Founding Member Of N.W.A. Rap Group To Move Sonomax Into Consumer Hearing Markets As Creative Director

Sonomax, once a somewhat staid manufacturer of ear plugs and hearing protection solutions for industrial users, has recently moved into the heart of the consumer audio business with its sculpted eers self-fitted custom earphones.

Now, the Canadian company is showing it’s all in to the consumer market with the appointment of K. R. Nazel–a.k.a. Arabian Prince, the West Coast music pioneer, DJ, producer and founding member of the groundbreaking rap group N.W.A. and Stones Throw label–as the new Sonomax Creative Director.

Sonomax is another example of a company with great hearing-enhancement technology that is figuring out how to reach a larger audience with products designed for a broader market of consumers. And Nazel isn’t just a figurehead. He has jumped right into both the marketing and product design:

“I listen and work on music everyday, so I wanted the sound and fit that I use on stage, and when I DJ to carry over to eers™. I have used custom in-ear monitors for years, but there has never been a cost effective solution for the general public until now. Custom in-ear monitors can take weeks to make and cost a thousand dollars or more, but with the SonoFit™ system and eers™ custom earbuds, the general public can get a one-of-a-kind custom fit in just 5 minutes right out of the box for less than 25% of the price.”

The SonoFit system enables you to create a custom set of ear buds at home, without going through an extensive process with an audiologist or ear mold maker.

Private Equity Investment Positions Westone Labs To Drive Growth In Consumer Hearing Device Markets

Now that private equity firm CID Capital has made a major investment in Westone Laboratories, watch for the Colorado company turn on the burners with a further expansion of its hearing-assistance products into new consumer markets beyond the hearing-aid industry.

Not that long ago, Westone was little more than a staid maker of ugly but essential custom ear molds for hearing aids.  But in recent years the company has introduced a slew of new products including earpieces for professional musicians, custom earplugs for swimmers, hearing-protection technologies for military and industrial applications, assistive listening products for hard-of-hearing consumers, and more. If you’ve been to AudiologyNOW or one of the other big hearing-aid conventions, you’ve probably enjoyed Westone’s product demonstrations where you can hear live musicians perform as you listen through the same kinds of headphones and custom earpieces professionals use on stage.

Westone CEO Lynn Kehler says the private equity investment will enable the current management team “to rapidly accelerate new product development, aggressively expand distribution and pursue potential acquisition opportunities. We also have a unique opportunity to leverage our extensive hearing healthcare and professional audio music background to offer the same premium quality products and listening experience to the broader consumer earphone market.”

All of which is music to my ears, as I continue to look for examples of companies born in the hearing aid business that are willing to commit management energy and financial capital to delivering great technology and products to a much broader base of consumers. Westone was founded in 1959 and prospered under several generations of Morgan family leadership. But several years ago the family owners named Kehler CEO. A professional manager who had previously been CFO of Westone, Kehler led the expansion drive while seeking a way to provide liquidity for the family. According to the news release from Westone and CID Capital, the investment “will allow the Westone management team to continue to build the company with a new investment partner while allowing members of the family that founded Westone to diversify and pursue personal interests.”

An Indianapolis investment firm with deep Midwest roots, CID Capital takes majority positions in small firms and often helps family-owned companies transition to professional management while providing the financial backing management needs to invest in growth over the long term. While the parties didn’t disclose the size of the investment, the Westone deal appears to be a great marriage of an investor with deep pockets and staying power with a management team committed to a long-term strategy to create new markets with new products and technologies.

Rather than trying to go public or being acquired by a much larger company, staying independent with the backing of an equity partner is a great strategy for success in the hearing-technology business. More innovation is needed and markets need to be created and given time to build, and patient capital is just what the doctor would prescribe for a management team that’s on a roll and only in need of some financial backing to move ahead with its long-term strategy.

All too often a private equity investment foreshadows major negative changes. When the equity firm finances its investment with debt to be repaid through the company’s current cash flow, management often needs to cut overhead dramatically, selling off lower-profit lines of business, and milking the cash-cow profit lines to pay off the debt. With short-term increases in profit margins, the company may increase in value, and the equity firm can make a quick killing by taking the company public or selling off what’s left. But if the company fails to increase in value quickly, the venture can lose market share and gradually waste away. In either case, lines of business with great long-term prospects but low current profits are often simply shuttered and employees with irreplaceable experience cast aside.

But CID Capital appears to be anything but a Wall Street slash-and-burn private equity player. It’s nice to see a private equity deal that rewards family owners for their years of hard work, leaves a strong current management team in place, and provides incentives for a good company to make an even bigger mark on a business that is positioned to drive positive change for an entire industry. Especially when it’s a company doing interesting new things in the hearing assistance business. Let’s keep an eye on Westone Laboratories.

How Much Government Regulation Should There Be Of Noise And Hearing Loss In The Workplace?

Manufacturers of personal hearing protection solutions are missing an opportunity by not raising their voices to be heard in the debate over government regulations limiting noise in the workplace. When two U.S. Senators this week persuaded the U.S. Labor Department to back off from proposed rule changes that would have required large and small companies to more aggressively manage noise levels in the workplace, they put their finger on a critical question: Should the government force companies to limit the overall noise they create, or should government instead simply require companies to provide their employees with effective personal hearing protection?

When the government tells manufacturers to lower overall workplace noise volume, it forces businesses to install expensive sound-dampening systems that can amount to huge capital investments. But when the government simply tells businesses to protect the hearing of their workers in the most effective way possible, the first move is to outfit workers with highly effective (and highly cost-effective) ear plugs, ear muffs, or more sophisticated hearing protection devices that allow them to communicate even as their hearing is protected from over-loud noise.

Unfortunately, government bureaucrats often are more interested in fast but expensive one-size-fits-all solutions than they are in getting up to speed on things like the variety of new personal hearing protection technologies that can do the job better and less expensively. Therefore, if makers of personal hearing protection devices want to increase their market and sales, they should be advocating for sensible hearing-protection rules that require companies to issue the right kind of hearing protection equipment to their employees, over rules that require more expensive investments in overall workplace noise reduction. Read more

Doing Well By Doing Good: Etymotic Research Wins CES Award For High-Tech Ear Plugs Protecting Soldiers’ Hearing In War Zones

Serious hearing loss is an all-too-common problem besetting U.S. military veterans and is the number-one cause of disability among those soldiers returning from Afghanistan. The problem is all the more tragic because for the most part hearing loss is preventable: a simple, inexpensive set of good earplugs can protect your hearing from the damage caused by even explosions and gunshot blasts. Unfortunately, many of the earplugs available to soldiers today frequently suffer the same fate as hearing aids worn by the rest of us: too often they sit in the drawer, unused. That’s not because soldiers are vain or lazy. The sad truth is that traditional ear plugs are unsafe in combat zones. When you can’t hear your colleagues in a firefight, chain-of-command breaks down pretty quickly, and people can get killed.

What’s needed is intelligent, active hearing protection. A new class of hearing-aid-like devices can dampen too-loud noise and filter out unwanted noise while amplifying and clarifying speech. A number of hearing-technology companies have tackled the challenge of hearing protection for soldiers, and one of them, Etymotic Research, just won a “Best of Innovations” award at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Etymotic’s Electronic Blast PLG Earplugs won a coveted Best of Innovations in Health and Wellness award at a ceremony yesterday. The Etymotic blast earplugs allow normal detection and localization of even the softest sounds, provide optional gain for (only) soft sound, and protect ears from firearms and explosive blast. And they’re not just for soldiers, as hunters and workers in noisy industrial environments can find them equally useful.

Harvard Health Study Finds 20 Percent Of U.S. Adolescents Have Significant Hearing Loss–But Will We Do Anything About It?

Researchers at Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have concluded that nearly one in five American adolescents suffers from the same degree of hearing loss comparable to the age-related loss normally found in adults in their ’50s and ’60s. And people immediately are pointing the finger of blame at all the usual suspects: rock concerts, cell phones, and the ubiquitous Apple iPod and other portable music players. That’s all well and good, but it begs the question of all the other environmental noise people are subjected to from birth. The sad fact is we’re living in a much noisier world than 20 or 30 years ago, and no matter how many times we tell people to turn down the iPod, there is no substitute for a far more organized response to the epidemic of environmental noise-related hearing loss than we have seen to date. Read more

Phonak Uses World Cup Vuvuzela Noise As Design Laboratory For New Hearing Protection Products

Phonak’s Hear the World initiative got so much attention from its announcement that vuvuzela horns were damaging World Cup attendees’ hearing that the hearing aid company’s product designers sprung into action to adapt Phonak’s popular Serenity industrial hearing-protection products with a new line of consumer devices for fans who need to protect their hearing at stadium events such as major league sports events and rock and roll concerts. Hear the World announced that Phonak customized a new version of its Serenity state-of-the-art hearing protection systems–typically used by helicopter pilots, fire-fighters, industrial staff and security professionals–and sent it to World Cup journalists in Johannesburg, South Africa, to see how well it would filter out the endless drone of the vuvuzela. The noise makers emit sound at an ear-splitting 127 decibels (dB), louder than a lawnmower (90 dB) and chain saw (100 dB). Continuous exposure to noise at more than 85 dB will cause permanent hearing damage, so virtually all fans in a stadium enduring an extended chorus of vuvuzela noise are at serious risk of hearing loss. Read more

Vuvuzela Or No Vuvuzela, Ear Plugs Are A Must To Protect Your Hearing At Any Stadium Sporting Event

Phonak’s Hear The World Foundation touched a nerve when it warned World Cup fans of the damage stadium noise can cause to your hearing, especially if you’re in the midst of a chorus of vuvuzela horns. It turns out that, at 127 decibels (dB), a vuvuzela is louder than an air horn. On top of normal cheering in a heated match, the sound can quickly do permanent damage to your hearing. After Hear The World issued its statement, the news of potential hearing loss spread across the media and the web like wildfire — Google the phrase “vuvuzela hearing loss” and you will see 71,000 entries. What’s the best way to prevent hearing loss from noisy stadiums? There’s been talk of banning vuvuzela horns at the World Cup and other sporting events. My preference, though, is to see everyone start using simple ear plugs, which can protect you from all stadium noise at any sporting event, which, vuvuzela or no vuvuzela, often surpasses decibel levels loud enough to cause hearing damage.

Hearing Aid Technology Is Finally Going To Work In Hearing Protection Market

For a long time, the standard in hearing protection for the military, police and workers in noisy industrial environments was little more than a set of ill-fitting ear plugs. But blocking your hearing is often more dangerous than potentially losing it in noisy environments where inability to hear your colleague’s voices or failure to hear warnings of an imminent threat can put you in harm’s way. It’s no surprise, then, that hearing loss among soldiers who don’t wear their earplugs because they don’t feel safe not being able to hear what’s going on around them has become one of the biggest problems for veterans of the Irag war and other conflicts. That’s why it’s gratifying to see hearing-aid manufacturers have finally start applying advanced hearing enhancement and hearing protection technology to the problem of environmental noise. Phonak is the latest manufacturer to come up with an advanced hearing system for people trying to get their jobs done in noisy and dangerous environments, and it integrates some impressive technology. Read more

Feel Good Department: Super Bowl Heroes Drew And Brittany Brees Give Big Assist To Hearing Protection Advocacy

Credit Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees and his wife and partner-in-parenting Brittany with the biggest assist of the year for hearing protection advocacy. The feel-good story of the afternoon was when the future Hall-of-Fame quarterback shared a special moment with his year-old son Baylen just before hoisting the Lombardi trophy in front of 70,000 fans and millions of TV viewers. The first question out of many viewers’ mouths was, “What’s with the headphones?” Drew and Brittany let everyone who asked know that the huge hearing-protection headset covering little Baylen’s ears has been standard issue since their son attended his first game at the tender age of three weeks. The New York Times parenting blog captured the moment beautifully, giving both parents an A+ for putting their son’s precious hearing first. Now here’s a question: who was the manufacturer of that hearing-protection headset? I can’t tell the brand or model from the pictures. Whoever it is now has the world’s most valuable product endorsement!

02/11/2010 UPDATE: This just in–a Hearing Mojo reader named bob has identified Peltor as the maker of Baby Baylen’s hearing-protection headset. Inc. Magazine got on the story quickly. Peltor, located in the home town of the Indianapolis Colts, apparently had no idea their Peltor Junior Earmuffs would be getting such a great endorsement. For more on Peltor see our previous story on Peltor’s hearing protection headsets.

Peltor Headset Communicates Safely Even In Noisiest Environments

A tree came down in our yard this week prompting a visit from our treeman, Conor Gleeson. Something was different this time: in addition to their usual safety helmets, Conor and his crew each were sporting a pair of bulky two-way communication headphones. Read more

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