Twenty years ago, Madelaine Uzuanis knew she had a solid business opportunity when potential customers kept showing up unannounced at her house at all hours.
Uzuanis started out as the Chicago sales representative for a hearing device made by a family friend. She quickly recognized the need for such offerings and became a distributor for various hearing devices, which were often the products of home inventors. Once word got out in the deaf community, people started arriving at the Uzuanis’ doorstep.
“Part of the problem was they didn’t have communication tools to call with, so they would just show up,” said her husband, Richard.
It wasn’t until last year, though, that the Uzuanis family placed a big bet on the business–evolving from distributors into manufacturers with their own line of phones, alarm clocks and other specialized hearing devices.
The Uzuanis family, which owns Hitec Group International in Burr Ridge, believes that while the number of people with hearing problems is growing, devicemakers have been slow to offer improved products. Under the ClearSounds brand, Hitec has started offering new products like an amplified phone with caller ID and an alarm clock with loud tones, a strobe flasher and a vibrating pad that can be inserted under a mattress.
Hitec appears to be coming out with its products just as demand for hearing aids and similar products is escalating.
About 28 million Americans are deaf or hard of hearing, according to the Silver Spring, Md.-based National Association of the Deaf.
That number is expected to grow as the population skews older, expanding the pool of people most likely to have hearing problems.
From 2000 to 2020, the number of Americans 65 and older is expected to jump by 56 percent, to nearly 55 million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“You’re seeing the Baby Boomer market starting to explode,” said Matt Hutchinson, director of marketing at Clarity, a division of Plantronics Inc. in Chattanooga, Tenn., that makes amplified phones and other devices.
Hutchinson said there is a huge market when combining the hearing needs of senior citizens and Baby Boomers, who have “hearing loss because of rock ‘n’ roll and everything.”
The industry’s biggest challenge is reaching people who could benefit from their products but may be unaware of what is available.
Jane Pearson, who lives in Dayton, Ohio, said she had trouble finding a phone for her mother, who has 75 percent hearing loss in one ear and 95 percent in the other.
Hitec helped Pearson find a phone so her 85-year-old mother, who lives by herself in Indianapolis, could stay connected with friends and family.
“She would not be able to live in her home without the phone,” Pearson said.
To try to reach people with hearing problems, Hitec works with 2,000 dealers around the country, mainly audiologists. The company also takes orders online and via the phone, which is more difficult to do since everybody’s hearing loss is different.
“There is not a cookie-cutter solution,” Richard Uzuanis said.
Hitec, which has $4.5 million in annual sales, works with the Chicago Public Schools to help the deaf communicate with teachers and school officials. It also has contracts with SBC and other phone companies to operate their “special needs” centers so people with limited hearing can get usable phones.
The company’s new phone, which sells for $159, lets users adjust the tone and volume, works with hearing aids and includes strobe signals to indicate incoming calls.
Another new device connects to headphones and can be placed on a table during meetings to amplify people’s voices.
“Hearing aids are not a panacea,” said Michele Ahlman, the Uzuanis’ daughter and a Hitec vice president. “There are a lot of applications where you need something else.”
Ahlman recently helped fix up a Detroit family’s home for a coming episode of the ABC show “Extreme Makeover.” Both parents are deaf, and their 12-year-old son is blind and autistic. Their 14-year-old son does not have any hearing or vision problems.
The family mainly communicates through sign language. Ahlman said they installed a range of devices, including a video link so family members could see each other in different rooms.
To communicate previously, Ahlman said, “They had to find each other in the house.”
