A QVC Moment That Changed Everything: The Early Days of ULTRASONE
This little anecdote happened almost 25 years ago, yet I still smile whenever I think back to those events.
At the time, ULTRASONE AG had just been founded. Our goal was to step out of our niche existence—Japan was our only international market back then—and become much better known worldwide. One of the key products at that time was the legendary HFI-15G, an ultra-lightweight headphone weighing only 85 grams, yet delivering an astonishingly spacious sound.
Today people would probably describe it as immersive audio. For us, it was already called S-Logic Natural Surround Sound.
To increase awareness, we decided to present our headphones on the home-shopping channel QVC. For the very first appearance, I personally handled the presentation.
Based on my experiences at trade shows—and the still surprising listening experience customers have today—I had only one single request before the show began: the presenter was not allowed to listen to the headphones beforehand. I wanted his genuine reaction, something I had witnessed countless times, to happen live and unfiltered on television.
The production team agreed—somewhat reluctantly.
So the show began. I had a short introductory conversation with the presenter and then invited him to try the headphones.
The phone lines for orders remained silent.
I had brought our own demo CD in a Walkman, and the presenter put on the headphones. I pressed play.
And… nothing happened.
The presenter said, “I can’t hear anything.”
The production team became visibly nervous.
The phones were still quiet.
But I knew everything was working perfectly. So I calmly told him:
“Just pay attention to the clarinet.”
He concentrated for a moment.
Suddenly he turned his head sharply, his eyes wide open.
“That can’t be possible!” he exclaimed loudly.
“Incredible… this spaciousness!”
Within seconds, the phones started ringing nonstop.
After the show, the presenter thanked me for what he called an amazing and surprising demonstration. QVC and we were extremely satisfied with the result.
My perspective
Sometimes things simply have to happen live and unfiltered. We repeated this style of presentation hundreds of times afterward—and we never stopped enjoying the reactions.
Many of the early ULTRASONE fans discovered our brand through exactly this piece of music and stayed with us ever since.
The truth is simple:
You have to hear ULTRASONE to understand it.
Only S-Logic technology from ULTRASONE delivers such an immersive and natural acoustic experience.
Let yourself be surprised.
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