Are earplugs the next jewellery play?

Bodewes says that most of Loop’s customers are between the ages of 25 and 35, and customer surveys show that they’re choosing the brand’s earplugs first for function and second for form. These young consumers are also willing to spend more on better design — Loop’s bestselling product is its most expensive, Switch, which enables users to swap the filters in their earplugs for varied decibel protection for different events.

“People are searching customer reviews and reading articles about us to find out about the technology behind our product — they’re really doing their research,” Bodewes says. “Then, of course, the other trigger is the style perspective. They say they want earplugs that match their outfits, and our designs have that virality aspect thanks to these festival partnerships where they’re seeing them on their social feeds and they have that stopping power.”

The ‘small luxury’ jewellery opportunity

In the last couple of years, there’s been a proliferation of competitor brands entering the market, including Hears, Eargasm and Set NZ, which are also marketed as design-led products that make hearing protection look cool. Bob Verlaat, co-founder of Hears, tells Vogue Business the earplug brand has grown 30 per cent in the last year and is selling “around a thousand sets a day” this summer.

So far, a couple of luxury brands have experimented with earplugs, including Balenciaga, which released a premium Berlin Ball earplug earring late last year, which retailed for around $450, and Saint Laurent, which has also released its first $86 earplug in collaboration with Hears.

It’s this selling point that is driving Loop’s next expansional pivot: collaborating with fashion and jewellery brands. The brand has already tested customer appetite for jewellery-like designs at a higher price point in various drops over the last couple of years. The highest end test was a product called Loop Bling, a solid gold earplug encrusted with 120 diamonds worth $10,000 that the brand made just one pair of and released as a giveaway. It also experimented with another special-edition silver ear cuff earplug that it released to influencers to test product demand.

“These weren’t collaborations, they were us assessing the market, but they went down really well,” Bodewes says. “Now, we’ve got five or six products like this in development, and we’re releasing our first big collaboration with a fashion brand in Q3 or Q4 this year.”

Photo: Courtesy of Loop