Black Friday Sales

Before I get into it, let me ask you a question!

Now, or sometime in the future, if you had a close friend or family member applying for a job with a retailer - would you like them to be working in a great environment, where they are treated well and they have the opportunity to genuinely help customers every day or would you prefer they push a trolley around an amazon warehouse where they have to keep up their pace, pick a certain number of orders per minute and get scolded for taking a toilet break?

I think I know which one you would prefer! Unfortunately working in retail is heading in the direction of the 2^nd option. Big corporations pushing for smaller margins, in the hope of monopolising the market, now mostly employ humans as robots and are in the process of replacing these real human robots with actual robots.

Making cheap products with poor quality components, fast fashion and fast retail, discounting and Black Friday Cyber Monday type deals are what is helping these retail giants take over the retail industry and put all other independent and specialist retailers out of business.

Most of us still remember growing up in a town or village where we had access to a friendly baker, butcher, greengrocer and local supermarket. It helped us be part of a community and we knew the products were local and of great quality. The large out of town supermarkets came along and all that went away. We let it happen because we gave in to convenience.

The same thing has happened to independent specialist retailers with the rise of amazon and other large corporations but you still have a chance to stop it and even reverse it just by changing website you use!  You will still get the same next day delivery, the only difference is you may have to put your credit card details into a website checkout(because we don't store them) versus having them stored automatically in amazon!!!

And now on to the main question you want answered!

Will Massage Warehouse be having a Black Friday sale this year?

What about a Cyber Monday Sale? Or a special January Sale? These questions come up quite frequently this time of the year.

Read on to find ​out about the answer...

 The short answer is: No.

We don't do Black Friday Discounts or any other seasonal sales.

Now... to give you our reasons for not having a black Friday or seasonal sale at Massage Warehouse.

It’s not because we are lazy or we don’t care! It is because we care and we have some strong reasons for not participating in these newly invented sale days!

Despite the flood of emails that you’ll get from retailers around black Friday and cyber Monday, 99% of the deals are rubbish.

It’s an illusory bandwagon made up by big corporations which most retailers have tried to catch a ride on.

So what do we have a problem with?

Reason No.1: It’s all a big fat lie.

Retailers generally share a common mark-up on products across all industries. In order to reduce prices in “the sale”, the price is inflated beforehand. You can read countless research papers and consumer reports on the reality of how this works. The best example is that bottle of wine “on special” at supermarkets. They buy the wine in and inflate the price from day one so that they can put it on special later on but still make their normal mark-ups.

We keep our prices as low as possible all year round. We are therapists too and as such we have empathy for our fellow therapists and understand the difficulty in running your own business so we keep that in mind when pricing our quality massage tables and equipment. We enjoy what we do for a living and have integrity and would never lie about pricing.

Reason No.2: Fairness to all customers and overpriced products

Imagine you became a customer of ours a couple of weeks ago and bought yourself a lovely new massage table. Then you find out we offer some crazy discount on Black Friday! How would you feel?

Betrayed, possibly even angry? You may even hold some resent towards us!

We want happy customers, we have happy customers! And those are feelings we don’t want our customers to experience.

We strive to treat every one of our customers equally and fairly and I am sure you do the same with the clients in your therapy practice.

Treating our customers fairly begins with not overpricing our products to later discount them. In that scenario some customers pay too much!

Take a look at our entire range of massage tables and you will see we offer a lot of value at every price point from entry level right through to professional grade massage tables. This is one of the reasons we stock so many different models of massage tables. And by doing this you also win with more choice.

The price you see now on our website is and will always be the lowest possible price so you'll never regret your purchase.

Reason No.3: The fall of the independent specialist retailer.

If you take up cycling, do you want to go to a specialist bicycle shop or get your bike from amazon? I’m guessing you would like to receive advice from a specialist so that they help you make the right choice.

We are the small independent bike specialist of the massage table industry. We hire knowledgeable people and treat them well. We create great products we would only use ourselves. We use quality components that allow you to be the best therapist possible. The bottom line is we care about the products we sell and we care about each other as team members and we care about you, our fellow therapists and customers.

We are the last remaining specialist in the industry.

There used to be quite a few more but they have all fallen because of corporations like amazon entering the market. The non-specialist retailers selling massage equipment on amazon sell any massage product they can get their hands on that gives them the most sales and the most profit. 

In order to treat our staff like fellow humans, and not like robots in an amazon warehouse, we need to pay better than average wages. To stock a large range of massage tables and equipment so that we can service every type of therapist requires overheads for storage and research and development for products. If we cut our prices, we would have to make cutbacks elsewhere - and you, the therapist, will inevitably lose out by receiving lower quality products and poorer levels of service - which we are seeing become more commonplace across many industries nowadays.

Black Friday sales were introduced by large fashion brands and high unit turnover big box retailers with the introduction of fast fashion and fast retail. They created a “want it now” mentality. In order to supply the “want it now” addiction, they have to carry lots of stock. Stocking the correct amount of stock is sometimes hard to predict for any retailer, big or small. Trends and tastes change and sometimes retailers get stuck with more stock than they expected they would sell.

How else are you going to get rid of stock quickly that has been laying around?

Discount it and pretend it is a very special one off black Friday and cyber Monday deal!

All of this is bad for the environment. Increased manufacturing, increased packaging, increased courier transit for that quicker delivery. As a small retailer, we want to have all our staff enjoy a fair living wage but we also want to be able to enjoy the wonderful world we live in which is why we do more to give back such as planting a tree for every massage table we sell in order to give the wood back to the earth. 

We have been in operation since 1999.  Over time we have put the research and development into long lasting quality products and have been selling the same range of massage tables for many years - so we do not partake in the fast throwaway product culture the cheaper brands and big corporations promote.

Reason No.4: “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

For the above 3 reasons. We do our best to have integrity. We believe all businesses should operate with integrity and we hope you will join us.

Imagine if there were robot massage therapists. How different would the experience be for your clients?

Without us, and other specialists retailers like us, I believe choosing the right product to assist you being the best therapist will become a minefield of frustration and disappointment!

Our goal has always been to build long lasting products for massage therapists that are worth buying at normal price any time of the year. I hope you will continue to see the value of supporting any specialist independent retailer and not chase the latest discounted deal the big brands try to hoodwink you with!!

Lets keep the human customer service experience going strong!