These are exciting times here at the Knops office. The launch of our product is coming up and we would love to share what we’ve been doing in the past weeks to realize the production of Knops. We already shared the story behind Knops and how we came up with the (final) design of the packaging. Now it’s time to tell you a bit more about getting the right certifications.

Our invisible process

Getting all the right certifications was one of our top priorities. It takes quite some time and energy and it isn’t a visible investment for the outside world. Nevertheless it’s very important to us and our customers. That’s why we would love the share a bit of this process with you.

The two certifications we’re talking about here are the ISO-marking and CE-marking. For us the ISO-marking means we have to work with a production partner who has this certificate. The latter is the certificate which tests if our product meets the legitimate standards when it comes to safety, health and environment. Wether you buy a teddybear or a tv: every product within the European Economic Area (EEA) needs this mark.

That means filling out a lot of paperwork. Like: a lot. Think of lengthy descriptions of all the materials we use, visualizations of quality control, lists of all the parties that are involved, a manual and so on. Paperwork doesn’t sound sexy, but this part of the process is of huge importance to us. Since we make a product that protects one of our most precious senses, we take that certification very seriously.

Ticking all the boxes

Ok, so this was the ‘boring’ part. After all this it gets more exciting. We are going to send some production samples to a lab in the United States where a test team brings our product to practice. An important factor of these tests are the adjustable settings. Settings 3 and -4 are the showstoppers here since these steps will really protect your ears from any possible damage. When the test team decides Knops ticks all the boxes (and we’re sure they will) we can show the rest of the world we make a trustworthy product that will live up to the standards of high quality ear protection.