Inside T10 Bespoke: The Luxury In-Ear Computers Redefining Personal Audio

I I guess [music] most people don’t ask themselves, “What if your jewelry could hear for you?” And I’m not talking about earbuds. [music] I’m talking about ear couture. So, let’s get into this. Uh, today we’re talking about something very specific, ear couture. And today, Bear from Team Bespoke is here with pieces that look and feel like art, like power, and quietly bend the soundscape to your will. Like this is just like so cool. You are so hired, Val.

I know. I mean, it’s like and I’m thinking about my first experience with T10 bespoke when I came over to your office and you had me try them in. I was like, “No, there’s a fancy there’s a fancy word they use. They call it an alier.” Yeah. I can’t even say that without looking ridiculous. But I think that’s what they call it.

Well, and this is what I love about you is that you are the the the true representation of your art, of your work. I I think of you as audio romantic and then also kind of mad scientist, but you are a designer and you are so passionate about the spokables, which is its own luxury category. They’re handfinished. They’re limited. Um, and they’re made to be a secret, which also makes them kind of difficult to sell when they’re so exclusive and so special that you really have to pay attention.

Well, we got we got lucky on the on the secret part. You know, good secrets never stay [laughter] never stay secret.

Play a secret, right?

No, they don’t. And so it it’s cool cuz these days because word is, you know, slipping out that there’s this weird little company that makes handbuilt, you know, computers or or earphones or ear couture as you have coined. I like that phrase.

I’m going to use that. use it because word is is slipping out now that you know my fancy little iPhone rings and you know we launch into a conversation with some random person who I’ve never talked to before and and we start talking about what they might like to do and build their fancy ear thing and then at some point in time we try to remember to get each other’s names because it seems like that would be important something some somewhat important to consummating a transaction and then later on I look up who I was on the phone with I Google I’m like oh Right. What person?

Right. That’s why that name sounded familiar.

Something from Well, this I want to start quickly. I don’t want to go all into all the nitty-gritty, but this you’ve been working on this for a really long time.

Decade. [sighs and gasps] Yeah. I mean, when I said you’re passionate and embody all of the spirit of this product, literally all of your energy is in this creation. But it’s not just beautiful, it’s the audio quality.

Yeah.

Right. And that’s that’s hard for people to get. They’re like, “What? Why wouldn’t I just go get, you know, my $40, $50, $100 headphones?” Like, we’re talking about Yeah. Why would you go get you some of those white AirPod thingies?

Yeah, those things that I use on the airplane.

Those are cool. All kids got them. Well, the kids do have them. and the kids have them because they’re they’re affordable and they’re reasonably performative, right? And so in the in the consumer electronics world, as is the case with, I don’t know, wine or cigars or fashion, it’s a curve that kind of goes like this on price and then it kind of goes like this, right? And so that last 10% or 15% starts to get expensive to execute.

And at the same time, if you’ve ever had really good wine, then going backwards sucks. And if you’ve had a great pair of shoes, going backwards, not so great. Fine furniture, a marvelous automobile, if you’re so fortunate, a yacht or an airplane. And in all instances, when human beings really go for it in the things that they design or they create or that they covet, uh, sort of the sky is the limit.

And at the same time, electronics are are hard and they’re and they’re expensive to execute. And so it’s normally the the the big companies, the Sony’s and the Bose and the Apples and you know the Googles of the world that are out there designing and building consumer electronics products just because it is so expensive and so difficult and the tooling is so you know formidable that most smaller companies that would try to get into building you know an electronics product whether it’s a computer, a television or or hi-fi audio they find out what it costs developmentally. and they they can’t, you know, and so it’s not that that the world doesn’t know how to make better stuff.

It’s that reasonably the big companies aren’t going to do it because you’re talking about a very very small sliver of the market that wants super high-end anything. And yet the little companies that might want to cater to something high-end in audio or consumer electronics, they just don’t have the capital to do it. So we were real fortunate.

I was able to lean on first friends and family and former business associates and former customers and people that that I’d spent 30 years in electronics working with and sort of outline my vision for a new way to interface with your ears by building computers that would fit inside your ears and would do cool stuff. And some of those people were just almost as crazy as me and voted to come along for the ride and became investors in our company. And so it began 10 years ago.

But quickly, and I promise I’ll let you talk. The funny part was in 30 years of consumer electronics development, I believed that I could do it in three years. And I told my original investors that in 3 years, here’s how the world is going to look. This is what we’re going to do. And they they said, “Okay, Bear, yeah, you know, if you say it, it must be. And so, we’ll do it.”

And then 10 years into it, I I actually it’s not true. It was 8 years into it when I launched. It’s 10 years now, but 8 years into what was supposed to be a three-year R&D journey, we actually brought the world’s first in-ear computers to market. It was a labor of love for the love of sound.