Daughter’s woes spur hearing aid developer

A 10-year quest by Mesa native Sam Thomasson to help his hearing-impaired daughter has reached fruition with the opening of his first Zounds hearing aid stores.

Thomasson, founder and president of Zounds, has started selling a new state-of-the-art hearing aid his company developed that includes advanced feedback and noise cancellation to screen out background noise and make conversations easier to understand in restaurants and other noisy environments. In all, 42 patents are represented in the Zounds hearing aid, Thomasson said.

The first three stores were opened in February at Superstition Springs Center in Mesa, Arrowhead Mall in Glendale and in Estero, Fla. Others are under construction or planned across the United States.

Thomasson was inspired to develop the hearing aid by his daughter, Katherine, who suffered severe hearing loss from an illness when she was 13 months old. When she was growing up, her hearing aid would squeal and cause discomfort whenever he tried to hug her.

Thomasson, an electrical engineering graduate of Arizona State University, vowed he would perfect a hearing aid that reduced the squealing and other common complaints about the devices.

“I owed it to her to develop a hearing aid,” Thomasson said.

He also recognized it as a business opportunity. An estimated 28 million Americans suffering some form of hearing loss, often the result of a lifetime of exposure to noise — whether it be loud cars, machinery or music.

Thomasson established his own company in Mesa called Acoustic Technologies, which first developed noise cancellation software and semiconductor chips for the speaker phone and cell phone markets. That technology helped his daughter use the telephone, but it didn’t meet his goal of developing an improved hearing aid.

“The investment community was more interested in the 600 million cell phones that are sold each year, so that’s what I had to do first,” he said.

Once Acoustic Technologies was established, Thomasson formed Zounds as a spinoff to apply technology he developed for telephones to his new hearing aid. He was able to raise $25 million in investment capital to start Zounds, headquartered at 1910 S. Stapley Drive, Mesa.

In addition to the noisecancellation advances, the aid includes a remote control that adjusts the volume, treble and bass and four programs that the user can set for various levels of background noise. The aids can be recharged each night, eliminating the need to buy replacement batteries.

Thomasson is trying a few unusual features in his retail stores, located in shopping malls.

They feature plush orangeand-grey decor that makes them seem more like electronics stores than outlets for a medical device. Also included is a room that demonstrates the difference in sound between Zounds and a conventional hearing aid in a simulated restaurant.

The cost is $2,000 for a twoear set. Insurance normally doesn’t cover the cost, he said, so the company offers payment plans for as low as $19 a month. Katherine, now 16, said she is “very excited” about the new hearing aid.

“It’s been a really great experience having my dad help other people while helping myself,” she said. “It’s been really cool to see how it (development of the hearing aid) is going along.”