Feature
Silence is QuietOn
Finnish company QuietOn has created a genuine innovation that revolutionises the meaning of deafening silence with active noise cancellation and acoustic noise attenuation.
Dentists like them. Their customers love them. Couples benefit from them. Business travellers promote them. Why are QuietOn earplugs so captivating? Simply because the much valued Finnish silence is now on everyone’s lips.
QuietOn earplugs boost one’s wellbeing by reducing stress brought upon by continuous background noise. They help users to improve performances by avoiding distractions so that the focus is on the task at hand. Furthermore, they can convert an exhausting flight into a relaxing journey.
These noise cancellation earplugs are one-of-a-kind in the world, whose form factory makes it possible to comfortably rest a head on a pillow or work anywhere without the need of the noise cancellation headphones.
“Our feedback has been magical,” rejoices Janne Kyllönen, COB and founder of QuietOn. “The product has the potential to change people’s lives. Its ability to minimise the irritation caused by snoring has already saved some marriages.”
Cool, calm and collected
Thorough research and modelling have paid dividends, and an ideal design to fit the earplugs perfectly in the user’s ear began to see daylight in early 2015.
“I used to travel a lot and was constantly stressed in noisy airplanes, airports and hotels,” Kyllönen recalls. “I once tried these noise cancellation headphones at an airport. Those provided me a good, relaxed feeling, but they were too expensive and clumsy to use and carry. After a while that good feeling they produced evolved into an idea of silence and what its value is.”
Kyllönen began to wonder why the noise cancellation technology has not been widespread. “I figured out that I need to build a wireless device so small that it could fit in the ear, thus enabling sleeping,” he explains.
Soon after, Kyllönen joined forces with sound engineers and founded the company QuietOn together with one of them, Matti Nisula. Utilising facilities provided by Yritystakomo Oulu, the engineers managed to produce functional prototypes, where earplugs combine active noise cancelling technology and passive attenuation in small size.
“When flying, everyone can observe that ordinary soft earplugs are pretty useless,” Kyllönen points out. “Those decrease the low frequency noise by a maximum of five decibels, while our noise cancellation can make reductions of up to 40 decibels.”
The world is all ears
The innovation hit the home run at the beginning of 2016. When the product was about to set forth, 9 000 pairs were pre-ordered via IndieGoGo straight away worth over 1.3 million US dollars.
“Those pre-orders are now delivered – distributed to over 100 countries,” says Kyllönen. “Today, we can manufacture 2 000 pairs a week. Demand is so high that we have some challenges to deliver everything. We are striving to increase production capacity even more.”
The production unit is currently in Tallinn, Estonia, where a former Nokia production line has been reutilised. Research & development as well as the company headquarters are located in Oulu, Finland.
Although the marketing budget has been next to nothing, the high quality of the product has been speaking in volumes.
“For example, in Japan, after one large magazine wrote about us, we sold 20 000 US dollars worth of products in just one day,” Kyllönen tells. “Australia suddenly become our third-most important market, after a story about us was published in Virgin Australia’s in-flight magazine.”
Roughly one-third of the company’s profit comes from US, and any day now, QuietOn products will be available in US, Canada and Mexico via Amazon. Europe will soon follow. There are also deals with airline companies to sell products in-flight.
According to Kyllönen, there are still new surprising segments coming into sight daily that find QuietOn useful.
“One very interesting clientele are dentists who have had a long career and are suffering from impaired hearing,” says Kyllönen. “Furthermore, their customers with dental anxiety like our product a lot. QuietOn eases the distress by limiting machinery noise, and in a sense, takes one out of the situation.
As being the only wireless and pocket size noise cancellation device in the world, QuietOn has a golden opportunity to take great advantage of the empty, yet significant and global market of silence.