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MAPLETON — When Shaun Knudsen took a job at a glass factory during the recent financial crisis, he struggled with boredom.
In his previous job as a realtor, he was able to interact with a lot of people and felt intellectually challenged. At the glass factory, he constantly had to wear earplugs to protect his ears.
“(He) was grateful for the work because he could feed his kids, but at the same it’s just mind-numbing work,” said his cousin Tyler Knudsen, the co-owner of Plugfones. “So he thought to himself, ‘Shoot, I wish these earplugs could play music or give me an opportunity to listen to a book on tape’ to keep his mind occupied.”
Shaun Knudsen went home and searched online for a pair of ear plugs that could play music without any intention of starting his own company. When the only thing he could find was forums of other people asking for the same thing, a lightbulb went off and he decided to make his own.
Now, six years later, his company Plugfones is releasing its first wireless version of his earplug-headphone hybrid. A Kickstarter campaign for the Bluetooth Liberate headset has raised over $330,000 so far, blowing past its initial $35,000 goal.
Over the past two years, wireless headphones have been the most-requested new product, according to Tyler Knudsen. He said the demand was so great that they decided to move up their release date.
“A lot of customers are working in environments where they’re moving around a lot,” Tyler Knudsen said. “They’re quite active and the wire would get in the way. Like, it would get snagged on a machine or … because of the environment they’re working in they’re getting hot or sweaty so the wire would kind of drag against their skin and pull on their ears. It wasn’t convenient.”
There are two models of Liberate Plugfones available on Kickstarter starting at $69: one that only plays audio and another that can facilitate phone calls. Both models come with silicone and foam ear plugs that can be replaced once they get dirty.
Since its start, Plugfones has grown significantly. Shaun Knudsen’s first customer was actually a co-worker. He bought supplies for his first working prototype off the shelf and went into “mad scientist mode.” When he brought them into work the next day, his co-worker wanted them.
That night, he went home and made a quick WordPress website to sell his Plugfones online. He started growing the business by liking the forums where he saw people discussing their desire for earplug-headphones.
Tyler Knudsen joined the company two years later, after his cousin brought Plugfones on a family trip to watch drag racing in Las Vegas. It was a real family business, with Tyler and Shaun Knudsen, plus two teenage sons, making the Plugfones themselves by hand. They would order the raw parts, solder the speakers onto the wires and make the speaker housings.
“It got to a point where we were making several hundred a day and we just couldn’t keep up with the orders,” Tyler Knudsen said. “Like the orders would come in on eBay, Amazon and our website and we would say, ‘OK, we have to build 50 of this model, 25 of this model, 75 of this one, and we were doing it all ourselves. Then we would turn around right after we’d made them and ship them.”
In 2013, the demand became too great and the Knudsens started using a manufacturer to make the Plugfones.
