I got a phone call from a salon owner in Atlanta. “My hydraulic salon chair won’t stay up,” she said. “It sinks to the floor whenever a client sits down. My stylist is basically squatting to cut hair.” I asked her how much she paid. “$120,” she said. I told her that was the problem.

Last year, a shop owner in Houston called me. She’d bought six “cheap recliner salon chairs” from a local supplier. Six months later, the pump on one died, the vinyl on another started peeling, and the swivel on a third got so stiff that her stylist actually threw her back out. She wasn’t mad at

Last week a barber from Chicago called me. He’d bought three reclining salon chairs from an auction site — they looked great in photos but the recline mechanism was a friction lever that slipped under a 180lb client. He said he’d have been better off buying office chairs. I told him: a salon chair that

I was at a spa expo in Vegas last year and a chiropractor stopped at our booth. He said his electric massage table’s motor died after 14 months — the brand he bought from in China didn’t have CE certification, and the motor was a 12V unit rated for 5000 cycles. We replaced it with

A clinic owner in Austin called me last week, frustrated. She’d bought a hydraulic massage table with a foot pump, and after 8 months the pump started leaking fluid. Her maintenance guy said the cylinder was a generic 1.5-ton unit — not rated for the 300kg weight capacity she needed. She had two options: pay

Last month a massage therapist from Phoenix texted me a photo of her trunk: a foldable massage table snapped in half, face cradle rolling around next to a spare tire. She’d bought it off a discount site for $89. The frame was hollow aluminum tubing with a 2mm wall — not enough for real bodywork.

I remember a massage therapist who bought a folding table from a department store. It was $180, weighed 45 pounds, and took her five minutes to set up. She was a mobile therapist, so she was setting it up and breaking it down four times a day. After a month, the hinges were loose, the

A guy in Arizona bought a $200 massage bed from a big-box store. He was a massage therapist, just starting out, and he thought any table would do. Six months later, the vinyl was peeling, the legs were wobbling, and he had a client complain that the table felt unstable. He called me and said,

An esthetician I know in Chicago called me last winter. She’d just signed a lease for her own studio and was buying furniture. “I found a table online for $280,” she said. “Do I need anything else?” I asked her what she’d be doing on it. “Facials, waxing, maybe some chemical peels.” I told her

I was in a med spa in Florida last week, and the esthetician was complaining about her facial chair. “It’s fine for basic facials,” she said, “but the backrest is too short, and the client’s head hangs off the edge when I do a neck massage.” She’d bought it because it was cheap — $350