Home Healthcare Appliance Rivals World Star Marketing Effect Shines Brightly

Ceragem, Lee Jung-jae Effect... Expanding to 10 US Stores by Year-End
Sales Doubled Last Year... Targeting 800 Billion KRW in 2023 and IPO in 2024
Bodyfriend Features Star Ads with Choo Sung-hoon, Son Heung-min, BTS, and Rain
Unrivaled No.1 in Massage Chairs... Industry's First Robot-Type Massage Chair Launched

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] Home healthcare appliance rivals Bodyfriend and Ceragem are seeing significant brand image boosts by employing world star advertising models. These two companies, recently engaged in a sales competition, plan to leverage their increased recognition to focus on customer experiences at offline stores as their next strategic move.

Ceragem appears to be expecting the so-called "Lee Jung-jae effect" after actor Lee Jung-jae won the Best Actor award at the 74th Emmy Awards for the drama "Squid Game." Lee Jung-jae has been Ceragem's advertising model for four years since 2019. Last month on the 19th, Ceragem also unveiled a new advertising campaign for its spinal medical appliance, the "Ceragem V6," featuring Lee Jung-jae.

With heightened brand awareness from Lee Jung-jae's advertising impact, Ceragem is expected to advance its ongoing U.S. market penetration more advantageously. Earlier this year, Ceragem simultaneously opened three regional experience stores in key locations around Los Angeles, California. The company plans to expand its U.S. stores to up to 10 by the end of the year. Domestically, Ceragem also intends to further expand its experiential store chain, Well Cafe, which currently operates about 125 locations.

Ceragem has recently emerged as a dark horse in the approximately 1 trillion KRW massage chair market. Although Ceragem’s business scope is broader, covering home healthcare appliances, its flagship products such as V6, Pause, and Decoare are rapidly dominating the market by serving as substitutes for existing massage chairs. Ceragem’s sales surged nearly twofold from 343.8 billion KRW in 2019 to 667.1 billion KRW last year. This year, sales are expected to exceed 800 billion KRW. The company aims to go public in 2024. A Ceragem representative stated, "We will continue to pursue management innovation, marketing, and social contribution activities in various ways, including recently changing our brand slogan to 'The Start of a Good Life.' We will strive to become a consumer-centric company through relentless innovation and challenges."

Bodyfriend took the lead in raising company brand value by boldly employing highly recognized advertising models. In 2013, Bodyfriend became the first in the industry to sign an exclusive model contract with mixed martial artist Choo Sung-hoon, maintaining the relationship for about seven years until 2019. Additionally, Bodyfriend spared no advertising expenses to hire world stars of the era as models, including soccer player Son Heung-min, pro gamer Faker, golf coach Park Seri, BTS, and the celebrity couple Rain and Kim Tae-hee. Sales grew from 65.2 billion KRW in 2012 to 263.5 billion KRW in 2015, and reached 591.3 billion KRW last year. Bodyfriend remains the undisputed number one in the massage chair market.

While Ceragem has penetrated the massage chair market based on home healthcare, Bodyfriend is expanding its business into the home healthcare field based on massage chairs. The launch of the "Phantom Robo," a robotic massage chair with independently moving left and right legs, in July marked the industry's first such product. Bodyfriend plans to upgrade this product to monitor blood pressure, electrocardiograms, heart rate, and more. Bodyfriend envisions evolving into a home healthcare platform by measuring various biometric data through massage chairs and analyzing it with artificial intelligence (AI). A Bodyfriend representative said, "Currently, about 30% of customers visiting our showrooms choose the Phantom Robo, making it a bestseller."

Bodyfriend is also expanding its offline experience spaces. On the 16th, Bodyfriend opened its largest premium store, the "Gwangjin Exhibition Hall," in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul. Spanning four floors and 922 square meters (approximately 279 pyeong), it is the largest directly operated showroom by Bodyfriend. A company representative said, "Considering the importance of experience for massage chair products, we opened this store to provide a more comfortable environment for customers to try our products. We plan to operate it as a complex cultural space where culture and relaxation blend, through ongoing art collaborations with artists and VIP classes, offering not only product experiences but also cultural and leisure activities."