An enterprising young man in Ho Chi Minh City has founded his own thriving business from his long-cherished passion: making handmade earphones, which increasingly appeal to local youths with their custom-made, acoustically premium quality. 

Tran Manh Hung, 26, has earned his living through a variety of menial jobs, including being a waiter and dock inventory assistant and worker.

Despite his coarse-looking appearance, Hung has nurtured his indulgence in head- and earphones since a tender age.

He would spend his savings from a meager salary buying earphones which cost some million or up to ten million dong (US$472) apiece.

The young man then switched to doing business in fixing and revamping earphones for local audiophiles both to satisfy his passion and gain access to exorbitant items which cost up to dozens of millions of dong.

He taught himself to delve deeper into the area and applied the skills he had learned from his predecessors to launch an earphone revamping shop, called 7xu.vn, of his own in late 2010.

Hung and his shop quickly became known for making expensive custom earphone covers.

The made-in-Vietnam handmade earphones

With his passion and abundant experience in revamping earphones, Hung then founded his own company, Join Handmade, and came up with the idea of building his own brand of elaborately handmade earphones.

Two years ago, the man and his like-minded friends began working on “Jelly Ear,” an earphone totally handmade, from its inner workings, cover casting processes to string weaving and surface work.

“It takes us around 48 hours to manually produce a pair of earphones, which involves more than 20 phases,” said Ngo Ky Quang, one of Hung’s group members.

The group’s earphone covers are made from foam and especially designed to fit almost everyone’s ears, and able to minimize irritation which wearers usually have with conventional silicon earphones.

Instead of featuring components which are glued together, making earphones currently available on the market prone to breakage, Hung’s Jelly Ear boasts a monolithic design, with the strings cast in the same block with the earphones.

The innovative design results in greater durability and minimizes damage to the components from sweat or rainwater.

The strings are especially woven and arranged to bring glass wearers and sport players the greatest comfort.

Premium, authentic acoustic quality is also what makes Hung’s earphones a success. 

To ensure the most authentic, hi-fi acoustic quality, Hung has chosen Amateur Driver, which has been adopted by major earphone companies in the world.

Even before Hung’s earphones were first launched last month, he had received some 300 online orders, including 100 paid-in-advance items, though each pair costs VND2 million (US$94).

Hung aims at receiving some 100 orders a month. He now supplies some 50 such earphones a month to local phone shops.

The Vietnamese man and his group have also received several capital contributing offers, but for now they are set on developing their own business without outside investment.

Hung is planning to expand production up to 1,000 pairs of Jelly Ear earphones a month, which are intended mostly for foreign markets.

The young man also considers launching his own music social network which provides copyrighted original songs for his clients.

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