According to the World Health Organization, 1.1 billion people are at risk of hearing loss due to exposure to unhealthy volume levels.
At the same time, one survey showed as much as one-fourth of the population deals with the ear-ringing condition called Tinnitus.
The good news is that hearing protection adoption appears to be on the rise. Recent data shows the global hearing protection market was valued at $2.28 billion in 2023 and is forecasted to reach $5.98 billion by the end of 2033.
For concert-goers and music festival fans, brands like Loop Earplugs are working to break the stigma and re-introduce ear protection as a fashionable accessory.
Thus far, they’re making strides in tackling the hearing protection space and taking a chunk of this market share, garnering more than $200 million in sales in 2024—up from $126 million in 2023.
The company has sold over eight million pairs of earplugs worldwide, with top sales in the US and customers in more than 150 other countries.
Their rapid growth has been partly thanks to strategic partnerships where hearing protection is necessary and relevant, like the Tomorrowland music festival in Belgium.
The brand is now in its third year of collaboration with the event which attracts more than 400,000 people from around the world each year.
Frequent Tomorrowland attendees, co-founders Dimitri O and Maarten Bodewes worked to solve the issue of post-concert ear ringing by leveraging their engineering backgrounds in their final year of college.
What started as a paper on how to reinvent the earplug into a stylish, useful accessory then evolved into a physical, 3D-printed prototype.
After rounds of iterations and many rounds of trial and error, they began scaling up the company, focusing on profitability and taking on just under $1 million in outside funding to expand the business operationally.
Research is a large part of their product development strategy, and recent survey data showed six in 10 nightlife participants have experienced ringing ears—while seven in 10 believe this is a normal part of the experience.
Working to address this issue for Tomorrowland festival attendees, the Loop team created a special Tomorrowland edition of its earplugs with up to 17 dB of hearing protection that provides flat attenuation – meaning equal volume protection across the audible sound spectrum without impacting sound quality.
The goal: Allow music lovers to enjoy festival performances at a safer volume level.
“Tomorrowland is a huge part of my experience as a live music-lover, and it’s an honor and a privilege to team up with them once again to spread awareness and improve festival experiences for people around the world,” O said.
In tandem with the special edition earplugs, Loop also collaborated with four DJs performing at the festival, including DJ OGUZ, who is 80% deaf in one ear and suffers from Tinnitus.
This is just one example of how the brand strategically selects relevant influencers and content creators around the Tomorrowland event and across its larger influencer marketing efforts year-round.
Much of their sourcing is done via one-to-one relationship building instead of through influencer marketing platforms or agencies.
“We manually source our influencers,” said Marit Tiesema, Senior KOL and Ambassador Specialist at Loop Earplugs. “This helps us understand how our journeys and values align, and how we can support each other.”
So far, the Tomorrowland collaboration is paying off: After the festival’s first weekend in 2024, Loop saw a 39% increase in year-over-year unit sales on-site at the event.
Looking ahead, Loop plans to expand its DTC presence into new retail partnerships, more festival collaborations, expanding into additional use cases, and furthering its mission of breaking the taboos around ear protection.
Content creators and Loop users like Allison Toth are on board with this goal. “As someone who attends festivals on a monthly basis, I have learned that my hearing is something I have to protect if I want to continue to attend these amazing events and life experiences,” Toth said.
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