28-year-old Yu Chen is a good age.
On November 29, 2016, the product was on the first day of the Kickstarter. Yu Chen and team partners are tension and look forward to sitting in front of the computer, and quickly brush the evaluation and discussion of netizens.
When many netizens were very innovative when talking about the "light custom" of HelloEar headphones, he finally showed smile.
Yu Chen established Helloear in April 2014, a headset custom design company. Different from traditional headphones customization, HelloEar is based on human ear-working effect principle and human ear image identification database, summarizes a set of ear size criteria, which is based on the user's custom headset.
Helloear's custom headset comes with the HIFI high fidelity module, which uses a flexible airbag structure. The outer ear is fitted into Z-type. The modular settings are used, and the consumer can be upgraded by the purchase function module.
In November last year, helloear landed in Kickstarter, less than 3 months, 20,000 yuan. At present, HelloEar's custom headphones are in the successive shipping phase.
Note: Yu Chen promises the data in the text, responsible for its authenticity, the lead in the pencil has been backed up, and the content is objective.
"There is no threshold, make money too shop"
At the end of 2013, Yu Chen was studying, and there is not much hesitation.
He got a $ 200,000 seed wheel investment, from a teacher in a college computer system. The other party is a continuous entrepreneur, the ability to optimize Yu Chen and team and the idea of custom headphones - process standardization, cost reduction, and decrease in user customization.
Yu Chen is a solid iron headset enthusiast. He reads the microelectronics in studying, and it is far from the laboratory, and it is far from the actual social application. If you don't have a good youth, you will spend this in a narrow laboratory. Yu Chen is looking for challenging things.
One day, in the dormitory, he worked as an example to watch the game. Listening didn't have long, his ear was hurt. He also listened to the students before listening to it. When wearing more than an hour, not only the ears will hurt, the headphones will go down.
However, custom headphones should be much better. It customs the outer casing according to the personal ear canal shape, and the fitness of the ear canal is better, and it is comfortable to wear, and it is not easy to fall off.
However, custom headphones are expensive, basically 10,000 yuan. After the e-professional, Yu Chen, after studying a product, judged that it is not difficult to make it, think of trying to do it. Soon, the first generation of products was completed, and a good response was obtained in the circle of headphones in Xi'an.
Yu Chen's confidence has increased, and the sure and classmates have opened a Taobao shop, and doing custom headphones in the spare time. However, this store didn't work. As a result, he still used the traditional to do legal headphones, there was no innovation; two, although a pair of earphones can usually earn about 1,500 yuan, but the production standard is vague, the process is very cumbersome, it takes a lot of artificial, team three people a day Only one pair can be made.
In addition, the custom headphones are usually used in the hearing aids. In fact, these materials are not suitable for taking civil products, and should not perform reliability and beauty.
Therefore, although the earphones make a small earning, I have also harvested a lot of recognition of enthusiasts. Yu Chen is also closed.
But Yu Chen's mind on custom headphones is still there. He thinks how to make the headphones you do, and achieve the standardization of customization processes and reduce user custom costs.
At this time, Yu Chen met with his seed wheel investors, and the two were as ill, very fast, 200,000 yuan of investment. In April, Yu Chen temporarily took a study, set up helloear, and made a custom headset design.
Multiple adjustment ideas
When I arrived at the money, Yu Chen bought a very popular FORM1 3D printer from the United States, and press the online source algorithm "drum" out of a high-precision three-dimensional scanner. He intends to realize the standardization of the earphone customization process in the way to take an ear mode, repeat three-dimensional scan, three-dimensional reconstruction and 3D printing.
By May 2014, this set of processes were basically running. However, Yu Chen found that his idea is too idealized - 3D printing can only improve the efficiency of the earphone outer shell massage production in the headset, followed by surface polishing and processing still requires a lot of manual operation, and time cost is also high. .
At the same time, 3D printing is more embodied in the process of product batch production, while Yu Chen's quantity is far from the corresponding level. So he also stopped this idea.
Yu Chen followed. In the 3D printing of this process, the producer will have a certain degree of reduction, but for the user, the process is still cumbersome, they still need to go to the hospital to take the effect, and then scanned by Yu Chen team, handled Model and print. Yu Chen thought of an approach to scan people's ear through the camera's camera, generating a corresponding 3D structure, allowing users to easily obtain the ear canal structure.
Through common development with a photographic measurement company, Yu Chen realized his idea. But this idea is quickly negated again.
On the one hand, the human ear is a concave structure, in the 3D structure scanned by the mobile phone camera, due to the difference between the operator's operating environment and the angle, the result is not necessarily a complete reduction of the ear structure, more importantly Once the scan is wrong, the user is not known, and this will bring great risks to the product.
On the other hand, Yu Chen realized that he ignored the purpose of making custom headphones when scanning the human ear cavity structure: comfort and firmness. "This is not a simple people's ear cavity copy can be achieved, but it is necessary to establish above the scientific ergonomics research."
This need has put forward the requirements for the theory of ergonomics. Yu Chen immediately worked with experts from the Chinese Human Industry Effect Society, Tsinghua University Human Industry Entry School, with a large number of people's europective effects across the country, including two-dimensional, three-dimensional and other sizes to achieve the abstraction of the subsequent human ear model. Design your headphones with a more scientific approach.
At the same time, Yu Chen also cooperated with the Personal Identification Laboratory of Beijing University of Science and Technology (the only person in the country "in China, a wide range of people's ear data, built a human ear image identification database to facilitate the implementation of ear type and ear Fast recognition of features. By the end of last year, the people's ear identification database already contains 4 million standard people ear pictures.
The key two elements are ready to be in place, depending on the characteristic parameters (ear type and size, etc.) in the human ear, and the integrated multi-dimensional headset is basically realized.
On this basis, HelloEar's custom headphones are standard from Danish sound-speaking, and use flexible airbag structures, and the outer ear is embedded into Z-type, which is eliminated in an in-depth user's ear canal.
Crowdfire 200,000 yuan
For the user, customization has become simple. They only need to put a one-dollar coin in front of the ear, and take the ear image according to the HelloEar and send it to the other party, the other party can analyze the ear-type and size according to the image, and then make the appropriate earphone.
After the product ideas run, June last year, Yu Chen ranked the headset in Kickstarter's crowdfunding. From November to January this year, HelloEar custom headphones were raised for 2 million yuan. Among them, wired versions have a price of $ 69, and the Bluetooth version is under $ 99.
The reason why chooses overseas crowds, because Yu Chen considers foreign users to innovate the acceptance and recognition of innovative products, and "domestic consumers may be more important."
During the crowdfunding process, Yu Chen also participated in the CES exhibition with headphones. According to the on-site feedback of the Trial, he has made the soundproof effect after returning to China, and the sound insulation structure is replaced by a double-layer sound insulation, and the effect is better.
After the crowdfunding, Yu Chen began to work hard for mass production. During the period, silicone rubber, metal parts, plug-in parts need to be customized, repeatedly adjusted mold, test reliability, etc., flowers to the team a lot of energy. The optical silicone rubber and the pluggable structure each open four sets of sample molds, and after repeated adjustment of the structure. However, due to the high cost, in the domestic online version, Yu Chen temporarily canceled the pluggable structure.
In April this year, the process of headphones is basically in place and enters the mass production. At the same time, the products also launched a crowdfunding in Mijia, the price is 299 yuan (for wired version).
This month, HelloEar issued a headset for more than 2,000 Kickstarter crowdfunding users, and Micjia's products were expected to receive goods from the end of next month.
In terms of financing, Helloear has obtained an angel wheel investment from Xiaomi in September 2014. Completed 5 million yuan PRE-A round financing in January 2016, and the investor is still a capital.
Original link: https://www.eeboard.com/news/kickstarter/
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