The Earphone That Changed Everything — Steve Johnson Interview on Shure’s E5c

Mike Dias (00:00):

So in one or two lines each. Tell me Scott Sullivan's role.

Steve Johnson (00:06):

Well, so I mean, I'll just give you the real quick. When I joined in 93, I came in as the wireless product manager when there really was not in the way of wireless anything at, sure. It wasn't long after that that I added to my team, found a young kid in purchasing named Scott Sullivan, and he came over and joined the team as product manage and product management. So that was where he came from. He came in, I don't know, whenever, 95 or something like that into product management. And yeah, I mean, he was great. What was so great about him was his enthusiasm. Not a musician. A lot of people are sure were at the time, but he wasn't. But man, he had to drive. He wanted to do some cool stuff. So we had to figure out what that cool stuff was.

Mike Dias (01:03):

And what was Susan Kelly? Sorry, how do I, Susan Kelly. Susan

Steve Johnson (01:08):

Keeley.

Mike Dias (01:08):

Keeley, okay.

Steve Johnson (01:10):

It's funny because I mean, she was also in product management, I believe she was on the wired microphone side at one point, and then things move around prior to management, small company, you go wherever. Somehow, I believe she started working with Scott, and this is where it gets a little fuzzy. We could verify that with Scott, but she was doing product management. She's a musician, saxophone player, and she was also involved in international sales. So that's where it gets fuzzy. For me. It was like, well, she, in product management, she an international sales. I think she did both at different times.

Mike Dias (01:55):

Okay. And Jerry's earliest involvement with Sure. What was the first touchpoint?

Steve Johnson (02:02):

Oh gosh. Well, I mean, we knew that we wanted to do a in her monitor system, but what we knew is we could do the electronics. That wasn't going to be a problem. Anything at the year, at the year, we had no experience with. So we were looking for help basically. And Scott would probably, possibly know better how that connection was made, or he would keep remember it better. But at that time, Jerry was doing stuff with, was like Aerosmith, I can't even remember who it was, but he was a road guy. I mean, he was a monitor guy, more or less, but was doing in-ear stuff also a little bit. And I can't remember if he was working with Santilli at that time or not. I mean, we were just trying to find people that could help us. We didn't really know how to get from here to there. We're reaching out to that emo, we're trying different things. We're stumbling across this Knowles driver that everybody seems to be using, and we're trying to figure out what can we do with this thing. So it was just an exploration. The thing about Jerry was he knew the musician side,

(03:35):

So that was really the connection there. That was the big value there was. He knew what people wanted to hear more me, of course. But he knew more about that, and again, than we did.

Mike Dias (03:51):

And I love that you mentioned at e Modic, especially you both Chicago based, and I've heard both versions. I've heard medel into this. I've heard people say, Nope, there was no mead in this. I'd love to get your take on some of the early discussions with Mead.

Steve Johnson (04:10):

Well, I think there might be, might've been some lawsuits or something after my time, so I hate to even comment on it, but No, I'm serious. I don't know, because whatever. But

Mike Dias (04:24):

I think there were plenty with Jerry too. So,

Steve Johnson (04:27):

Yeah. And honestly, I don't know. Most of that happened after my time

(04:36):

Was when I was there, it was kind of like free love man. And we were just talking about stuff I, I mean, I still have a kid of stuff for metic and whatever, that we were just trying these different things at that time. I know I went to at Modic and met with him, met with Mead along with probably Scott or whatever, and we talked about stuff. Everybody was really suspicious of the other, I guess you could say, understandably, because everybody was just guarding jealously, whatever it was that they had that they thought could be guarded or could be protected. And rightly so. There'd be comments made by people, I've got 27, not patents, but things that I do to this thing to make it different than this thing and whatever. But it ended up being a shorter chord. I mean, come on, really.

(05:49):

And I'm not kidding. Or a different type of cable on it or something like that, or how was detached or something. But in hindsight, I guess I can see why they were scared of sure, because we were kind of big guys trying to figure stuff out. But at the same time, my intentions were nothing but to learn. And I'll always tell people, if you don't want to tell me something, you don't have to tell me it because that's fine. Let's just go about that. That's where, somewhere along the way, Westtown came into the fold as well, because was like, well, these guys can actually make stuff. And that was kind of how the E two came along. E two was single driver, and it was not that different from, I guess, well, because it was a single driver, it was similar in concept to some of the things that EMO or others were doing at the time. But rather than looking like little, I dunno, cylinders, you stick in your ear with cables coming out, we style it a little bit. So it'd be a little box and you could wrap it around your ear and look a little bit better on stage or whatever was the idea.

(07:21):

Yeah, I mean, we were working with, who were the West Tone boys?

Mike Dias (07:25):

Carl. Carl, yeah, the twin, Chris and

Steve Johnson (07:27):

Carl. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were working with them. I mean, again, it was kind of, nobody's really making any money. My whole goal in all of this, to be honest, was to sell electronics. At that time. I couldn't do a system if I didn't have something to go in people's ears. And I figured, if you're a pro, you're probably going to buy a custom thing from somebody else anyway, and that's fine, but I at least need to get something in your ear so you can do it. And so that's kind of where it started with the early PSM models. And then as time went on, we saw limitations to that, which is where the E five comes along. But the E two was almost kind of like it validated that the electronics work now go work with Jerry or whoever. You want to get some customs made. And we don't care. I mean, we don't have a way to touch that business. To be honest. We didn't know, I think around in some kind of custom things with some people or affiliations, whatever with Michael. But again, that wasn't our play. That'd be like us selling, trying to make money on XLR cables, which I guess we did sell some, but that wasn't the idea. The idea was really to sell transmitters and receivers. That's what we were good at.

Mike Dias (08:48):

And why was short entering the IEM space, what problems and opportunities were you solving?

Steve Johnson (08:57):

Well, again, for the pro usage, for the onstage usage, I mean, it was pretty clear the advantages that an in air monitor system brought to people. It was also pretty clear that some of the stuff that was out there was cobbled together. They're not the most professional, let's say.

Mike Dias (09:18):

Yep. Sorry, Marty.

Steve Johnson (09:22):

Well, exactly a good way. And we could do better for people in that regard. So we thought, again, focusing on electronics, we knew how to do electronics. We knew how to do wireless transmission. We knew wireless analog audio, whatever it takes. That was our domain. We thought we could do it better if they still wanted to plug it into one of Marty's ear pieces, right on, whatever. That was kind of the start. And also, I mean, at that time, we weren't thinking about the consumer side of these earphones. That was still to come. But when we went and visited people that made these things and got samples of 'em, I mean, I immediately was listening to 'em on my Walkman or my whatever, iPod, I guess at the time before of, it was before iPods.

Mike Dias (10:19):

It was before the very, very, very early MP three players, like the palm pilots that you could get, bro, an SD card in. So if you can confirm the order. So first was the E two, then the E five, and then the E five C.

Steve Johnson (10:39):

I think we did an E two C also, but I don't know that it's sold very much problem with the E two was it had an orthopedic look to it.

(10:51):

It very much looked like something that you get from a doctor, and we knew that. And so with the E five, we set out to do something that had a better consumer look to it. I mean, this is the era of the iMac. So what ended up being a clear shell, and I've got samples at home that are blue and other sorts of colors that we shot. Also, just trying to think what would be nice, what would be a good look. And we experimented with different cable types. We had a twisted cable, which really was really nice from a comfort perspective. In fact, that's what Ian Anderson liked, and that's what he got first. And then when we went to the final thing, we ended up with a more rigid, I guess it's probably still twisted, but in a whatever cable, single cable.

Mike Dias (11:55):

Are you talking about the ear loop side of things?

Steve Johnson (11:58):

Yes, I am.

Mike Dias (11:59):

Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God, you guys are the, yeah. Right. And you're still talking about the E five right before you turned into E five C, right?

Steve Johnson (12:09):

Yeah, I'm talking about the E five for sure. Yeah, the E five, I mean was yeah, mean we were experimenting with different things, different cables, different colors, different ear pieces, different ways to get it in there. I mean, Michael and company we're doing some of custom sleeves that you could put on both the E two of the E five, and we're just kind of messing around with different things like that. And at that time, it was all centered and mostly centered. We were supplying them to artists along with the inner systems, and it wasn't like taking off, I mean, it's not a huge market at that time. We always thought the play was ultimately going to be more, let's say, the smaller band or whatever. But that presented its own problems because now you got to have a monitor board with stereo mixes, which nothing did. So then we created the Ill faded UX bander, which is its story all and of its own, which we won't get into, but we were trying all things, but along the way, it was just like, damn, these things sound really good. These things are really fun to listen to.

Mike Dias (13:21):

Yeah. I mean, that's why I really fell into this rabbit hole. I did ultimately, first business plan, I got brought in by their IP attorney right after everything started to break to actually write their first plan. And I really only did it because they promised me a set of customs, but all that I got from it was an E two. I was like, this isn't even an E five.

Steve Johnson (13:51):

Yeah. Well, it was funny too because I mean, there was this whole driver frenzy going on about how many drivers can you get in earpiece? And I don't know, I guess surprisingly, lots of drivers can sound good, but I still sort of felt like if you could do it with one true full range driver, that would really be the ultimate. The E five is a bit of a compromise, and it has two drivers, so you can handle the low and the high. And there was another thing we did, oh God, we did a dynamic driver of some sort. I can't remember what that thing was called.

Mike Dias (14:27):

Did you do the dynamic?

Steve Johnson (14:29):

We did a dynamic.

Mike Dias (14:33):

I didn't know that.

Steve Johnson (14:34):

Yeah, I don't remember much about that. Scott would remember that better than me, tried to flush certain things out of my brain, but I'm pretty sure that we did a dynamic one just for a price point to see if we could hit $99 or something like that.

Mike Dias (14:52):

I know Jerry had Royal, I believe is a better way to say it, but I believe Jerry had royalties on the E two and the E five. Is that where it all fell apart, where it was in discussion with Tone and Jerry, is that, was it the launch of E five

Steve Johnson (15:07):

Or You know what? I'm just complete ignorance. I honestly don't know. Okay. I honestly do not know. I've never focused on that side of it. I mean, it's kind of weird that I didn't in hindsight, but you got to remember, at this point, I'm vice president of marketing. I'm no longer a product manager, so I'm now the vice president of marketing. I've got Scott who's in product management. I've got other people in product management. They're worrying about all that kind of stuff, I suppose. And I wasn't involved in that at that time. I was getting a lot more drawn into relaunching the Sure brand itself for that next generation. It had lost its way.

Mike Dias (15:58):

Well, I'd love to hear more about that, because I don't think most people nowadays equate Sure with phono cartridges or realize that it lost its way. And I happen to think that the headphones were a huge leap forward, and I'd love to hear your take on that, both as a consumer and as the VP of marketing.

Steve Johnson (16:19):

Yeah. Well, so first off, we didn't get into the headphones while I was there.

Steve Johnson (16:24):

Talked

Steve Johnson (16:24):

About it. We dinked around a little bit with it. I mean, the same people that were doing phono cartridge things, were also looking into headphones. But again, more something for the turntable list perhaps than for home listening. Yeah. If you look at circa, I don't know, I think I was VP of marketing in 1990 to 2003. If you think about that era, there's a lot of really cool stuff going on just across consumer electronics. Apple is kind of coming out of its, I mean, gosh, we all knew what they were doing was kind of cool, but the world didn't quite know yet. And so I guess we'd all bought stock then on there, whatever. Anyway,

Mike Dias (17:11):

Mindy did all that money that Mindy got from when Youi was first acquired. She stuck it all into Apple.

Steve Johnson (17:18):

Good for her.

Mike Dias (17:19):

Good for her. Yeah,

Steve Johnson (17:22):

Good for her. But I mean, there was just a lot of talk about the brand. What does it mean? What is branding up to that point? And people thought about brand as being an advertising thing. It's like a logo on a whatever, kind of very much, not a holistic discussion at all. And we were no different really. We had our logo, I guess, and all that, but we had this rich history that really wasn't being, well, let's say it was being mined, but it wasn't being replenished.

(17:59):

We had people who knew the Sure brand, the funnel world. We knew people who knew Sure brand from the SM 58 and whatnot, but not everybody knew that SM 50, not everybody needs an SM 58. I mean, it's hard to play an instrument, sing a song, what can we all do? Most of us anyways, we can hear, we can listen. And just like the phone cartridge, anybody could turn, put a record on their Gerard turntable with a sir cartridge. The earphones to me looked like, man, what an opportunity. These things sound great. Nobody's really doing this.

(18:40):

Why not go after this part of the world out there, reintroduce ourselves? It's still music centric. It's not audio per se. I mean, there's pro audio component to it, and it's validated in that sense, but it's a new thing. And it just seemed like a wonderful opportunity to do that. I mean, prior to that, I was working with an industrial, actually a branding firm. We did this thing where we looked at the Sure products, and we put 'em into four piles. There's stuff that's good for the brand, stuff that's okay for the brand, stuff that is not good for the brand and stuff that's really tearing at the brand. And they pretty much did this. And then we looked at it, the stuff that was good for the brand was all, there was a certain residence to it. Most of it, it was like 55 s sh s, and 58. I mean, things that had been around a long time. But also if you looked at it, it was real materials like steel, things that you could with some half some weight and whatnot. Then there was some other things in the middle. Then you get to the other side, and the stuff is not necessarily, let's say good for the brand. It was the new wireless stuff, stuff that had come up in my,

Mike Dias (19:57):

Really

Steve Johnson (19:58):

During my time. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was plasticy, kind of squeaky.

Steve Johnson (20:01):

Okay.

Steve Johnson (20:04):

If you looked at, I mean, the head was still an SM 58, but the rest of it didn't really exude sureness and my God, we even let somebody, at that time, we had a green Sure logo that was on that. It was more like the beta green logo, but this is before the, sure. They did the whole corporate thing years ago. But this was before that. I mean, I think the problem there was a problem. We had what they call blue ribbon teams, and these blue ribbon teams were autonomous, answered sort of to themself. I mean, it was fun to be on a blue ribbon team working on a project. I mean, you had all the disciplines there, and you could work on a project that you were assigned and bring it to market, and it was fun. The problem was there wasn't necessarily the oversight to that. So while they were making good products, they weren't necessarily making good products for sure. They didn't really understand. I mean, nobody had really explained to them what does sure mean. So that's when we sort of started this internal mantra. It manifested itself as sure it's your sound, but internally it was sure inspires confidence. Anything you do has to inspire confidence. So

Mike Dias (21:30):

I've got to pause here for a second because

(21:33):

I want you to understand how powerful this is. When I took the job at Earthworks, and it was really just because I had moved around the corner from the company. My daughter was five, her school's five minutes away. The girls desperately wanted to be back in the East coast. Don't ask me why, but that neither here nor there. And so I take the job and I telling my uncle about it, and my uncle is at best, a hobbyist musician. He might play a concert, a benefit concert once a year-ish, or plays at the Temple or something, right? But he plays his guitar every night. He plays the same Neil Young five Neil Young songs. It doesn't matter. He is your exact customer that you want from an MI side. And he says, categorically. He goes, why would anybody ever buy a microphone that's not sure? And I was like, yeah, exactly, exactly. And by the way, that is the only line I would say to Earthworks. I think they hated me. No matter what they'd put out, I'd be like, okay, that sounds good, but why would anybody ever buy a microphone that's not sure?

(22:46):

But that's the only line that matters. And that line comes from Sure, inspires confidence. That is a direct lineage. Oh, yeah. That must have been the greatest company initiative that has changed the direction for the entire industry, not just for sure.

Steve Johnson (23:09):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean it, I'm getting some baby goosebumps, just remembering and thinking about you should, what we did during that period.

Mike Dias (23:22):

At that time, you should beyond proud of that. I mean, that is so bold. And to put such a moonshot with that, it really, and you must have faced a lot of internal resistance because nobody wants to think that they're not good for sure. Not good for the brand.

Steve Johnson (23:42):

Right? Right. Well, yeah. I mean, we would've design reviews, and I, as a VP of marketing would say, I'm just going to ask one question. How does this inspire confidence? So we'd go through and they would tell me that the orientation of the knobs on the face plate or placed it a certain way because it allows you to do this and this and this, and you always know where it is exactly. You're not fumbling around, inspires confidence, that kind of stuff. I mean, it was powerful. And at that time, we didn't have any internal industrial design. We were doing it with people on the outside. And that was also a problem because we didn't have any control over that. We just said, make something cool. We didn't even say that. And they'd come back with something and we'd look at it and go, yeah, that's kind of cool. And then we would do it, or we'd see something that was good, and we'd fuck it up by saying, no, no, no, do this. And they'd do it getting paid, right?

Steve Johnson (24:47):

Yeah.

Steve Johnson (24:49):

And if you look at it now, they've got a whole industrial design team there. They have a consumer experience team. But all of that, none of that was there when I started. And the shoots of that were there when I left. And I can look at the products today and I can look at 'em through the lens of what the design language was that was being in, its early, I wouldn't say infancy, but certainly early days. And it carries through, and that's really cool.

Mike Dias (25:21):

It's really cool. And it makes this conversation that much more powerful. And forgive me, when I said headphones earlier, I didn't mean the over ears, I just mixed the terms back and forth. But

Steve Johnson (25:32):

No, that's fine.

Mike Dias (25:32):

I really did just mean the earphone category that you helped pioneer. But what I'm hearing from this conversation is the switch from the E five to the E five C, it's not just a product launch. It is a company refresh. You are planting a flag on the moon saying, we're going here.

Steve Johnson (26:00):

Yeah. Now the thing is, and this is what I kind of alluded to in my note to you, is I was doing this not to create another consumer company. My intention was we would stay true to our core quote consumer, our end user, which was a pro end user that was really, I wanted to reintroduce us to. I mean, there's a point at which everyone who becomes a pro is not yet a pro, right? So what is that point? And can I touch them at that point and get something in their hand, get something in their ears that when they become a pro or they have pro needs, they'll think about me. And so if I think about the microphones, again, even a cheap sure microphone is, that's a fair amount of money. And you probably have used or owned other less expensive microphones somewhere along the way before you quote, become a pro.

(27:00):

And I wanted to get things in people. We did the whole line, the PG, which is called was the performance gear line. That was all about being kind of not really my first Sure, because that sounds too childish, but it was easy to choose. The problem was sure was it was a pro brand and people were put off a little bit by, Ooh, it's pro. It's scary because pro stuff is scary. It's like riding a bike. I mean, oh my gosh, to ride a bike today, look at the clothes you have to wear. I can't ride a bike. But even though, if you go back to childhood, everybody loved to ride a bike, but now everybody's put off by the professionalism of bike. You can't go ride a Sunday afternoon and go to Europe and you can ride a bike anywhere and your workloads, but you can't do that here.

(27:45):

And so same thing with a microphone, buying a microphone, using a microphone, whatever. That was a kind of scary experience. You go into a store, you go to a microphone counter, which is man by somebody who's probably not a very good salesperson and probably only working there for the discount, and they're going to sell you this. Sure. Anyway, it was great for us, but again, it was kind of a scary thing. So we were trying to find ways to ease people into selecting things that were good for them and we're good for sure. And so we were doing that on the microphone side. Here was an opportunity to do that in a whole nother category. And so that's where the E five, maybe not the E five C so much, I mean, the E five C ultimately is almost an aspirational thing. There were a lot of e stuff that came after that, again, after my time.

(28:36):

But with the E five C was, that was our opportunity to move in that direction. And as I wrote in my note, the economy was pretty horrible at this time. Yes. Nobody wanted to invest in another thing. So I was on the executive committee. I told the executive committee, look, I'm going to do this in the least expensive way we possibly can. The things I'm worried about, I'm worried about liability. I'm worried about things because now we're now going to be putting things in people's ears, and these people are not professionals. So I'm going to put my energy toward making sure that we've covered our bases on all the legal stuff, and we will spend some money there. But on the promotional side, we're going to try this kind of grassroot. We're going to get these in people's ears that are musicians. I don't even remember how we communicated the E five C to be quite honest. I don't know if we did anything much with it from an ad perspective. We did an online direct thing. In hindsight, I mean, it's really kind of cute what we did. I mean, in today's age, you could have done something with social media and all, but there was none of that really.

Mike Dias (29:48):

There's none of that. Nope.

Steve Johnson (29:50):

So I mean, today would be a totally different approach. It was very much starting with the product and starting with the vision that not everybody can sing. Not everybody can play guitar, but most everybody's got two ears and they like to listen. And me personally, the reason I like this so much was I've never been a huge fan. And listening to music really loudly, he gets to a certain point and it doesn't sound good to me. So when I can put in something that occludes the outside sounds, and I can listen to it at my level and not have to listen to all the other stuff that I'd otherwise had to be listening to, it's like heaven. And for a musician to be able to hear all those parts that you've never been able to hear before with the nuance, oh my gosh. For me personally, that's why it's so cool. I'm a sax player, but I'm not really like a musician in the Sure sense. All the other people, guitar players and all that. So I didn't have use for a lot of the products. I didn't play in the band anymore, though. I played through college. I didn't. But man earphones. Oh yeah, that's good stuff. That's fun stuff.

Mike Dias (31:01):

I mean, did you know you were going to change the world and launch become the epicenter of the global headphone revolution? Again, putting this back in context, there were very few commercial headphones over the $79 price point. And 99 was, forget about it. And you come in again, it's pro, and there's all the other reasons, but you're way ahead of the common price point. This is before beats, this is before all of this. So what was the fear of entering into the space with the price point? And what was the,

Steve Johnson (31:41):

I don't know that there was a fear. I also think that why not go aspirational? We are not, not a high volume company. I mean, even the SM 58, if you count up all the ones that have been sold since day one, a lot for microphone. It's not for a lot of other stuff.

Steve Johnson (32:04):

Sorry,

Mike Dias (32:08):

Steve, you there?

Steve Johnson (32:09):

Yeah,

Mike Dias (32:10):

I fidgeted and I touched my AirPod that was on the table and it just transferred over there. So I'm sorry, could you repeat the last thing you said?

Steve Johnson (32:18):

No, I just said that, I mean, sure's never been a crazy high volume consumer electronics company. So the thought of us hitting a price point that we could sell millions of these things was never the intention. So let's go with, this is a special thing. The customs at the time, were really out of reach

Steve Johnson (32:42):

For

Steve Johnson (32:42):

People. We have the sound of the customs. We have something that sounds really cool. And I think if you price it too low, you miss an opportunity. So let's price it where people go, wow, that's a lot of money. Maybe I should check it out. And that's why Steve Jobs orders, and that's why John Winter orders 'em because yeah, this might be kind of cool. I mean, I used to love going on an airplane back in the day and putting these things in, and people just look at me. Nobody else knew what these things were at the time,

Mike Dias (33:17):

Right? I mean, there was no other point in time like this. So tell me more about the packaging, the case, again, all the decisions, because again, in this idea that you're planting a flag on the moon, this is the new direction of the company.

Steve Johnson (33:35):

Yeah. So I mean, let's talk a little bit about the categorization. I mean, I did allude to this. We had Marty out there using words. Was he saying in air monitors? I can't

Mike Dias (33:51):

Remember. He was saying he would sue you for, yeah.

Steve Johnson (33:54):

Was it in your monitors?

Mike Dias (33:55):

Yeah. Was in your monitors, all of that. Yeah.

Steve Johnson (33:57):

Yeah. And frankly, I don't know if I like that term anyway at the time. It sounds, I mean, what is a monitor for most people

Mike Dias (34:06):

Better than a canal phone, but not a grip? Not a slam dunk. Yeah.

Steve Johnson (34:10):

Yeah. I mean, a monitor me is either something you have in stage or studio monitors or on the stage monitors, but again, very still. And so we're thinking, no, we want this to be consumer friendly. We want this to be that. We also don't want to confuse it with headphones because it's not a headphone or it's not something on or over the ear. So we discussed it a lot and earphone, even though when I thought of earphones, I did think a little bit about the little kind of beige, one ear thing that I got with an Iowa television in 1969 or whatever. But still, it just seemed to be the right term. It just seemed to be the thing that we could get behind. And we wanted it to be a generic. We weren't going to call them. We weren't going to say, sure, earphones. We were going to say, sure, something earphones. We wanted to allow the category to be out there, let it be a generic, but get behind it and not confuse it with the in ear monitors or ear monitors or any of that

(35:14):

Stuff. So that's why we chose earphones. And you were asking a little bit about the packaging on the E five C. I mean, that was partially justification for, I mean, if this thing's going to cost so much, it better be wrapped like a gift. I mean, again, this is one you saw. I feel like maybe the iPods were out, but by now or something at this point. And Apple was doing that. Apple was presenting things in nice ways, and other people were too, for sort of Japanese in terms of the gift. And so we were working with an industrial design firm at the time on a lot of this stuff. And they came up with this concept of the two interlocking U pieces that looked like a cool box, and you kind of slide 'em apart, and there it was. And it was just cool. And it also sort of reminded me of Phono cartridges back in the day.

(36:13):

I mean, I remember long before I ever was thinking about, sure, as an employer, I had type threes and type fours, and well type threes and type fours on my phone, on my turntable, and I'd keep that dumb packaging. It was just cool. It's like a watch, mean watch. Same thing with watches, A really nice watch would have and a really nice watch. I'm not talking a lot of money, but mean to me, it seemed like a really nice watch. And so we just wanted to give that experience to the consumer, give 'em something that would elevate this as being something special.

Mike Dias (36:52):

And did you start hitting your targets, or were you overshooting targets? Were you surprised? How did the market receive what you were putting out?

Steve Johnson (37:07):

It was during my time there. For the most part. It was slow go. We were selling 'em directly. We'd look at every night who ordered them. I don't know if we knew that we were making a difference much, to be honest. Again, I think we were more focused on at that time, still on the personal stereo monitor side. On the electronic side.

(37:38):

This was just something interesting, but not a strong focus. It really became more of a focus after I left when whatever head of sales and marketing decided that sure Future was more consumer centric, more of a consumer future, and they kind of went after that. And that was a totally different thing. And again, I don't think that went so well for sure. And I wasn't there at the time, but I think when they got out of their space and got away from using this as an introduction to Sure, the pro company, and made it more sure, the consumer company, I think you get into things where your price points become an issue. Margins become an issue. Not for everybody in the channel. You're running through distribution. Everybody wants bigger and bigger margins and all that. And it just became different. And I don't know. I mean, I've seen them sort of retreat from that. I haven't been part of that at all, but that was a logical direction to go. I can see why they did it, but at the same time, that was never really my intention. My intention was to stay at that higher price point, to be the best, to be something that people would be excited. I mean, look, I've got AirPods now that I use, and they're not cheap either, and they're really nice.

Mike Dias (39:28):

Right. Well, I was going to ask you just complete these sentences for me. From the E five C to AirPod Pro, the through line is blank.

Steve Johnson (39:46):

I guess

Steve Johnson (39:50):

Really the experience is very similar. One has electronic isolation. The other one is just acoustic isolation. But they both get me into a place where I want to be, which is a quiet place. They both give some attention to good audio. I would argue probably the E five C sounds better, but then again, I'm plugging that directly into something. And poor pro's got to do a lot of work to get there from here. So it's a little bit of an unfair, but in terms of the user experience, I mean, yeah, it's very similar because what I was doing before is I had a cable, I plug it into my iPod or I'd plug it into my phone and I'd listen, and I'd have a wonderful experience where it sounded really good. I could listen at my level. I could just enjoy the subtle nuance of the mix and just lose myself in it. And I can do that with my AirPods nowadays. They don't put a whatever millimeter jack on there anymore and all these other things that stand in my way. So yeah, I just have to buy AirPods to be done with it. Yeah.

Mike Dias (41:11):

What do you think is the most misunderstood thing about the era? And it deserves a correction? Steve, are you there?

Steve Johnson (41:31):

Yeah. No, I'm thinking, I don't know that there's anything to set straight, but I just feel like the E five C was, I mean, it's still what I listened to. If I got a cable, if I can, I still listen to 'em. I really liked them.

Mike Dias (41:51):

I love that. I love

Steve Johnson (41:53):

That.

Mike Dias (41:56):

How should sure be remembered in the birth of personal audio?

Steve Johnson (42:10):

This is kind of unrelated, but when we launched something, it could have been the personal stereo monitor. I'm not sure. I think it was her rep came up at the show and said, no, no, it wasn't a rep. It was somebody out. It was somebody else, not one of our guys. He said, sure, you guys, you wait on the sidelines until somebody else gets this concept out there. And then when you come out, you do it right and you act like you're the first guys that have ever done it. And I said, well, I don't know if that's fair. But I mean, it is fair that we're usually not the first mover on something, but when we set our sights on something, we do it well. And I think that speaks to the E five C. I mean, we set our sights on something. The E two was nice, but we knew we could do better.

(43:02):

And we knew that we'd heard better in these multi driver things that people were doing that were customs, but we knew that we couldn't play custom. So it was just a wonderful opportunity to say, no, let's make the best freaking earpiece, the best earphone that we possibly can and go for it. And I think that's what we did. And whether, and I think as time went on, and there were some new generations of e things that came out that were really nice, and they have some of those too. They were a little more consumer focused. The marketing was better. Maybe the overall product packaging itself, not the packaging, but the product packaging was better. But man, the E five C, it just sounded good. It was remarkable. It's still remarkable to listen to me.

Mike Dias (44:01):

What I love is you might not recognize it as such because it's hard to see the tree when you're standing right in front of it. But the type of product placement that you are able to do, again, taking somebody from stage to the bus with 25 C, tell me about one or two of your favorite campaigns that you remember from this, because it's revolutionary to this day.

Steve Johnson (44:26):

Well, could I recommend that you do Jack Ney?

Mike Dias (44:33):

I don't. I've heard the name, but I don't know.

Steve Johnson (44:36):

Jack was our artist relations guy at the time, and between he and Mark Bruner and a few others, well, if you want to talk to somebody, I think he's still there. The guy that's in, oh, God, he's in Nashville.

Mike Dias (44:56):

Ryan.

Steve Johnson (44:57):

Ryan, yeah, Ryan was there at the time.

Mike Dias (44:59):

Ryan was there,

Steve Johnson (45:01):

Yeah. Yeah, he was there. He'd be a good one to talk to because I didn't ever get that involved in it, so I don't want to just make up

Steve Johnson (45:08):

Stuff fair.

Steve Johnson (45:09):

You know what I mean?

Steve Johnson (45:09):

Yeah.

Steve Johnson (45:11):

But Ryan was there. We were doing all right. So we were able to give stuff away, and people liked our stuff, and these earphones were special, but they weren't out of reach to be giving them away and whatnot. So yeah, I mean, I can't think of anything specifically. The only thing I remember is on the pro side is I think it was a European trade show. We had a dinner, and I mentioned this earlier, and Ian Anderson was there. So we were launching personal stereo monitors in Europe at the time, and we did a silent concert of some sort where everybody had their little body packs and their earphones and all that. And that was the whole idea. So there's silent stage, and I'm not sure if it was entirely that, but that was the idea. Anyway. And so either before or after that we're meeting, talking to him, talking to Ian about this, and he was just really ragging about, I can't endorse this product.

(46:24):

I, I just don't like the cable. And that was one of those things when you think about, sure, sure's not going to make something with a flimsy cable. We needed a cable that could get abused and not fail. But what we had first given him was earphones that had a little twisted cables. He loved those. But the ones we ultimately were shipping were these things with the thicker cable, the single looking thicker cable with the sheath around it. And it was really interesting because he loved the sound, but he was not down on that part of it. And there wasn't much we could do about it, except that was it. That's what we were doing. But that's about all I remember from sort of the pro side of people using these things other than just in general, we would certainly give 'em away to anybody who, not the E five so much, maybe more the E two if we're just going to give it away.

Mike Dias (47:21):

And in one word, the feeling of the E five C launch was

Steve Johnson (47:26):

Blank, muted

Steve Johnson (47:34):

Because we had no money. I mean, it was muted, which is kind of sad. But I mean, it was special to me. It was a special product, but it didn't fit. Sure. At the time, what would we do with this thing? We weren't going to consumer shows,

(47:55):

So we couldn't do anything at a consumer show. You go to a pro show, but I don't even remember where we launched the PSMs, where I feel like the E five C, it came after the E five was already out. And we said, Hey, you know what? This is pretty cool. We could probably sell this to other people who don't need it on stage. Yeah, we probably could because pretty cool. So that's when I said to soly this, this isn't going to be easy. We don't have any budget and we're not really sure what we're doing, but let's see what we can do. Let's see what we can do for nothing, basically. And again, step one was to make sure that we had our bases covered from a legal side, but it was kind of a muted thing. And I have no idea to this day how many of 'em we sold if we sold a lot of 'em or a little bit of 'em. I've never even thought much about what kind of legacy or stepping stone it provided towards anything else. I, I'll admit, with all of the other custom things out there with nine drivers and all that, and it always felt a little bit like, well, we're cool, but we're not that kind of cool.

Mike Dias (49:19):

Well, here's the perfect way to end. Okay. So I'm a dumb guy. I've been incredibly lucky so far. I've kind of stumbled my way into it. I'll take a little credit, but most of it's just been dumb luck. But I was, you'll

Steve Johnson (49:34):

Read both, by the way.

Mike Dias (49:35):

But I was really dumb when I first started. I mean, really, really dumb. And I knew sure from the trade shows, but I definitely thought I was on the winning team. I'm attached to the fucking coolest, rockstar custom company. We've got our universals going up against your universals, but we've got all the rock stars. And I'm thinking, I'm running laps around you guys. I see some of the audio file shows, and I don't have the full history of who sure is or the be myth that you are. I know Matt and team and I like, sure, but I still think I'm winning. Okay.

Steve Johnson (50:20):

Right.

Mike Dias (50:21):

So I end up in Chicago. I'm doing an Apple store demo training, and I go out with Matt afterwards, and he played this, the greatest cool hand Luke. He is like, oh, by the way, you want to go see the parking lot of the office? And I was like, I mean, we're here. Why not? And he pulls up to the glass stone. To this day, Matt didn't know that I was a student of architecture or that I have a this, now I'm in the parking lot just eating humble pie. But I don't want to admit to this because Matt knows he's played me like a fiddle. And then it says, I mean, we're already here. Do you want to see the lobby? So now it's air in space surrounded by glass and steel and concrete with legacy after legacy, like the Hall of Shame gauntlet that I'm walking through. Okay.

(51:26):

And Matt doesn't say anything again, he's just so humble. Midwestern perfect about this. And he goes, I mean, as long as we're here, we should probably go up and see my office and all the rehearsal rooms and where we all just hang out on the way to the och chamber. I'm like, we're here. He just keeps serving me humble pie after humble pie. And to this day, I don't think that you have a bigger Sure fan in the world than me who's never actually worked for sure, but has been so humbled by what Sure. Actually, is that when you wrote about the building as being part of it? Yes. I'm telling you. Yes. It

Steve Johnson (52:09):

Works well, and everything I've been telling you about in my era was at 2 22 Hartery Avenue or somewhere, some address like that in Evan. It was this brown two story in one side and another brown building in the back. I think they're church now or something. I don't know. And ultimately behind a grocery store, I mean, in Best Buy.

Mike Dias (52:39):

Yeah, right, right. You're just like, dude, dude, why did I get to work in that office?

Steve Johnson (52:44):

Well, I know. And I remember I told Sandy about this helmet yawn building. I said, it's pretty cool. It's for sale. At that time, he was thinking about moving us all out to Hawk in the estate, which is way out west. I mean, it was freaking people out.

Mike Dias (52:59):

Oh my God.

Steve Johnson (52:59):

And it would've been fine for me, would've been fine for him. You know how that is with CEOs. He was out there, so he thought,

Steve Johnson (53:05):

Anyway,

Steve Johnson (53:07):

And we also had some money we needed to spend because we were doing well. And so we were able to retain earnings for the purpose of building a building. Well, ultimately, we were able to take those earnings and buy a building with it. And

Mike Dias (53:23):

That was my, oh my God, sorry. And I heard you got it for pennies for the dollar off of

Steve Johnson (53:29):

It. Yeah. Yeah. It was a good deal. It was a good deal. But that was one of the sad things is I think literally they moved a week after I was shown the door.

Mike Dias (53:38):

Oh my God. That's the worst part of the story.

Steve Johnson (53:45):

Yeah, yeah. I mean, perhaps my passion got in the way or something, but somehow it wasn't meant for me. So yeah, life went on and then they did the things. My role really went away. I was VP of Global Marketing, and they decided to go with more regional marketing. So they had, not VPs, but whatever, titles in Europe and us and whatnot. And that was the way they went. And so I became, I guess, redundant at that point. So yeah, whatever life happens well, but yeah, I never made it there. Never made it there. I did have some meetings there though, before we actually moved there. I used to bring the team over there and say, this is the ultimate space to brainstorm and be creative. It was so different than where we were before.

Mike Dias (54:44):

The best part about this entire story, as somebody who knows the industry fairly well and who has a love for sure, you've probably given me and anybody who read this more to think about of the company shore, the history, the legacy for somebody who doesn't work for sure, it's perfect on every level. For the two of us who don't work at Shore, to be having this conversation is pretty fantastic. Yeah,

Steve Johnson (55:14):

Yeah. No, it was a great time. And I've tried to learn from it and apply some of my learnings and some of the things I've done elsewhere. Not always successfully. And also in hindsight, I look back at some stuff that sometimes there's some things going on that are better than you knew at the time. And there's other times there's things going on that it's like, we do that. But there are certain things that I'm really proud of. And certainly the foray into wearables. I mean, I went on, I worked for Motorola in the wearables division for a little while there, and that was kind of fun, but it was different. And yeah, I mean, it was a good time and I miss it. And literally my office now is a half a mile away from.

‍