Steven Kirchhof of Better Health Innovations interviews Paul Sajgalik of Thumper Massager Inc. Find out the latest information from Thumper and how they are different from other companies!
Better Health Innovations (BHI): Today we are speaking with Paul Sajgalik, General Manager and Co-owner of Thumper Massager Inc.
Paul, many of us in the wellness industry are familiar with the Thumper brand, but what is the Thumper Company all about?
Thumper Massager Inc. (TMI) Well Steven, our Mission Statement is to help people stay active through the use of drug free wellness products. As you well know, people are gearing towards healthier lifestyles and they have become more educated about exercise, eating habits, relieving stress, and sleeping better. People are living longer, healthier lives. Even if you compare a short period of time, our grandparents were considered to be old in their 60s, today most young retirees play sports well into their late 70s.
Today, people eat better, exercise more, and stay out of the doctor’s office. Thumper is part of that process. We design and manufacture products that help your posture and energize you; products that release tension and fatigue; products that soothe your aching muscles; products that help you recover faster from exercise and fatigue.
(BHI): How do you go about designing your products?
(TMI): All our products are conceptualized from the ground up. We identify a need and we work on a solution to that need. We have Engineering capability in house, and we also work with local specialist for electronics design and industrial design. The most exciting part about conceptualizing new products is to work with our board of medical and wellness experts. We have a team of Chiropractors, Physiotherapists and Health and Wellness experts that help us qualify all our new products. We have prototyping equipment in-house, which we use to produce working models for our health professionals to use on their patients. All the products are tested for effectiveness and ergonomics. It is common to go through as many as 10 iterations on a product before we all sign off on a final design. Only then do we go to tooling and manufacturing.
(BHI): How are your products different than those of your competitors?
(TMI): We spend a lot of time and energy understanding the therapeutic benefits of percussive massage. For instance we educate ourselves in the effects of mechanical vibration through muscular tissue and the benefits of massage right at the cellular level. All our massagers operate at the natural healing frequency of the body.
We believe our products are not only more effective than those of our competitors, but they are of a higher quality. We manufacture all our products in our plant just North of Toronto, Canada, with our own Assembly Technicians and Quality Control personnel. We have tight control of our supply chain, as 90% of our suppliers are located in the Greater Toronto Area.
(BHI): Would you consider moving your manufacturing facility off-shore to offer more competitive pricing?
(TMI): No. We live in a world where you get what you pay for. Our biggest challenge in business is to educate consumers on the fact that all products are not created equal. There was a point in time about 8 years ago, where we had more than 60 so called competitors. They all made electric massagers; almost all of them off-shore. People bought these products, and found them ineffective. This gave our industry a bad name, as people became very disappointed in such products. We spent a lot of time explaining to people the dos and don’ts of selecting the right massager: percussive vs. rotational, depth of stroke, frequency, balance, feedback, strength. Our sales grew during this time of customer rejection towards massagers.
(BHI): I understand that you have been getting into social media. What can you tell us about that?
(TMI): Well Steven, I’m going through a really interesting learning curve. We hired a recent business and communications graduate into our sales team to help us with our Social Media initiatives. We went live in January of this year with our “Stay Active” Blog. We post daily articles on ways to improve your posture, how to sleep better, become leaner and more limber. We post videos on how to get the most out of an electrical massager. You can visit us on You Tube, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter. And right now if you “like” us on Facebook you could win one of our monthly prizes.
(BHI): Thank you for your time. Is there anything you would like to add before we wrap this up?
(TMI): Just this: “Stay Active”
Stay Tuned for more interviews by Thumper Massager Inc.
