Exploring Rexton’s New Reach Hearing Aid Platform with Kerrie Coughlin

Welcome to This Week in Hearing. Hello, I’m Bob Traynor, your host for this session. And today we’re going to talk about a new platform called Reach from Rexton. And today my guest is Kerry Coughlin, Vice President at WS Audiology in charge of marketing for Rexton US. And thanks so much for being with us today, Kerrie. We very much appreciate your input into This Week in Hearing. Well, thank you, Bob, for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. You know, and I understand you’re kind of the person behind the curtain. then kind of pulled a few strings and – and being said, not necessarily used to being on camera. And so again, that’s another thank you from us for joining us. But before we usually get into these, I understand that you have kind of a background in fashion and retail and some of these areas. And of course we’ll scratch our heads and say, the heck does fashion have to do with audiology and hearing loss and some of these kinds of things? So can you tell us a little bit about your journey in getting into hearing care and hearing instrument marketing and that kind of thing? Well, sure. So maybe it’s not quite the linear line that some of the others in this profession have had, but a few years ago I sort of found myself at a crossroads during the pandemic like a lot of people and looking at a great career in the retail world, but wanting to maybe take that in a different direction. And it so happened that I interviewed with WS Audiology. And I think the one thing that stood out for me and has been that standout since that time is that it’s not just about technology. It’s not just about you know, even in retail. Not just about the new piece of jewelry or the new piece of, you know, fun accessories or you know, this was really about helping people live their best lives. And it was an incredible opportunity for me to be able to take my experience as a marketer and parlay that into an opportunity to help people live their best lives and to learn more about what makes hearing care so important, so fundamental and something that we should all be not only aware of but effectively engaged in. So do you have any family or friends or others that you knew very well that had hearing loss at one time or another? You know, my grandmother and I feel like this is a. Story. A lot of people say my, you know, my dad or my mom or for me it was my grandma. And, you know, I grew up in a household with my grandma. She was a formidable figure for me. She was a cook, she was italian. She was very much about family. And, you know, everyone coming to the table together especially on Sundays for dinner. And, you know, over time, as her hearing deteriorated, I watched her participate less you know, be at the table less. She was quieter. And, you know, she used to laugh and tell me, oh, I hear what I need to hear, or I hear what I can hear. I hear what I want to hear. And you know, I really wish I knew what I know now. Because I would, you know, I would have loved to have had that woman stay at the table you know, continue to be that, that source of energy and fun and all the life that she brought that I watched when she really wasn’t able to hear as well anymore, that she showed her, just withdrew and she wasn’t as much a part of our kind of that family dinner anymore. Those of us that have been clinicians for even five minutes have heard stories like that a lot. And I think it’s admirable to take some of the experience that you develop somewhere else and bring it into our profession because that’s what makes us better people in what we do. And now let’s talk a little bit about Rexton. And can you give us a little. I recall years ago I did some work with Rexton and I dispensed their products over the years. And of course, at that time they had a very good reputation for reliability and quality as well as for things that dealt with more affordable kinds of products as well. But now, has that kind of continued with Rexton or is it quite different? Or maybe you can give us a 2024 perspective on Rexton as a brand of products. Sure. That heritage of us as a brand, relying on Rexton is something that continues even till this day. I think when you make an investment in Rexton you are making an investment not only yourself, but in a high quality, dependable, reliable product. Because we know that when you make an investment in hearing aids, you need to make an investment that gives you that return and is something that you can depend on. Rexin in 2024 is about more to than that reliability, though. It’s really about trying to break down some barriers that prevent people. From getting hearing aids or maybe even understanding about hearing aids. It’s our goal to try to provide opportunities for people who maybe don’t have access to care or affordable solutions or who want a less complex user journey to have an opportunity to buy hearing aids. It’s through partnerships like we have with Costco or some of our third party is where we do that and we help to expand the access. So it kind of works in tandem. We want to have more points of sale in that regard because we want more people to be able to have access to this great hearing care. But at the same time, we don’t want to compromise on the product that we’re delivering to you. And so we continue to offer the reliable, the durable, the quality products that you may have known Rexton for 30 years ago today. And just so everyone understands, Rexton has not moved into the OTC market. They are still a totally prescription kind of product. We are, we are a prescription product and we still work through licensed independent hearing care providers today. Okay, so now there’s something in the, in the marketing that is called ‘life proof’ with design. Now, I mean, I kind of have an idea what I mean by life proof design. I mean, you don’t put mashed potatoes in the microphone and stuff like that, but maybe you could tell us a little bit about what Rexton’s interpretation of life proof design might be. Sure. So life proof is about standing up to the challenges that a user faces in everyday life. And as Rexton and the brand knows, we need hearing aids that are, you meet all of those challenges in your lifestyle. And so lifeproof is really about fitting a person’s life style and daily needs. You know, with, with all of our BTEs, our RICs, our custom devices, they meet the standards for IP 68 ratings. We work with a third party vendor from Germany to be certified, et cetera. But when it really comes to our rugged device, our rugged BTE, actually our most durable device, it’s our toughest hearing aids yet. And it’s kind of where we take it that one step further. And we have done a series of different kinds of testing so that we can look at it being water resistant construction. So if someone gets caught in the rain they don’t have to worry about removing it. It has special seals, microphone protection, so it can handle immersion in water for 30 minutes at a depth of 2 meters. It’s also drop proof and scratch resistant. So if common happens, someone drops their hearing aids, it has that thick housing. So that it can withstand a drop of up to 2 meters. And it had that scratch resistant housing as well. So it’s that extra durability. It can handle detergents, mild soaps. So if someone forgets to take them off, for example, before they get in the shower it’s not a problem. Or if they’re exercising and you know, they’re, they’re worried about sort of the salts or the oils or the, you know, the sweat. Rugged can handle it. So it’s that extra set of elements to really make sure that when someone again is investing in hearing aids, they’re getting everything in then sound for their return. Well, it sounds like most all of the manufacturers now have a lot of the things you just mentioned built in, and it doesn’t make any difference what kind of a product it is. If you stick it in the washing machine, it’s probably going to have a problem. But the deal is that the everyday kinds of things have not been compromised relative to affordability. And that type of thing that you’re mentioning. Exactly. It’s those kinds of elements that are, those kinds of features rather, that you’re getting with our product and you’re still getting it at an affordable, really accessible price point. Yeah. The reliability of products to the consumers, to our hearing impaired patients, that’s of the utmost importance. There’s nothing like somebody saying part of a going someplace and not understanding what’s going on after you’ve already invested into products and that type of thing. Well, we’ve kind of talked about you a little bit and we talked about the, the concept of the company just a little bit these days because companies change a little bit. But obviously Rexton still has some of that same kind of orientation to the hearing impaired and the market that I remember back in the days when I did some work with them all the years. Lets talk a little about the Reach platform and what kinds of things does that do for, for the hearing impaired and what kinds of things will that, situations, will that improve for individuals using the Rexton products? Sure. So much of our life depends on communication. Whether that communication in small groups and environments with lots of people with background noise the ideal situation would be a very quiet listening. But the reality is that complex environments that make speech or even messages more important, can be hard for us to hear. Reach was specifically designed for these situations. It was designed to help provide the wearer with the confidence, with the reliability of hearing in those dynamic. listening situation. So it’s kind of like the group listening around an Airstream trailer. Right? Like my background would kind of show you know, being in those environments around the table with lots of family and friends or a restaurant or a crowded food truck. Its the perfect type of device to help the wearer to be confident to here again more comfortably in those environments. So how does this kind of thing just in general Kerrie, how does this thing kind of work? How does the Reach program, the Reach Platform make differences among one type of situation and another type of situation and so on? Sure, so the foundation of reach is really what we call our multi voice focus. It helps deliver those multiple speakers building on the foundation of our previous generation, which was the previous platform, which was the BiCore platform. BiCore was the first time that we actually introduced the separation of the speech and the noise that the two independent processing of the sounds. With multivoice focus we’re actually able to track and detect multiple voices in sort of that 180 degrees activating the different beams for the individual speakers and following the people as they move so that we’re separating the target speech to the background noise and processing them separately. Well that’s a pretty good fashion way to say that. And I think honestly for, for a person that’s more behind the scenes it’s a it’s, it’s kind of difficult to, we certainly wouldn’t expect that to be a high technology lecture from a doctoral level audiologist. But we would certainly appreciate just to have a little bit of an idea of what’s meant by this by core system as well as the reach system. And now this background noise is such an issue for patients. And so my understanding is that the Rexton Reach platform is an advanced version of using the two amplifiers to separate the speech from the background noise. And it isn’t just background noise, but it’s all the babble and all the, and as they’re sitting around the Airstream trailer there, they’re not going to just have a lot of babble from speech, but they might have some wind noise and some dogs barking and some other kinds of things. And the one processor may process that and the other processor may process the speech. So that’s an interesting concept for how the device is different. And now is that in all of the Rexton products or is it only in some of the Rexton products? I mean, assume that everything from CICs to BTEs would use a similar kind of assistant. Sure. So right now, the first product that we’ve launched is the Reach RIC. And that is the first generation that does have the multi voice focus. You’ll see us continue to launch on the Reach Platform. But this is the first one that does have that capability. Okay. And Rexton it still does offer not only RICs, but also all the way down to CICs as well. And maybe even mini CICs. Correct. We do also have BTEs the RICs, as we mentioned, we have CICs. We do have sort of a full portfolio depending on the different platforms. Okay, well, do you have some other topics relative to Rexton and this Reach platform and some of the other issues that go into these these products that you’d like to have us know about that would be of benefit to our clinical group. The thing that’s the most exciting about Rexton Reach is that it’s really built on, you know, the helping users in these challenging listening situations and with multi voice focus with voice stabilizer. We actually have seen in a survey that we conducted that the wearers were 82% more comfortable in these listening situations than with their own hearing aids. So wearing the Rexton Reach hearing aids, there was marked improvement in that confidence, in that ability to return to the conversation again and be a part of it. And I think that’s, you know, that’s fantastic to see that. That’s what we want to see. Right. And that we all hope for, for the users of our products. Well, and it would have been, would it have been very nice to have grandma have a set of these things to facilitate her Sunday dinners and other kinds of activities. Exactly. So well, you know, I certainly want to thank you for being with us today, Kerrie. So my guest today has been Kerry Coughlin, Vice President at WS Audiology in charge of marketing and particularly for the Rexton products in the United States. Thanks again so much for being with us and for all of you out there. Thank you for being with us as well. And I hope you can join us for another session of This Week in Hearing.