Cranbury, NJ (March 29, 2021) --- Songbird Hearing Inc., the developer and manufacturer of the world's first disposable hearing aid, today announced it has formed a strategic alliance with The Boots Company PLC, to sell its Songbird Disposable Hearing Aid in the United Kingdom (UK).
Boots is the UK’s leading retailer of health and beauty products. It has approximately 1,400 pharmacies, and is the second largest professional dispenser of optical products in the UK. Boots also has divisions that provide dental, chiropody, and laser vision surgery services. The first two Boots Hearingcare centers in the UK will open in late March, with full nationwide availability expected later in 2001.
"The Boots name stands for trusted healthcare in the United Kingdom," said Fred Fritz, President and CEO of Songbird. "We see a synergy between our two organizations. Like Songbird, Boots recognizes the tremendous unmet need within the UK's hearing impaired population.”
According to Fritz, Boots will build hearing assessment and dispensing centers within their clinics, which will be staffed by licensed audiologists and Registered Hearing Aid Dispensers (RHADs).
"Boots plans to invest millions of dollars into staffing, training, equipment, and marketing to bring better hearing to the United Kingdom," said Fritz. "That thinking meshes nicely with Songbird's U.S. strategy of selling our products only through licensed hearing professionals. Globally, this affiliation is an important milestone in achieving Songbird’s corporate mission of ‘Bringing Better Hearing to the World.’”
Fritz cited two major factors that make the partnership between Songbird and Boots significant:
1) The hearing correction market in the UK is as underdeveloped as the U.S. market—80 percent of the hearing impaired go unaided. This is primarily due to the dispensing system, which is radically different from that in the U.S. In the UK, approximately 70 percent of all hearing aids are dispensed free by the British National Health Service (NHS). Capacity in the NHS is limited and this can mean long waiting times. In addition, the hearing aids that are supplied tend to use older technology.The Songbird Disposable Hearing Aid is designed to be convenient, virtually invisible in the ear, extremely comfortable, and very affordable. It offers sound quality that rivals the very best in the industry. Each unit, priced at about $1 U.S. per day, delivers a full 40 days of life when used 12 hours per day. Unlike ordinary hearing aids, Songbird can be fit in one office visit and allows patients to avoid the inconvenience of frequent battery changes and repairs.
2) The UK market for private pay hearing aids available through RHADs is growing rapidly. However, many of these professionals have affiliations with other hearing aid manufacturers, which precludes them from dispensing Songbird.
“We believe our partnership with Boots will open the market to large numbers of hearing impaired non-users in the UK by providing easy access to a high-quality solution to hearing impairment,” said Fritz.
Boots has over 1,400 stores and employs over 63,000 people in the UK, and leads markets in a number of areas including cosmetics, medicines, sunglasses, and film processing. The company employs over 4,000 pharmacists and dispenses over 70 million prescriptions each year. It has nearly 300 opticians’ practices, around 30 dental practices, and six chiropody practices.
Songbird Hearing Inc. is a privately held company based in Cranbury, New Jersey. The company was formed in 1997 to develop a line of disposable hearing aids based on highly proprietary technologies exclusively licensed from the Sarnoff Corporation (formerly RCA Labs). The Sarnoff Corporation is widely recognized as one of the top research centers in the United States.