The same travel does not create the same comfort
The same mechanical displacement can feel entirely different across bodies and muscle groups. A depth that supports the shoulders may be excessive elsewhere.
THE RELAXBRO STORY
The best technology
is felt,
not seen.
Relaxbro did not begin with a calculated business plan. It began with a question founder Nicholas Ching could not ignore: why could even the most advanced massage chair still feel so far from a pair of hands that truly understood the body?
2016
THE BEGINNING
2016It began after midnight,
in front of a screen.
A graduate of Fudan University, Nicholas Ching was operating a high-tech business. Long hours at a computer—and workdays that regularly stretched late into the night—made neck and shoulder tension part of everyday life.
After a session with an experienced massage therapist in Hong Kong, he was struck by what made the relief feel different. It was not simply stronger pressure. The therapist was constantly judging where to deepen, where to soften, when to pause, and when to change rhythm.
“Real comfort is not a setting. It is a sequence of human judgments.”
THE FIRST QUESTION
So he bought one of the
best massage chairs available.
He wanted to bring that sense of recovery back to the office—to find genuine relief in the short spaces between long days. So he chose one of the leading premium massage chairs available at the time.
The specifications were impressive. The programs were extensive. Yet the experience still felt unmistakably mechanical.
HUMAN
observe · adapt · respond
MACHINE
repeat · execute · continue
THE SEARCH
He went on to study
over a hundred models.
To understand where the difference truly came from, Nicholas sourced, experienced, and compared over a hundred massage chairs. The deeper he looked, the clearer one conclusion became: the problem was not a lack of features. It was a lack of judgment.
100+
chairs studied and compared
Real technique keeps making decisions
Neck, shoulders, back, and waist call for different combinations of pressure, speed, rhythm, and dwell time. Skilled massage is not repetition; it is continuous adjustment.
More technology does not mean a better experience
When technology dominates the experience, greater capability only creates greater complexity. Mature technology eventually becomes something you no longer need to notice.
A NEW DEFINITION
If the answer did not exist,
he would define it.
Nicholas began defining the massage chair he actually wanted to use. He became directly involved in the mechanism, massage heads, and algorithms—not to accumulate specifications, but to make every technical choice answer the same question: does this genuinely make the body feel better?
That became a core Relaxbro principle: let the machine recede, and let the human experience come forward.
PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE
MECHANISM
Precision in motion
Depth, trajectory, and pressure refined with millimeter precision. By reading muscle resistance feedback, we recreate the nuanced rhythm and deep tissue penetration of human hands. The mechanism completely recedes behind a warm, profound sensation of relief.
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
Form in service of comfort
Posture, proportion, and surfaces shaped first for the body, then for the home around it.
MATERIAL & CRAFT
Touch is part of the engineering
Leather, tactility, and finishing are not decoration. They are the first layer of the experience the body actually meets.
TECHNOLOGY, MADE INVISIBLE
As AI gets smarter,
the experience should get simpler.
Nicholas believes that as AI makes sophisticated capability easier to access, true luxury is no longer about displaying more technology. It is about turning complexity into an experience that feels natural, quiet, and almost self-explanatory.
Relaxbro therefore began embedding intelligent judgment into massage logic, allowing the chair to respond more precisely to different bodies—while deliberately letting the technology itself disappear into the background.
“The best technology disappears into the experience.”
THE MOMENT IT FELT RIGHT
Then one day,
he fell asleep in it.
After round after round of refinement, Nicholas lay back in a chair whose experience he had helped define. There was no feature he needed to admire and no mechanism he needed to think about.
He simply relaxed, drifted off, and woke later. In that quiet moment, he knew he was finally close to the answer he had been looking for.
“When you stop noticing the machine, relaxation can finally begin.”
2017
RELAXBRO · 2017
That answer became
Relaxbro.
Planning began in Hong Kong in 2016, and Relaxbro was formally established in 2017. From the outset, the ambition was not to build another visibly mechanical device, but a form of meaningful recovery that could live naturally within everyday life.
The Chinese name, 放松堡—literally a fortress of relaxation—expresses the same idea: a private space in a busy world where the body can finally let go.
RELAXBRO
放鬆堡
FROM HONG KONG TO THE WORLD
From Hong Kong,
comfort reaches
more homes.
From Hong Kong, Relaxbro first expanded into Mainland China, Taiwan, China and Macau, then across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. From there, the journey continued through the United Kingdom, Europe and the Middle East, before reaching the United States and Canada.
Hong Kong
Mainland China
Taiwan, China
Macau
Singapore
Malaysia
Thailand
Indonesia
Australia
New Zealand
United Kingdom
Europe
Middle East
United States
Canada
RECOGNITION · 2024—
When comfort is designed with intent,
the world responds.
Beginning in 2024, Relaxbro products received recognition from a number of international design awards. For us, awards are not the destination. They are confirmation that a massage chair can combine engineering depth, the restraint of well-considered furniture, and a more nuanced understanding of the body.
2024
2025
2026
NORTH AMERICA · 2026
Next stop,
North America.
In 2026, Relaxbro plans to bring this approach to comfort and everyday stillness to North America. Not simply by taking a machine into another market, but by bringing our answer to a more fundamental question into more homes: what does it really mean to make someone feel comfortable?
OUR BELIEF
Modern comfort.
Meaningful recovery.
Machines can become smarter and technology can become more complex. Ultimately, we want you to remember neither. We want you to remember the moment your body finally lets go.
RELAXBRO
RELAXBRO · EST. HONG KONG 2017