We’re here today with Justin Miller CEO and co-founder of Nuheara. Justin thanks for your time. Are you able to share some of the background of Nuheara.
Audio Transcription
Justin Miller: [00:00:17] Nuheara listed on the ASX March of 2017. And in a very short space of time we’ve come a fair way and to the extent that we produced our first wearable prototype in January 2017 and now to this point where now major retail globally and some of the biggest consumer electronics retailers around the world across the US and now through Europe and the Middle East.
David Tasker: [00:00:45] What makes your product so unique?
Justin Miller: [00:00:47] Yeah. Nuheara has come and brought some technology together that we’ve produced our first product which is like earbuds. And essentially it’s an augmented hearing device and when we talk about augmented reality it really is very much visual. What we’ve largely forgotten about is the ears and the ability to augment. When we talk about augmentation it’s overlaying the digital world with the physical world. So bringing both these things together and Nuheara an IQbuds in our technology allows you to do that. So give you all the things you need from a digital perspective, music, phone calls commentary all those sorts of things and then overlay them with what’s happening in the real world and provide some some really intelligent software that enables you to converse or utilise the technology in the appropriate way.
David Tasker: [00:01:37] How big is the market for wearables?
Justin Miller: [00:01:40] Wearables is a very big market. Twenty dollars billion plus per annum market largely driven by technology on the wrist. I mean wearables for the for the lay person is a computer wear on the body somewhere. We’ve gone into a subset of the wearables market that we’ve done “hearables” and “hearables” is a computer that’s essentially worn on the ear. So it replaces a headset in the sense that a headset is just replicating whatever we’re transferring from our smart device to enable us to process on the ear. And once you process on the ear you’re capable of a lot of different things. So the hearables market is an intersection of a number of markets It’s that wearables market so body worn computers. It’s the headphone market which is an 8 billion dollar per annum market and it’s also speech enhancement or hearing assistance type market which is another eight billion dollar amount of market. So all these things are colliding around what we’ve termed hearables. And for us to be in that position as one of the leaders globally in an emerging market is a wonderful position.
David Tasker: [00:02:46] You’ve been able to achieve some significant milestones since listing. Are you able to share some of those with us.
Justin Miller: [00:02:52] Sure. So we’ve obviously gone through manufacturing. So which is a you know we’ve gone from prototype to manufacturing to. We were first ASX company to actually crowdfund a product. So having launched on the ASX we crowdfunded a product so essentially what that means is advance selling your product and we were able to advance sell a million dollars worth of product to people in 80 odd countries around the world and essentially help prove up the whole concept of what we’re bringing to market. And from that point now developed a major retail deployment. So we’re now in over 650 stores globally across North America, Europe and the Middle East. And you know that we’ve got an expectation that that will grow to about 2000 stores prior to Christmas.
David Tasker: [00:03:46] Everyone talks about online but how important is bricks and mortar to the rollout of your retail strategy.
Justin Miller: [00:03:52] Great question. Very important for any business for any consumer facing business at least anyway and for us where globally 80 percent of retail is still done in brick and mortar stores. You know there’s a lot of noise about online sales and it’s an important part important strategy. But for us to be a global leader of sorts in our space we must be embedded in brick and mortar stores. That’s where we get our scale. A lot of research still done online. But ultimately a lot of decision making and purchasing is still done in-store. People still feel the comfort of visiting a store to purchase so it’s imperative that we’re in those stores.
David Tasker: [00:04:34] And what milestones should investors be focussed on over the coming three to six months?
Justin Miller: [00:04:39] Yeah. Well this quarter is a big one for us. This is the largest consumer spending quarter of the year. Forty percent of all consumer spending is done in this particular quarter. Obviously the holiday season. So it was important for us to be in retail. We invested heavily to be in those retail stores. We invested heavily from a timing perspective rather and an effort rather than dollars. But having now secured that retail base then we’ve got to we’ve got to ensure that we sell through in those retail stores. So this quarter is important for us and into 2018 we move beyond a single product company. So we’ve been working on a number of different products and the company moves beyond that. The IQbud product into some other I guess supporting products but that doesn’t impact on IQbud sales it reaches into into other areas for us and enhances the prospect of Nuheara of being a hearables company and a global leader in that particular space.
David Tasker: [00:05:39] It’s been a very exciting time for the company since listing and much ahead. Justin thanks for your time.
