Articles

The Racine Journal Times

PUB DATE : 10/28/2003 "The Secret is in the Seats" BYLINE: Michael Burke

RACINE - Mark Eberhardt was sold on the benefits of a massage chair long before he found a way to sell those benefits to others. But sell them he has, and Eberhardt's local company, First Class Seats®, is now seeing some first-class revenue growth from its mall-based massage chairs. His company's revenues have soared from about $190,000 in 2001 to $1.2 million, with $2.7 million expected this year. First Class Seats®, at 310 Fifth St., started simply enough: Eberhardt - a Racine native and former stockbroker - liked what a massage chair did for his back. "Every time I would go to a mall I would see massage chairs," he said. Each chair was a demonstration model for a store that sold them for home use, and cost nothing to use. "I couldn't believe how great I felt after setting in them. But it was difficult to get a turn." One day, sitting at an airport with his wife, Marsha, Eberhardt got his business start-up idea. "My back was killing me, and I thought, 'I bet these things would be fantastic in an airport.' " Eberhardt's next step was to get one of them rigged up to accept money, and to find a place to station them. Both steps proved more difficult than expected. "Massage had that connotation" in some people's minds of something a little bit illicit or embarrassing, Eberhardt said. But he thinks that's been changing. His first chairs vibrated while pushing rollers up and down the customer's back. Today, First Class Seats® employs a chair that does not vibrate - rather it gives a deep-muscle workout with strong pressure up and down the back. The actions are described as kneading, rolling and tapping, but the tapping is a pretty good pounding like a masseur or masseuse might deliver. If you like your massages to really get into the muscles, it feels great. If you like them soft and gentle, this treatment is not for you. Eberhardt got his first break in 1996 at Mitchell International Airport with six chairs there. In the beginning, it was all tiny, one-chair orders, with Eberhardt trying to find a shop that would make what he envisioned. He wasn't good at specifying what he envisioned. "I don't know how many of these guys I went through, because they couldn't stand to work with me," Eberhardt said. But in 2000 he hooked up with a Canadian company, Shiatsu Plus, that was putting a similar massage chair into shopping malls. Eberhardt gave the company owner, Christopher Wu, all his future business of manufacturing his chairs, and shared his technology. In exchange Wu agreed to stay out of the United States with his company's chairs. That year Eberhardt quit his stockbroker job and began to worm his way into the shopping mall market with his dollar bill-operated massage chairs. Each deal is individual, but First Class® usually tries not to pay more than 30 percent of its take to the mall for the right to be there. In 2001, First Class Seats® had about 150 massage chairs in operation in 26 locations. Today it's 95 locations with about 600 chairs, including three in Regency Mall. And Eberhardt may have tapped into only about 10 percent to 15 percent of that market alone. The price of a massage from First Class® hasn't changed since Eberhardt's first chair in 1996: $1 gets a three-minute massage, $5 a 15-minute going-over, and $10 a 30-minute workout. For some reason, teenagers seem to get a kick out of the deep-tissue massages - "The people who need a massage the least," observed Marsha, who quit her CNH Global job to join First Class Seats®. The chairs are also very popular with tradesmen such as carpet installers, she said. "People 60 and older are not our best customers," Mark said - apparently because the workout is a bit too rigorous for their taste. They're also less popular with affluent people who can afford a real live masseuse. But they appeal strongly to people of more modest means. "Near the border of Texas and New Mexico, we scream!" Eberhardt said. "These people line up." Lately Eberhardt has been negotiating with several airlines to put First Class Seats® in their terminals and/or lounges. He predicted, "Next year is going to be huge for us."