Hunter Centre student Gavin Allan has launched a new earphones product incorporating wireless technology to cut out the problem of trailing wires.
This is the latest venture for the entrepreneurial student who has shown admirable entrepreneurial spirit since the age of 12 when he bought 'white-label' mp3 players in from China and sold them on eBay.
Currently in second year studying International Business with Management Science and Enterprise as core subjects, Gavin has been running the business in various forms over the years.
"I first started when I was 12, buying in mp3 players and selling them on. I increased the number of players I bought with every new order I placed and over the next few years I sold a mixture of screen protectors, phone cases and earphones on eBay and Amazon. In 2011 the business really took off after one of the phone case designs became the number 1 best seller on Amazon UK. I took 21,000 orders - up from 3,500 the year before - and this continued until 2013 when competition from factories listing on Amazon UK made it impossible to compete on price."
Gavin moved back to selling earphones with a budget model which had reasonable success and is in the top 100 bestsellers for earphones on Amazon. Gavin found it all a bit repetitive though and decided he wanted to take on a new product and get it fully branded for the first time.
"I compete in mountain biking individually and for the University and this requires a fair bit of training. I used various sets of wireless earphones - the wireless makes listening to music much easier but I found that they were either very expensive, had poor build or sound quality or couldn't stand up to the Scottish weather. I thought I could do a much better job so I worked with a supplier out in China to produce our first fully branded set of wireless sports earphones, the ES201.
"My friend Andras Danyi, also studying Business at Strathclyde, designed the logo on my behalf which is receiving a lot of compliments. The key difference is in the waterproofing and adjustable earhooks which is unique to the ES201, and the pricing at an affordable £24.99.
"They have only just launched so the key now is to get samples out to relevant websites and magazines to see what they think and spread the word about the new model. If all goes well I will look into developing more models to add to the wireless range in the future."
You can find Gavin's headphones on his website and Andras's website. You can also find Gavin on Facebook.