Student Spotlight: The Earphones Entrepreneur
IE University is filled with dozens of unknown, unexpected and often impressive stories about students with remarkable talents and their ambitious projects. In an interview with The Stork, Louis Lechanteur, a 2nd-year BBA student, talks about his product called the L&L’s. The Belgian has been recently working on the development of innovative earphones, which allow the user to share content with others.
“The L&L’s are ultimately simple earphones that permit people to share music, audio, projects and whatever they desire through the implementation of an integrated splitter at the bottom,” explains Lechanteur. Having nothing more than an idea that originated merely from personal experience, the 19- year-old entrepreneur came through a long journey to be holding now the first shipment of his product.
“The idea came from the hundreds of times other people and I wanted to share music or movies on a train, bus, plane. Although external splitters do exist, I thought why not integrate one into high-quality earphones altogether,” he points out, “This was both an easy and a simple idea I was looking for that wasn’t going to be too hard to create or manage.”
In order to turn his idea into reality, Lechanteur had to face many processes, formalities and negotiations. First, he found an Asian producer from Shen Zhen, Hong Kong, and negotiated the design and production of the earphones.
“I contacted numerous factories introducing basic designs and specifications I needed for my product. This was the best place in terms of price, communication, and patent procedure system,” states the young entrepreneur.
Another obstacle for Louis was the Cantonese language barrier.
“Out of everything, I found the communication barrier to be the hardest to overcome, especially when designing a product,” reveals Lechanteur. “E-mails about the development of the product would often result in more confusion and frustration.”
Despite overcoming the barrier and approving the design, the student eventually found himself wrapped in a legal procedure to protect his intellectual property.
“A patent was something I had never done. I went to my IE Law professors for outlook on the matter to make sure everything was in order,” he explains, “Thanks to them, I was able to approve and sign the patent, which resulted in the final phase - mass production.”
After rigorous work and determination, it all paid off for Louis.
“After long nights, hundreds of emails, and phone calls in Chinese, I finally received the shipment of my newly developed earphones,” he says with a smile. “With them in hand, I realized they were everything I had hoped for and more.”
[L&L’s]"Today, are able to double the sound output of conventional Apple ear-pods, have noise canceling abilities, adjustable sizes, high quality sound, and of course, the ability to share what you’re listening to with whoever, whenever, wherever,” describes the entrepreneur. “L&L’s can be stacked with an unlimited number of sharing capabilities.”
Besides his satisfaction with the outcome of the project, Louis is happy with what he learned in the process, starting from communication with the producers to the overall experience of starting a business.
“I did this to learn how real things worked and got exactly what I wanted,” says Lechanteur. “By going out and doing things in the real world, I feel like you learn a whole lot more. Something I encourage everyone to do.”
Louis is only one of the many bold and ingenious students at IE University, whose stories and feats the Stork’s Student Spotlight wishes to unveil to the community. If you would like to share the story about your start-up, then make sure to contact Nicolás López, the News Editor and the author of Student Spotlight!
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