Shared massage chairs are dead.

At their peak, the industry deployed over one million units nationwide, crowding shopping malls, cinemas, airports and high-speed rail stations.

Industry experts once predicted shared massage chairs would pioneer the "stay-at-home economy" and become the first sharing-economy segment to break through — but reality tells a different story.

Young people didn't become addicted after the novelty; instead, they kept their distance. Meanwhile, the elderly turned to long-term "freeloading naps", lying spread-eagled on the chairs for a snooze, picking their toes, eating sausages, and cracking sunflower seeds.

Nowadays, even freeloaders find the chairs filthy — almost all are rusty and dusty, turning train stations, airports and cinemas into dumping grounds for broken furniture.

See the towers rise, watch the banquets in full swing, then witness the collapse.

01. A Full-Body SPA for 9.9 Yuan

During the sharing-economy boom, thousands of sharing-based projects emerged. As the cheapest massage leisure option on the market, shared massage chairs were packaged as one of the best investment opportunities in the sector.

Under the banner of "sharing", these pay-per-use chairs sprouted like bamboo shoots after rain across various venues in 2017.

On one hand, within the sharing economy, shared massage chairs could legitimately be called the only "lie-down-and-earn" category.

From an industry perspective: they fit the megatrend of health-conscious consumption and the upgrade of consumer habits. From a business model view: no deposit required, low investment with high gross margins and fast ROI, low maintenance costs, diverse deployment scenarios, and practically a necessity in waiting areas...

The business model of shared massage chairs is simple: either sell the chairs directly to earn the margin, or take a service fee commission.

The franchise pitch was extremely tempting.

For example, you find an indoor mall with high foot traffic where the average dwell time exceeds one hour. You buy a massage chair for 5,000–10,000 yuan and place it there. With 3-5 daily users at 8–30 yuan per session, you generate about 50 yuan per day. After giving 15% to the platform and 15% to the mall, you keep 35 yuan net. That's 1,000 yuan per month – recouping the chair cost within 5-10 months.

And that's a conservative estimate. A chair lasts for 3-5 years, so you go into pure profit mode after less than a year. Now imagine buying 30-50 chairs at once.

On the other hand, the market education cost is extremely low.

Massage chairs had always had a luxury connotation. The shared model suddenly lowered the barrier from ten thousand yuan to a single digit.

For as little as 9.9 yuan, you could buy a "massage therapist" machine and enjoy a full-body SPA experience. Just park the chair, paste a QR code on it, and curious customers would naturally keep coming.

According to Tianyancha data, the number of newly registered companies in this industry in 2017 was five times that of 2016. 2018 was the peak of capital inflow: the number of newly registered companies nearly doubled compared to 2017.

That same year, multiple shared-massage-chair brands received funding.

According to incomplete statistics, in 2018 alone, the number of deployed chairs reached 120,000 (Shuangk), 100,000 (Momoda), 110,000 (Lemo Bar), 40,000 (Minben Moxiezuo), and 20,000 (FirstClass), plus countless others from lesser-known tech companies — totaling over one million units nationwide.

However, in 2019, the industry suddenly went silent. Not only did large-scale financing vanish, but the investment community also stopped buzzing about the concept.

By 2020 and 2021, the capital environment became even harsher. No further echoes were heard from the shared-massage-chair space, and most companies' financing progress remained stuck at Series A from 2-3 years earlier.

The root cause: after the capital tide receded, the industry could not generate enough revenue to support itself.

02. Great Model, Terrible Experience

A quick massage when tired from shopping — sounds relaxing. A massage before a movie starts — pure pleasure. A massage while waiting for a train or flight — kills time and relieves fatigue.

Shared massage chairs, strictly speaking, dived deeper into specific pain points than shared bicycles. Yet after the novelty of a free trial wore off, a cascade of issues followed.

Humiliation of self-esteem.

Many young people first sat on a massage chair simply to rest, not to get massaged. But in the end, they were "forced" to scan and pay.

Before your seat even warms up, a cold, mechanical female voice repeats like a broken record: "This massage chair is for paying users only. Please do not occupy it for free and affect others' use."

If you ignore it, the voice grows louder and more frequent. Under the gaze of others, it feels like doomsday judgment. The loud alert draws everyone's eyes, accusing you of freeloading. Your pride and face shatter on the spot.

Whether you walk away angrily or reluctantly pull out your phone to pay, you probably will never come back.

Hygiene hazards.

In December 2019, a man in Shenzhen tried a shared massage chair after working out to relieve muscle fatigue. Soon, his inner thighs became increasingly itchy. When he took off his pants, he found several white worms on his legs, leaving multiple bites.

Turns out, the crevices of the chair were thick with bugs. Due to a lack of regular cleaning, they were packed with hair, toenails, food scraps...

Especially in summer, the leather chairs are soaked with sweat and bacteria. Fungus thrives, skin diseases can cross-infect — you can't imagine how dirty they are.

Safety hazards.

The most alarming issue: safety.

In 2018, at Hangzhou East Railway Station, a woman's head got caught in a massage chair; her hair was pulled into the machine. Firefighters had to dismantle the chair and cut her hair to free her. Her scalp was torn and required several stitches.

Also in 2018, a 68-year-old woman went shopping and thought a shared massage chair seemed like a good idea. She paid 10 yuan for a massage. The following day, her lower back began to hurt. After more than two months of worsening pain, a hospital examination revealed a compression fracture of her lumbar spine.

Doctors warn that electric massage chairs are not to be taken lightly — especially for people with cervical or lumbar conditions, heart disease, hypertension, organic lesions, or the elderly.

Freeloading naps.

The most notorious issue is elderly freeloaders taking over the chairs for naps. They occupy the seats in a perfectly aligned formation, making you furious.

Whenever and wherever massage chairs appear in a mall, the seniors no longer go to IKEA to enjoy air conditioning or take naps on display beds. They lie across the massage chairs, chatting, snacking, napping...

During the 2017–2018 turf wars among top brands, train stations, high-speed rail terminals, airports, and cinemas became key battlegrounds for prime locations.

Ordinary seats were torn out and replaced by swaths of massage chairs. Even some hospitals swapped their waiting benches for paid massage chairs.

Cold attitudes repel customers, long-term freeloading degrades the environment, appalling hygiene conditions, and potential safety risks — when the capital wave finally receded, the entire industry collapsed into a mess.

03. Outside the Mess, Someone Really Did "Lie Down and Earn"

The "lie-down-and-earn" pitch couldn't fool serious investors. Public companies and well-known investment institutions certainly saw profit — so who actually made money?

If you look closely, almost every player is linked to massage chair manufacturers or has strategic partnerships with them. For example, Lejin Health, Rongtai Health, and OGAWA are all publicly listed companies.

By hyping up "sharing", the industry generated enormous demand for manufacturing capacity. Manufacturers profited handsomely by selling chairs. Regardless of whether the model eventually crashed, and regardless of the business approach, at least the equipment was sold.

Small platforms also made money by selling chairs. For individual or small-scale distributors hoping to profit from massage chairs, you need capital upfront and a high-traffic, high-dwell-time location. Early birds made profits — and ultimately, they were the ones left holding the bag.

Under the wave of internet trends, scams disguised as "new concepts" are not limited to the sharing economy. Cases with names like "financial mutual aid", "virtual currency", "e-commerce", "WeChat marketing" pop up frequently. Victims are often unfamiliar with these terms, and scammers need only a simple repackaging to create a fraud.

Under the allure of "lie-down-and-earn" through the sharing economy, some greedy for high returns inevitably fall prey.

In June 2019, a Mr. Wang in Hainan was introduced to an "investment" in shared massage chairs. For an investment of just 1,280 yuan, you could subscribe to one chair, then earn a 50-yuan daily return. Referring a friend would bring an additional 300-yuan bonus.

Invest 1,280 yuan, earn a steady 18,250 yuan a year — Mr. Wang took the bait. He then joined a WeChat group of over 100 "investors". The perpetrators deliberately fabricated the illusion of hot products and short supply, and increased referral rewards, encouraging Wang to bring in more people.

In the end, Mr. Wang paid 76,800 yuan for 60 subscribed "shared massage chairs", but received only a few hundred yuan in "dividends" before his upline disappeared. After reporting to police, he discovered the "high-return" promise was bait, the business license was fake, and the electronic purchase contracts were forged.

The most chilling part: the entire 100-member group, apart from Mr. Wang himself, was made up of scammers.

04. Final Thoughts

A widely worshipped mantra among venture capitalists: observe Japan’s past and present, and you will find where China’s consumption upgrade is heading.

According to data, the Chinese massage chair market was estimated to be 15.03 billion yuan in 2020, an 8.2% year-on-year increase. In contrast to Japan's 27% household penetration rate, China's stands at just 1%.

Today, China has become one of the world's largest manufacturing and R&D centers for massage chairs, housing multiple large factories and holding numerous patents.

The seventh national census shows that the proportion of people aged 60 and above has reached 18.70%, with those aged 65 and above accounting for 13.50%. Based on current trends, China’s aging level will exceed 20% by around 2023.

Demand for wellness is rising, and chronic spinal and bone diseases will further boost the need for massage chairs.

In an interview with DeepTech New Consumption, a shared-massage-chair distributor who wished to remain anonymous lamented:

"We spent five years and burned through half a billion yuan to learn a painful lesson: 'sharing' might really not be suitable for massage chairs. However, with consumption upgrades and the impending aging wave, massage chairs will eventually enter millions of homes — but for now, we simply can't find a profitable model."