Startup Company Looking to Make Name as Voice-Control Accessory Provider

The company’s first product, a speaker for Amazon’s Echo Dot, might seem an unlikely hero product when consumers easily can buy an Echo to have a speaker with Alexa capability, but Brennan touted cost savings with the $49 Vaux speaker and its ability to let Dot users cut the cord to AC power. The Vaux isn’t rated for outdoor use or water splashes, but the device can be taken outside, allowing users to take Alexa to places where a power cord isn’t practical.

“You can go backwards and sell it” to people who want to add functionality to Dots they’ve already bought, and the device offers retailers a bundle opportunity, Brennan said. It also can give independence to people who use voice control to replace the loss of vision, he said, allowing them to take the Dot from room to room without having to plug it in each time. Brennan cited a letter from a partially blind customer who said the Vaux speaker helps him hear the Dot from across the room.

“You don’t have any portability in the Echo,” said Brennan, and combining the $49 Vaux with the $49 Dot brings the price to $100 vs. Echo’s $179 list price. The $100 is less of a selling point with Amazon’s frequent price cuts on the Echo, which Best Buy and Amazon were selling for $99 Tuesday. The Vaux was $39 in a four-hour Lightning Deal on Prime Day, and it will be deal-priced at Amazon on Monday, too, Brennan said.

The Vaux housing is made to fit the Dot, and includes Bluetooth and a line-in jack to accept the audio feed from other products. The Dot snaps into a bay in the speaker’s housing and uses the power supply of the Echo Dot for charging.

Ninety7 is the first company to sell an accessory that houses the Dot, and it's one of the first handful of companies to make accessories for voice-assist products, Brennan said. A learning curve has gone along with being a pioneer. The Vaux is designed for the Dot’s 9-watt power adapter, and customers who have tried to power the Vaux/Dot combo using a standard microUSB charger complained of frequent shutdowns. One user said in an Amazon review: “When it works it works great.” But, she said, “It will not stay on though. I keep it permanently plugged in with my dot inside and it will not stay on longer than maybe half an hour if I am listening to music.”

Vaux told several customers to check the power supply they're using to power the combo to make sure it’s the 9-watt one that came with their Dot (Vaux doesn’t include one in the box) and not a random power supply for another device such as a smartphone. “Using a lower powered power supply will result in the Vaux shutting down” because it doesn’t have enough juice to charge the battery in the Vaux and run the Dot, Brennan said. The company had an average 4.2-star rating on Amazon Tuesday from 459 users, with several reporting the power issue.

Having Alexa adds to the power burden because she's always listening, Brennan said. The Vaux speaker is rated for six hours on a charge. “Every time I say, Alexa, this thing lights up. That’s a big power draw,” he said. “If someone is doing that 10 or 20 times over the course of six hours, they’re going to get less than six hours'” battery life, he said.

Ninety7 is being featured Monday as a marquee vendor on Amazon’s Launchpad section for “brightest startups,” Brennan said. The Launchpad run is four weeks, and Ninety7 decided to make Monday a sale day, dropping to the $39 price just for the day. Vaux launched on Amazon mid-May and is in 300 Best Buy stores with hopes to grow that presence to 1,300 Best Buy stores by the holidays. The device will be featured in high-traffic areas in the 300 stores, and depending on “sell-through and velocity,” it will roll out nationally, he said. The company is also talking to Staples for in-store sales, he said.

“Amazon isn’t known to give great margins for products they sell in stores, so you take our product and the Dot combined, the margin dollar combination on that is pretty good,” he said. “It’s a great attach for someone that might have gotten the Dot as a gift," and it's a good "upsell" product for retailers, he said.

The Vaux speaker had to go through Amazon certification because it's sold as part of a bundle with the Dot as one of the sales options, said Brennan. Amazon had to ensure that if someone buys the Vaux along with the Dot -- and there’s a problem with the Vaux speaker -- the e-tailer doesn’t receive a bad review by association, said Brennan. The Vaux went through various tests involving how the two products worked together and the microphone array -- a relatively expensive process at about $5,000, he said. "Technically we can say this is a certified Amazon-tested product.” Consumers buying it will know when they’re using the Vaux that it will “perform very similar to an Echo," he said.

Next up for Ninety7 is a battery-only version of the Vaux to extend portability of the Dot. Other batteries for the Dot are on the market, and Brennan wants to "play in that space." The $39 battery-only device is for people who don’t need the speaker but want to connect their Dot to say, a Bose or Sonos audio product. An emerging use case is connecting Alexa to a smart TV to use voice as an alternative to a remote control, he said. He compared the product to a sophisticated remote control that requires a docking station for power. Run time of the battery-only version is given as 10 hours, and the company will begin taking preorders in two weeks, he said.

Ninety7 is also working with Google on a similar portable speaker solution for Google Home that’s due on the market in late September at $49, Brennan said.