For a year or two before we brought the first Clevy Headphone to market in 2010, the concept of a sturdy and volume safe headphone for children was something we had been pondering over in various ways. We still come across the very first working sample we made back then at times, when looking through the archives in an attempt to clean up those old-but-cool nooks and crannies of our warehouse. With just that one unit made, that one single piece may altogether well be the most expensive children’s headphone ever produced, making it kind of our own version of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. 😉

Fast forward to 2020; After processing all the feedback we received from our trusty customer base on the previous models over the years (while obviously keeping all the good stuff), the Clevy Headphone 3.0 came to see the light of day. However, not without some serious hurdles to take during the development process.

For instance, the initial idea was to make a waterproof case to accompany our new Clevy headphone. As a lot of our headphones are sold to schools, we thought it would be a good feature to add a case with name ID stickers for both the headphone and the case. In this way, the headphones won’t go from head to head so it would be a solution for this major hygiene problem at schools. The case being waterproof is a necessity here though. Why? Headlice can be a major pest at primary schools, , and a waterproof zipper would make the case impenetrable for these critters. At first it looked like this was doable but when we received the sample, the waterproof zipper turned out to be not very child friendly. In fact it was so hard to open, it wouldn’t be suitable for kids at all. There was no solution for this so unfortunately we had to skip the waterproof idea. In the end we still have the case with the ID-stickers, which is still a big pro for our total product.

Another idea was to try rubber coating for our headphone. Rubber coating looks comfortable and after research, we found both children and parents indeed liked the look and feel of it as we did. After stress-testing and worst case scenarios we decided to skip rubber coating though. Why? Rubber isn’t easy cleanable. Rubber isn’t scratch proof. When there are scratches in the rubber coating, it’s even less hygienic. That’s why we decided to go for UV-coating of our headphone parts. It’s easily cleanable, scratch proof and at the end we think it actually looks a bit more classy.

Then along came COVID, putting a spoke between the wheels in several respects. While the virus closed down complete factories and Donald Trump was fighting out a trade war with China, factories making earpiece padding for headsets were working overtime to fulfil the needs of the global work-from-home economy. We figured that whole situation provided an improvement opportunity as well though and kept finetuning further, until we arguably left you with the best pair of children’s headphones ever created. 😉

The first new Clevy headphones are expected to ship out by early April and stay tuned, as we’ll share more info once available!