DEI Makes Push with Inexpensive Headphones, Bluetooth Speaker
DEI Holdings, which arrived late to the headphone market with its first line of Polk-branded phones in summer 2011, is making a stronger push into the youth market with a line of lifestyle headphones rooted in the college bookstore market. The brand, Boom, stands for Born of Original Motives. It’s the brainchild of founder Ryan Minarik, son of DEI Holdings CEO Jim Minarik. Boom has distribution in 400 college bookstores for its headphone lineup that ranges from $19.99-$49.99. The headphones are also sold in Nebraska Furniture Mart, Fry’s Electronics and BrandsMart stores, Minarik said.
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On a media tour through New York Thursday, Minarik showed a new powered, portable Bluetooth speaker with a silicone skin that’s designed for outdoor use. While there’s no shortage of Bluetooth speakers on the market, Minarik said Boom is narrowly targeted to consumers in their late teens and early 20s who want to listen to tunes while biking, skateboarding or hiking. The oval-shaped speaker comes with a carabiner to strap to a belt loop or a fence, a suction cup for mounting and a screw-mount attachment for a car dashboard. A metal threaded hole is integrated into the chassis for mounting to a bike. Called Boom Urchin, the speaker will launch at CES with shipping slated for January at $149.99, Minarik said. Sister brand Polk will debut its own version of a Bluetooth speaker at CES, but at a Polk-level price point and design. “There’s no platform-sharing,” said Chief Design Officer Michael DiTullo.
The Urchin is a product of DEI’s new Global Design Center in Vista, Calif., as part of DEI’s roadmap to expand more into the portable audio products market (CED May 7 p1). DiTullo acknowledged the world doesn’t need another headphone or speaker company, “so we didn’t make one,” he said. “We made a youth brand born from Southern California” that’s about art, music, fashion and action sports, he said. The target unisex customer “surfs before work” and doesn’t have a set schedule of activities day to day, so “products need to go with her throughout the day and withstand the abuse of a Big Ten university,” DiTullo said. To support that lifestyle, Boom products are water- and shock-resistant, DiTullo said. The speaker can go into the shower and withstand spray for up to six minutes, Minarik said. Warranty is 1-year for manufacturer defects, Minarik said. The Urchin was “repeatedly dropped from 10 feet onto concrete” in product testing, DiTullo said. “We have not been able to break one."
Boom’s focus on the action sports crowd is reminiscent of Skullcandy and other high-profile headphone brands, which have a following in the skiing and skateboarding world. Minarik calls some of those brands “over-distributed” and said “it’s hard to be cool when you're at 7-Eleven.” Some of the competitive brands targeting the same demographic “talk at the youth culture,” while “our brand is born from it, which shows through in the products,” he said.
Minarik calls Boom a “skunkworks” project begun by his father and himself. The elder Minarik saw an opportunity in the market for a “youth brand” that wasn’t being met by longstanding DEI brands Polk and Definitive Technology, the son said. The Polk brand “didn’t really fit a kid like myself,” Minarik said, because “it didn’t have the correct price points to do so.” When he began Boom as a college business, Minarik tried selling Polk products, “but the price points were so high it wasn’t working,” he said. The reinvention of the brand was double-digit priced Boom headphones, he said.
Boom is heading to CES in hopes of expanding distribution with the somewhat conflicting strategy “to live in the lifestyles we're part of,” Minarik said. He cited distribution targets as stores like Urban Outfitters and Zumiez. The latter sells phones by Beats, Skullcandy and Sol Republic, according the store website. Because the Urchin speaker will be sold with a bike clamp, a bike store “would make a lot of sense,” he said.
On how Boom can make money on $20-$60 headphones competing in a world of triple-digit lifestyle phones from higher profile brands, Minarik said, “It’s difficult, but we've been successful in establishing and growing our business with those price points.” Higher-priced products would help the bottom line, he said, but “for our demographic, I don’t believe in a kid going out and spending $300 on Beats by Dre. That’s not necessarily the right thing.”
Boom touts its DEI relationship, which has provided the funding, audio engineering and industrial design expertise of established audio companies. Boom is also focusing on little things to set it apart. An upcoming line of $39.99 earbuds, called Spooner, have built-in cord management and use neodymium magnets to snap the elongated buds together. The buds will also come with a “sport tip” to help the earbuds stay inside of the ears, one of the biggest gripes among athletes who listen to music while they work out, Minarik said. The Spooner buds are due out in February, he said.