FranchiseOpportunities

Hi Everybody!

I had a great opportunity to record a second podcast and interview the President of The Back Rubber, a company that offers a business opportunity in the vending massage chair industry. Click the link below to read the transcription of the interview, view the pdf of the transcription and also listen to the podcast itself.

Enjoy!

Amy

Podcast audio here

Transcription of Podcast PDF

Amy: This is Amy Greene with Franchise Opportunities. I have with me David Simon from The Back Rubber. Is that correct?

David: Yep.

Amy: Alright. So tell me, what exactly is your official title with The Back Rubber?

David: President.

Amy: Okay. I’m just going to start off with a few really general questions. So, tell us a little bit about your concept.

David: Okay. The Back Rubber is a concept where we manufacture vending massage chairs. They are mechanical massage chairs. And they’re put in locations where there are people with down time. You know, people waiting at air ports, malls, movie theaters, laundromats…any place people congregate…fun centers, amusement parks. And for a dollar you get a three-minute massage, five dollars you get a ten-minute massage. Our customers then go out and get locations for the chairs, and they place the chairs in these various locations where people have down time. And, they’re in business! It’s a unique vending concept in the idea that there is no need to restock anything, there is no inventory, there’s no additional buys for product, there is no issue with the health department or anything like that. Really what they need to do is find a location, put the chair in, plug it in and they’re in business. Some people have reservations about finding locations themselves. We do provide them with a list of locators that we work very closely with. And the locators will help them, you know, for a fee per chair, help them locate the chair. So they don’t have to do the locating. They just have to sign off on the location, agree to it and then pay the locator a nominal fee for the location. And they also get guarantees with the location. Depending on the locator, if they’re not satisfied, within an X amount of time, they’ll relocate the chair for free.

Amy: Okay. Going back to your customer in the sense of the man who is walking through the mall carrying five or six bags, and he’s tired and he sees your chair – what kind of experience do you want him to have?

David: I want him to enjoy the chair. And the next time he’s in the mall and he doesn’t feel like shopping, go back to the chair. Or, become a customer. Believe it or not, we get calls almost every day where people who have sat in one of our chairs become customers of ours. Because they like the concept. They think to themselves “Oh, I just put five bucks in this chair. This chair must make somebody a lot of money.” And they find our name on the chair or our Web site on the chair and they contact us directly.

Amy: I guess you already told me about the business opportunity as far as how they get started. Talk about a few interesting points that I read on the brochure that you have with FranchiseOpportunities. Tell me about the low start up costs.

David: Basically, it’s a very low-cost start up – depending on your location. It’s somewhere from $1,800 to $2,000 on a chair. We offer various packages for four chairs, six chairs, eight chairs, ten chairs, twelve chairs. On a sliding scale, it’s actually called the silver plan is four chairs, the gold plan is eight chairs, the platinum is twelve and the diamond is sixteen. So we give people a volume discount. The interesting thing, and probably the most significant thing…and you know as I do that you can’t entice people in this business by giving them actual numbers. And in honesty, I don’t know what the numbers are because they all depend on the location. But some of the things we’ve heard in conversation with our customers, and I know that even in worst-cast scenario, the return on investment with this opportunity is tremendous. I don’t know of any other businesses that you can go in at such a low cost, and get such a high return on investment and pay off our original investment in such a short time period. Some of the numbers we get back are ridiculous to even quote. And I stay away from quoting numbers because it all depends on volume of traffic in the area. But that’s one thing, is the return on investment on this product is tremendous. At the worst, it’s good. And the second thing is it’s not like you’re opening up a candle store, and you sign a year lease and you have to wait for people to come in. The fact is that if a chair is not performing well in a particular location, neither the owner of the chair nor the owner of the establishment are going to be happy about it. So the owner says, “Great. Take your chair.” And you move your chair to the next location. And if you work this business properly, for a very small investment, you can get your business up and running.

Amy: I think the return on investment is just one the things that makes this such an attractive business opportunity for your potential customers. So is the fact that it can be home-based and part-time or full-time. Tell me a little bit about those.

David: The only thing you need to do is when you receive the chairs is to assemble it. I don’t mean to sound facetious: Assemble the chair, put it in the location and count your money. You have no overhead. The chairs are either done with a revenue share on a location, or on a rental basis. But you have no fixed costs that you have to meet a monthly goal before you start to make money. It can certainly be done out of your house. We have people who do it out of apartments. There’s no business address involved in this other than your telephone.

Amy: And also something that I found interesting was that the chairs, which hold up to $600, is that correct?

David: Possibly more, but $600 in singles. The chairs will hold $600 in singles. That’s another thing about this opportunity whether you want to do it full- or part-time…you don’t visit the chairs. It’s not like owning a vending route where you have to go and replenish a supply of, let’s say, soda. On a daily, weekly, semi-weekly basis. These chairs, again, I’m being a little redundant. You plug them in and then, depending on your schedule, you go collect the money. Most of our people go out somewhere between every two or four weeks. So when you think about it, it takes them half an hour per chair because they go to the establishment, they count the money, whatever their revenue share agreement is, they split it with the owner and they’re on their way until two or three weeks later. It takes so little time to run this business, and it’s such a simple concept, it almost sounds unreal.

Amy: And they don’t even have to count the money, do they? You have a bill counter, is it?

David: The bill counter will not tell you what is in the chair. It’ll tell you the number of bills, but it won’t tell you if somebody put in a five-dollar bill. We get many people who sit down for $5, and $10. It will only tell you that there are 400 bills in there. Usually what happens is if there’s a rental agreement, the person just takes the money and goes and pays the rent. If there’s a revenue-sharing agreement, usually what happens is you call up and say, “I’m going to be there at 2 o’clock on Friday. Is that good for you?” And you meet the owner there. You go in and you count out whatever is in the chair. You do your split whatever it is – 70/30, 60/40, 50/50. And then you go on your way.

Amy: And how do you operate with competition, for example in a venue like a mall, looking for locations if there are other chairs of this kind.

David: That’s really done on an individual basis. Usually what happens is if somebody’s going into a mall they have some kind of relationship with the mall. I don’t see many malls putting in two or three different vendors for chairs. It’s usually one person gets into a mall and they work out the number of chairs that they think the mall can use. And then they put the chairs in the mall. I’ve never come to where that’s an issue.

Amy: And I guess going away from the concept a little bit, and talking about entrepreneurship. Can you tell me a little bit about how this idea spawned and how you became the franchisor?

David: Well first of all, it’s not a franchise. It’s a business opportunity. Which, I think, is very important because our only gain, which is significant when somebody is looking at the opportunity, is that our customers are happy. And they buy more chairs and more locations. We don’t get a residual. Whatever monies they make, they make for themselves. Somebody else started this business in 2002, and we bought it a year and a half ago. I found this business opportunity and I just fell in love with the concept. I just thought it was great that people could do this full-time or part-time. Even if you do this full-time. Even if you have 100 chairs out there, it really is a full-time job with 100 chairs. Unless you’re in the middle of a very rural area where you have to travel a lot to the chairs. Or far distances between chairs. I don’t know the history of it. I do know that we are the largest importer of vending massage chairs in the US. We’re actually listed by Entrepreneur.com as one of the four fastest growing business in our category.

Amy: Tell me about your first experience with a customer who was buying four chairs, fourteen chairs. How did that go?

David: I personally don’t do the selling. I have a partner and sales associates. But I can tell you that while we were still doing due-diligence, my partner just got on the phone and sold three packages like in the first day. It’s a very interesting concept. So really what we do here, and what our sales associates do, and one of the things I kind of tell them that you can’t make this sound too easy. And you have to go over the details of what’s involved because it sounds too good to be true, that it is so easy, that it takes so little time, that there is such a low investment, that you can make so much money. But when you go to our testimonial page, we had a girl and she said. “Thank you.” We had one chair left from a re-order. And she could only afford one chair and she couldn’t even get credit. And one of my sales associates worked with her. She put it in a call center and I think she said she was making $1,500 a month herself out of the chair. And when you think that the chair costs $1,800-$1,900, and she got back $1,500, in her first month, how happy is this girl?

Amy: Very.

David: It’s an interesting relationship. It’s establishing a confidence. And we do have that confidence because with this, we give lifetime technical support, you get a year warranty. Most of our issues, if there are any with the chair, can be fixed over the phone by the technician guiding you. Because it’s usually something stuck, a modulator, or somebody too heavy sat down on the chair. If I say 90 percent of the things that do happen to the chair can be fixed over the phone, that’s an extremely conservative estimate. I could probably say 98 percent of the things. Worst case scenario of a chair that can’t be fixed over the phone: They’re sent a call tag. The chair comes back. We turn it around in a day. One of our two technicians replaces it. Obviously if we can’t fix it, we replace it if it’s still under warranty for a year. I don’t think I have run into a chair that we haven’t been able to fix in a year and a half. And we ship it back to them. And they’re back in business in a couple of days.

Amy: Those were all the questions I had. Is there anything you want to add?

David: We’re very proud of our company. We don’t have any issues in terms of customer complaints registered anywhere. We take pride in what we do and I think the most important thing is that people understand our goal; which is really that our customers are successful. Because without them being successful, then we’re not successful, and that’s what we depend on. There’s no residuals which I said before in our conversation. But that’s important. So we will help guide people to success with this model. And it really, really works. And that’s it.

Amy: Great. Thank you, David. That’s some really interesting information. Okay, everyone, grab some pen and paper. To get more, instant information about The Back Rubber business opportunity, go to www.FranchiseOpportunities.com. Then you’ll be on your way to owning your own business. This is Amy Greene for www.FranchsieOpportunities.com signing out. We’ll see you on the next pod cast.

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