The Medtrade Expo + Conference is a Mobility products trade show. A twice annual event where the manufacturers and other industry vendors of mobility scooters and power wheelchairs show off their new products to dealers. We attend these shows to make sure we are up to date on the trends and new features, and to get a sense of what our customers are looking for in their next new mobility scooter or power wheelchair.
We flew from sunny Jacksonville, Florida and braved the 10 degree weather in Dallas Texas so that we could fill you in on what’s coming, and give you our take on the state of home medical products from the MOST important person’s perspective - you. In addition to showing off new products, Medtrade is also the place where attendees and vendors can learn more what’s new about the business of home medical products via industry experts.
Since Medicare plays such a vital role in home medical products, representatives from The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the governmental agency who manages Medicare and Medicaid are typically on hand to talk about how local dealers can work more efficiently with Medicare. This year, nobody from CMS was in attendance because as reported by HME News, a travel ban was imposed on them by the current Trump administration.
Pride Mobility is the market leader for power scooters and lift recliners, and they did not disappoint us. They exhibited all their products, including some remarkable ones that I’ll tell you about here.
First, there’s their soon-to-be announced VivaLift! Premier lift recliner. This chair is HIGH END. It comes upholstered in butter-smooth leather and standard heat and massage. But the coolest thing is the built-in Bluetooth audio system with rumble function for a fully immersive at-home theater experience. It positively rocks!
The big deal is that their efforts to move production of many of their scooters to the US has begun to bear fruit. If you see a person riding a compact travel scooter on the street, the odds are it’s a GoGo scooter. Pride has been selling GoGo models for nearly 15 years. At the show, they were touting their brand new GoGo Elite Traveller 2 Platinum, just announced to the public on February 17th, this Made-in-USA scooter features Pride’s EZ Turn technology that has to be seen to be believed.
Previously you had to choose the stability of a four wheel scooter or the tight turning radius of a three wheel scooter. You couldn’t have both. But the GoGo Elite Traveller Platinum scooter’s front wheels turn almost sideways, allowing for a 37” turning radius. This means it will navigate around furniture, down hallways, etc., with ease.
Speaking of mobility, the Pride Jazzy Carbon power wheelchair has turned into a family of products. The newest member of the family is the Pride Mobility Jazzy Ultralight, weighing in at 33 lbs. I have to be honest, the popularity of all of these products caught everyone by surprise. They are flying off the shelves.
When you have a success, everyone wants to copy it and that’s what’s happening with the Jazzy Carbon. There were around 300 companies exhibiting and 30 of them under the name, “Formosa Cultural Corporation”, were actually Asian companies looking to find dealers who would buy their scooters, wheelchairs and other medical products from their factories in China. We see this as a trend on Amazon.com as well - shockingly cheap electric wheelchairs and scooters from companies whose names appear to be random collections of letters. Our advice is to steer clear. A $700 scooter is no deal if it breaks after nine months and no parts are available to fix it.
One thing hanging over all of these Chinese companies is the prospects of tariffs. In general, electric mobility devices have long been considered essential medical devices and so have been exempt from tariffs. That could change and it’s on the minds of most of the Asian exhibitors we spoke with.
It was also interesting to see a few US-based companies who are importing low-priced products from China to sell themselves and also offering them to smaller dealers who don’t have the ability to import the cheap stuff on their own. Companies like Vive Health, Journey Health & Lifestyle, Feather Mobility and others are all hoping to score big by importing low-cost products, putting an American-sounding brand name on them, pricing them low, spending big on advertising all to see if they can strike it rich.
All of these companies were showing their wares on the showroom floor at Medtrade in the hopes of signing up some local medical store dealers. Our advice: Do your homework ask questions including the question, “would I be disappointed if I spent good money on this product and after a year or two and when it broke, I couldn’t get it fixed?”
One product we saw and that we’re very excited about is a scooter that retails for less than $1,200. It comes with big chunky tires on the back and the manufacturer claims a towing capacity of 2,600 lbs. Additionally, there are several trailer options including one that has a dump function. We see this scooter as perfect for the gardening folks out there who need to bring gardening tools out to the yard or move dirt from one place to another on their property. We’re going to take a close look at this product to confirm it really works as promised. If it does, expect to see it at Livingwellstores.com in the not-too-distant future.
So that’s the product story. On the business front, we continue to see the result of the shift away from insurance paying for these products (which actually started a decade or more ago) in favor of the consumer paying. Prices of the products have come down substantially and many of the stores who accepted insurance are gone as much of the business has moved to where we are- the internet.
In any case, with the prospect of tarrifs hanging over everyone's heads, purchasing a product with lasting value coupled with a warranty is the best way top go in 2025. Fortunately for OUR customers, we offer ONLY the Best products on the markplace and we ADD our own 'Worry-Free" Warranty on top of that to give our customers the confidence they need to make such an important purchase.
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