Bar, said that market saturation is the biggest challenge. At present, the capacity of shared massage chairs in cities such as Beijing has reached the upper limit. Last year, Lemo Bar accelerated its sinking market expansion. However, taking a certain northern county town he launched as an example, the utilization rate is high only during the Spring Festival when returning home. The average monthly income of a piece of equipment is only 200 yuan, which is one-tenth of that of a first-tier city. The main reason for the difference between the two is passenger flow and Different consumption capabilities.

In addition, Da Mao introduced that high-quality locations in the county are more limited, and the top two shopping malls are usually chosen, but the forecast revenue is usually not ideal.

In order to find more consumption scenarios, Le Moba not only expands more consumption scenarios such as office buildings and e-sports venues, but also looks overseas. It stated in its prospectus that the funds raised by the IPO plan will be used to expand the Asian market, especially in Thailand and other Southeast Asian cities.

In the domestic market, the test for Le Moba is whether it can continue to retain users. According to the prospectus, as of September 2024, the number of transactions in Le Mo Bar has reached 604 million, and there are approximately 402,100 massage equipment. After rough calculations, it can be concluded that the average number of transactions per massage device per day is about 5.6.

But for shared massage chairs that frequently reach the top of the Internet due to accidents such as dirty hygiene problems and hair pinching, product quality and service experience are obviously the key to whether this business can last long compared to the worries of peaking in the market.

(Note: All aliases are used in the text.)