Naomi tells the Flare story, and her part in an award-winning growth company which now sells worldwide
If you’d have told my younger self that I would be co-founder and co-CEO of an audio technology company, I’d have thought it was a serious case of mistaken identity!
I began as a secondary school art teacher, SEN teacher and then a youth officer for Mid Sussex District Council, where part of my role was to organise under-18 band nights. Meanwhile, my husband, Davies, was a retained firefighter for 13 years, and had been running his own company buying and selling broadcast equipment.
It was after Davies got involved with the sound at one of the under-18 band nights that both of us found ourselves fully immersed in the world of sound. In 2007, he decided to have a go at designing a range of loudspeakers – borne out of a frustration with inconsistencies in sound quality. Our main focus was - and is - to reduce as much distortion as possible in the sound that we hear.
Weeks were spent writing patents and pitching for jobs, and weekends were spent at gigs doing the sound – it was exhausting.
We were a niche brand, so we decided that if we really wanted to make a difference, we needed to take a sidestep into the consumer market. We miniaturised our tech into earphones for our first crowdfunded campaign nearly 10 years ago. It went well, raising over £177,000 – and gave us a new audience.
We experimented more with in-ear devices. Our first ear protectors, Isolate, raised over £2 million via a crowdfunded campaign. With a small team of six at the time, it was tricky, but an awful lot of learning and growth happened very quickly, and we grew our resilience muscles.
Since then, we’ve developed our pro audio range of earphones, used by a wide number of industry names such as Tony Visconti, Stephen Fry, Fran Healy from Travis, Isy Suttie, Julian Lennon and Liam Howlett from The Prodigy.
Our most popular product came during lockdown, when we launched Calmer, a non-electric device that changes the way everyday sounds enter our ears. Calmer reduces stressful frequencies without blocking sound, leaving the wearer more relaxed.
We’ve sold over two million pairs of Calmer since launch, and ship to over 186 countries. Calmer has given us a huge new customer demographic with over three million followers on social media. We also work closely with the neurodivergent community, which has found Calmer particularly helpful.
My focus at Flare is mostly on the day-to-day operations and marketing. I see part of my role as gatekeeper of Davies’ big inventor brain, and I try to translate the science of what our products do into user-friendly language. We’re now fully focussed on developing innovative and impactful technologies based around the human ear, and want to improve everyone’s audio world and better connect people with the sound they hear.
www.flareaudio.com
