A product that you "regret" after buying it, a track that is not cost-effective.
Author | Waterl
Edit | Eucommia
来源 | 观潮新消费（ID：TideSight）
It is said that everyone who buys an ergonomic chair regrets it, some regret spending it in vain, and the other regret buying it late.
The emergence of ergonomic chairs has made office chairs independent from desk supporting facilities, which is not only a productivity tool, but also a way for workers to care for themselves.
But the cost of caring for yourself is a bit high.
In this market, which belongs exclusively to workers, good quality and low price are eternal paradoxes, and there is no way to talk about cost performance. You can't buy it for less than 1,000 yuan, and 10,000 yuan is not expensive. Unlike other consumer goods, the difference between ergonomic chairs from 1,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan is only "a little more comfortable", and this difference in body feeling is difficult to quantify.
When the practical value of the ergonomic chair becomes a metaphysics, the question of the IQ tax ensues. I spent tens of thousands of yuan to buy a chair, but the place that should hurt still hurts, and the place (wallet) that didn't hurt is also hurting.
The "old" waist of young people supports the new market
20-year-old age, 50-year-old cervical spine, 60-year-old waist. Before the cause was prominent, the cervical spine and lumbar spine were protruded first. The backbone of workers supports the hope of economic development and countless market segments.
In most people's lives, sitting longer time than lying down has become the new normal in the office. According to the White Paper on Sedentary Behavior in China's Workplace, 46% of the respondents have more than 10 hours of sitting time per day, 58.6% of office workers sit for more than 1 hour at a time, and 39.3% of them sit for more than 90 minutes.
If you can't consciously intersperse activities during sedentary periods, you have to sit down to play games or watch short videos after getting home from work.
According to the results of the White Paper on Sedentary Behavior in the Chinese Workplace, 48% of people believe that they may be suffering from sedentary disease; 74% of people believe that sitting for a long time can greatly harm their health and lead to longevity; More than 77.6% of people think that going to work puts them in a state of sedentary fatigue and sub-health, and 41.7% think that it has affected their work.
According to the China Health Statistical Yearbook, the number of people discharged from public hospitals for lumbar disc herniation increased from 159,000 to 556,000 from 2010 to 2020, and clinical data from Zhongda Hospital affiliated to Southeast University showed that the number of adolescent patients with lumbar protrusion doubled from 2019 to 2020 compared to the previous five years combined.
In the eyes of most affected people, the threat of sitting for a long time is like boiling a frog in warm water, and it is difficult to recover by the time they realize the problem. And the time node of 2020, which corresponds to the peak of the first wave of working from home, proves the suddenness of sedentary disease.
The rejuvenation of geriatric diseases, even the young body can not bear it, from the sciatic nerve all the way to the toes, the pain of the cervical spine directly punctures the brain, seriously affecting the KPI.
In fact, humans are not a sedentary species.
From an evolutionary point of view, another meaning of walking upright is to straighten the waist and behave as a person, and the spine in the central axis of the human body plays an irreplaceable role, which can support the trunk, dominate movements, comb nerves, and protect internal organs.
In the natural environment of natural selection, the Olympic motto accurately sums up the direction of human evolution - to run faster, jump higher, and be stronger, but the natural environment cannot predict that the real threat to human beings today is sedentary and sitting for eight hours.
The spine is composed of 26 bones, 7 cervical vertebrae, 12 thoracic vertebrae, 5 lumbar vertebrae, 1 sacrum and a coccyx.
The correct sitting posture should maintain the 3 90° principles, with the soles of the feet touching the ground, between the thighs and calves, between the thighs and lumbar spine, and between the upper arms and forearms, with an S-shaped curvature of the spine. However, this sitting posture is difficult to maintain, because the muscles of the lower back, abdomen must always be in a state of exertion, and people will subconsciously relax their muscles when concentrating on work, and there is an incorrect sitting posture.
Increased pressure and uneven pressure are the causes of sedentary illness.
Taking the weight-bearing index of the intervertebral disc as 100 when a person is upright, the weight-bearing index is only 25 when lying down, 145 for sitting correctly, 185 for sitting forward, and 275 when carrying heavy objects.
The intervertebral disc is divided into two parts, the middle part is elastic and responsible for cushioning, and the peripheral toughness is high and is responsible for reinforcement. The weight generated by walking, sitting, running, and jumping is cushioned by the intervertebral discs, and the pressure is borne by the elastic part in the middle when the correct posture is carried out, and then dissipated to the periphery.
When leaning forward, hunchbacking, bowing the head, and stilting the legs, the pressure shifts to the periphery, and the long-term maintenance of the wrong posture leads to uneven force on the intervertebral disc, causing strain and aging, which will lead to cervical spondylosis, lumbar muscle strain, lumbar disc herniation, scoliosis and other problems.
Even if you can sit correctly for a long time, if you are inactive for a long time (> 4 hours), it may lead to poor blood circulation in the buttocks, increased muscle pressure load, and fatigue.
Young people who love health have begun to look for solutions to back pain, and as a result, different sub-sectors have been driven. For example, wearable devices that remind and record activities, childhood nightmares, massage and traction acupuncture three-piece sets, notebook stands, liftable computer desks, ergonomic chairs......
Headache doctor, low back pain doctor, sitting comfortably has become the core demand of workers, when the base is large enough, the scale of the 10 billion industry of ergonomic chairs has rapidly taken shape.
According to data from Bergers Consulting, the global ergonomic office chair market will reach 56.69 billion yuan in 2022, and the Chinese ergonomic office chair market will reach 17.619 billion yuan. It is estimated that the global ergonomic office chair market capacity will reach 72.312 billion yuan by 2028 with a growth rate of 4.11%.
Young people are struggling to support this new industry.
Insiders bring private goods, and laymen pick dazzling
Ergonomic chairs are a new industry, but ergonomics is not a new concept.
Human Engineering, also known as ergonomics, ergonomics, ergonomics, ergonomics, or ergonomics. Ergonomics is a combination of the roots "work" and "efficiency", i.e. the discipline that explores the efficiency of human work.
The essence of ergonomics is to design tools in a way that fits the natural shape of the human body as much as possible, reduce the cost of learning and adaptation when using tools, and minimize the fatigue caused by using tools, so as to ensure long-term use.
For example, the ergonomic chair was inspired by the seat of a fighter jet, and in order to keep the pilot in a state of battle for a long time, the battlefield has now become a cubicle. An offshoot of the ergonomic chair, the gaming chair, was originally called the racing chair, and the arena was shifted from the track to the computer desk.
The key to reducing fatigue while using the seat for long periods of time is to reduce static muscle force. The principle of the ergonomic chair is to design the chair according to the natural spine curve of the human body, and correct and support the four physiological curvatures of the neck, back, waist and buttocks through adjustable cushions, headrests, armrests, backs, lumbar supports and footrests, so as to maintain the natural spine shape.
In short, an ergonomic chair can help maintain a correct sitting posture and minimize the negative effects of sitting for a long time on the body by distributing the force through the support of different parts.
With the arrival of the work-from-home period in 2020, ergonomic chairs have quickly stood at the top of the chain of office chair contempt. It is not only because of the healthy consumption trend brought about by the high incidence of sedentary diseases, but also because of the expansion of office scenes to the family.
Sales bring attention, and attention is mixed with doubt. Whether it is in the comment area of social platforms or e-commerce platforms, the view that "ergonomic chairs are an IQ tax" has always existed.
(Source: Weibo)
The core of the view that "ergonomic chair is an IQ tax" is expensive, because in the traditional consumption structure, the expenditure of a chair is generally at the level of 100 yuan.
"500 yuan to buy a chair is really luxurious; 500 yuan to buy an ergonomic chair, advise you to retire quickly. ”
In the eyes of many core users of ergonomic chairs, there is no need to discuss comfort in ergonomic chairs below 1,000 yuan, and a higher experience threshold brings higher expectations, which also means that there is no "good quality and low price" in this industry for the time being. And once the demand cannot be met, it will naturally be considered that the IQ tax has been paid.
On platforms such as Zhihu, Xiaohongshu, and Weibo, the discussion of "whether the ergonomic chair is an IQ tax" will eventually become a large-scale shopping scene, the fundamental reason is that this emerging market has not yet won the leading brand, and the private goods carried in the popular science have increased the difficulty of consumer identification.
In 1976, United States furniture giant Herman Miller designed a chair called Ergon, which first applied ergonomics to office chairs, opening a precedent for ergonomic chairs. Today, Herman Miller is regarded as the "Hermes of the office chair industry", and even once a way for Silicon Valley giants such as Apple and Google to flaunt humanistic care.
(Source: Herman Miller flagship store)
At present, the domestic participants in the ergonomic chair industry are roughly divided into three categories, the old furniture manufacturers represented by Yongyi, the smart home manufacturers represented by Xihao, and the emerging brands represented by NetEase Yanxuan. But even SKUs of the same brand have a large price span.
(Source: Flagship stores of each brand)
In addition to the confusing prices, what is even more incomprehensible is the difference between the products. Under the roughly similar appearance, the difference in function and experience is difficult to be intuitively amplified, and it is not as obvious as the difference between the thousand-yuan machine and the thousand-yuan machine in the mobile phone field. The brand's propaganda caliber is the same, and the description of the grass grower is also full of metaphysics, in short, "the more expensive, the more comfortable".
Therefore, the time spent on screening and the unjust money spent on blindly placing orders have become part of the so-called "IQ tax".
The lower the price, the higher the "IQ tax".
The high-end of ergonomic chairs is rooted in design.
Before ergonomic chairs became "internet celebrity products", office chairs were a B2B market with a focus on enterprise-level customers. Zooming in to the chair market, it is a branch of the complex home market, usually sold with a table, and the intuitive design is reflected in the appearance.
After the emergence of ergonomic chairs, labor-intensive industries have been transformed into technology-intensive industries, and the cost structure has changed.
In the cost structure of the traditional chair industry, the cost structure of design, production, warehousing, logistics, and store operation has been formed, and the fluctuation affected by the market is not large, and the design, material, production and marketing processes behind the ergonomic chair are in a state of exploration, which will also be reflected in the price.
Even if you get the design drawings of other brands, not every foundry can produce an ergonomic chair that is suitable for most people and does not get tired of sitting for a long time. Thousands of people, thousands of faces, thousands of people, thousands of waists, the design of a good ergonomic chair needs to be collected and analyzed for multiple groups of people of different body types, so as to conform to ergonomics, mechanics and biology.
From the perspective of practicality, the evaluation criteria of ergonomic chairs are roughly divided into four points, namely material, support, adjustment and comfort.
The metaphysics of "the more expensive the more comfortable" is reflected in the support, and there is no difference between an ergonomic chair and a bench that cannot provide effective support; People have different heights, body shapes, and sitting postures, so they need a good degree of adjustment to match the support.
The first point of correct sitting posture is that the feet are close to the ground and the thighs and calves are bent at 90°, which puts forward the requirements for the height and adjustment of the ergonomic chair, and also tests the depth and support of the seat cushion.
The seat cushion needs to support 2/3 of the thigh area, to ensure the 90° bending of the thigh and the torso, to reasonably design the angle between the seat cushion and the lumbar pad, the height of the lumbar pillow should be adjusted to the position of the third, fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae of the human body, so as to ensure that the weight of the human body can fall on the seat to a greater extent and reduce the natural weight bearing of the waist.
The height of the headrest should be adjusted to the third to seventh segments of the cervical spine and provide multi-angle adjustment to accommodate the rotation of the head.
At the same time, the height of the armrests should also be carefully designed to ensure that the arms hang down naturally, so as to reduce the hunchback and frozen shoulder caused by hanging shoulders and shrinking shoulders.
Materials are essential for the latter three. High-density sponges and fabrics provide support while ensuring comfort and durability, and reduce pressure on blood vessels and nerves while fitting snugly to the body. The height and affirmation of the seat and the adjustment of the front and rear require a stable chassis and air pressure bars to achieve, and every joint of a good ergonomic chair is smoother, and it will not bring a "shock feeling" when leaning forward or backward.
If more advanced intelligent elements are superimposed, such as intelligent lifting, massage, built-in audio, etc., the design and production costs will be increased.
The early R&D investment is still restricting the "price inclusiveness" of the ergonomic chair industry. Similar to products such as computers, mobile phones, automobiles, etc., any industry with a high upfront investment needs a sufficient time span to achieve a balance between cost and selling price.
This means that the current ergonomic chair industry cannot take the cost-effective route. Even if you do OEM and pull the price below 500 yuan, it is still a high-priced product in a market that has not yet completed user education, and any lack of experience will be magnified.
Therefore, in the view of Guanchao New Consumption (ID: TideSight), due to its strong practicability and low substitutability, ergonomic chairs are not IQ taxes, but the lower the price, the easier it is to "pay tuition", and in the end it can only be hung on the second-hand platform. As a product with a strong experience, it is recommended to experience more before placing an order.
From the perspective of market competition, ergonomic chair brands are still in the stage of telling stories to consumers, Herman Miller uses the choice of Silicon Valley giants as the endorsement of luxury, and more brands use the time cost invested by designers to increase the persuasiveness of products, develop co-branded products with design companies, or sponsor e-sports events, in order to jointly promote the industry out of the circle.
Profit margins are also dispersed across channels. Caijing Wuji mentioned in a report that, according to industry procurement sources, a charcoal gray Aeron ergonomic chair with a retail price of 15,310 yuan in the Tmall flagship store, the price of the company's large-scale purchase from channel providers can even reach less than 5% off, that is, 7000+.
Open the product manual of some ergonomic chairs, you may be able to find a cold knowledge from the small print, its origin is in the mainland of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, where is located in the world's chair production town - "chair township" Anji County. There is a local saying that "for every three chairs produced in China, one comes from Anji; For every two chairs at the exit, there is also one from Anji".
This industrial belt that has been deeply cultivated for decades has most obviously felt the trend of consumption upgrading and brand upgrading brought by ergonomic chairs, from low-end OEM to independent branding, from price competition to brand competition, which has become the consensus of Anji chair industry and the epitome of the development of ergonomic chair industry.
epilogue
At present, the mainland is still the largest producer of the global office chair industry, accounting for about 30% of the global output; At the same time, the mainland is also the second largest consumer market, with the consumption of office furniture second only to United States, and has a broad market space.
Thanks to the huge user base, young people's attention to spinal health is supporting this emerging industry, but similar to other segments of the big health industry, as a preventive consumer product, its value and efficacy need time to test, and it is difficult to define because there are too many variables.
It is impossible for young people to really choose to lie flat between effort and lumbar protrusion, which is the confidence of the ergonomic chair brand to enter the game.