Hearing Aids from China – The Ultimate Guide

Chapter 1: Why Chinese Hearing Aid Became Increasingly Popular?

Traditional Hearing Aid Are So Expensive to Afford

The hearing aids have been constantly evolving in appearance and functionality since the development of ear trumpet in the 17th century. 

Hearing aids are now much more advanced and technically developed than they were 400 years ago. The “big six” hearing aid brands, including Signia, Widex, Oticon, Resound, Phonak, Starkey, etc., are recognizable to consumers.

In reality, the industry is controlled by the major manufacturers.  A single hearing aid’s cost is between $1,000 and $3,000 in the United States. A single hearing aid has an average sale price of $2, 372.

For the majority of customers, this is a surprisingly high cost. Consumers have always expected more affordable listening aids on the market.

The Birth of Made-In-China Hearing Aids

A huge population, wide area, good infrastructure are all the factors that give Chinese factories manufacturing advantages. 

Such benefits are also extended to hearing aid manufactured in China so that production costs are much lower than in most countries. 

To customers who used to pay thousands of dollars to obtain hearing aids, cost-efficient hearing aids are available at the price of $300 to $1000. 

But how is the quality of hearing aid manufactured in China? Maybe you’ve got this dilemma.

Before the Chinese hearing aid brand entered the market. There were already a number of factories which produced OEM for famous brands.

As such, the technology was not a concern when skilled staff started developing their own hearing aids brands, as the Chinese hearing aid industry grew steadily in the last two decades. 

Hearing aids made in China are both increasing and gaining more popularity on the market in aspects such as chips, design new features such as Bluetooth / rechargeable.

Consumers might understand that Chinese hearing products are not unreasonably cheap devices, but good hearing aids that are worth consideration and helps people with hearing loss.

Chapter 2: Benefits of Working with Chinese Hearing aid Manufacturers

As mentioned earlier, Chinese hearing aids are more affordable with quality guarantee. If you want to sell hearing aids, what benefits could you get by working with a Chinese supplier?

2.1 Reduce your procurement costs

You may distribute hearing aids from well-known brands more, but sourcing from China can dramatically reduce your purchasing costs.

The average cost of manufacturing in China (salary, rent, and tax) is lower than well-developed countries, thus you could purchase hearing aids with relatively low prices.

2.2 Get unique and customized hearing aids

When you work with big-6 companies, you’re more likely to get standard products as you are just one of their distributors. But if you work with Chinese suppliers, you can ask for customized services.

Imagine this, when user could only contact you to get one particular product, won’t it bring you a competitive advantage in the market?

2.3 Expand your brand influence and win more customers

Brand is an important intangible asset of a company. Maybe your brand has a good reputation in the hearing aid industry, or you’re just planning to promote more about your brand, in either case, a Chinese-made hearing aid may help, as long as the product gets good word-of-mouth from customers.

2.4 Get stable production capacity, guaranteed delivery period

One of the great strengths of Chinese manufacturing is its stable manufacturing capacity, an advantage that is difficult to have elsewhere.

Modern hearing aid factories in China are equipped with advanced equipment, and professional operators follow ISO guidance during each step of production, all these guarantee that hearing aids are with good quality.

Larger Chinese factories can produce hearing aids around 30-50k units per month, so you don’t have to worry that the capacity couldn’t meet your order needs.

2.5 Leave the after-sales problem to the vendor

After-sales is important for hearing aid sales. If the after-sales service is not done well, the brand reputation will be greatly affected.

With a reliable supplier, you could work together to come up with a solution. Take AZ Hearing for example, we offer new components for partners who could repair locally. Or you could send defective products back to us to repair. We can also offer training courses for repairing to our distributors.

Anyway, reliable after-sales partner could help you save much loss from return/reject.

In short, a trust-worthy Chinese hearing aid supplier could help you win more margin and skyrocket your business.

Chapter 3: Things You Need to Consider When Choosing Chinese Hearing Aids Supplier

When you want to source products from China, three factors you will definitely consider are: price, quality and delivery time.

3.1 Coming to price, perhaps you often hear vendors ask you how much you are going to purchase. The reason, as you can see, is that mass production is more efficient and less costly for the factory.

If a production line needs to switch orders back and forth, efficiency discounts. If you are buying large quantities, you can request more price support from the Chinese supplier.

3.2 Secondly, quality always matter. You can’t be too careful to check the sound performance.

One thing you should know that the components used by different manufacturers may differ a lot, even with the same hearing aid body. You could ask your supplier about the circuit and component and match with their price offer.

3.3 Thirdly, timely delivery could reduce your back-order as low as possible. Especially if you are doing some marketing campaign, we should prevent delayed shipment.

Besides above 3 aspects you should care, there are some points that you need to pay special attention.

3.4 Product Feature

Different markets have different functional preferences. For example, the USA market prefers Open fit, and Middle East countries and other countries including India, Mexico prefers traditional ear hook designs.

Besides, rechargeable technology on hearing aid products is more mature. It is becoming more popular and attract users who hate to buy and replace battery.

You can specify the features of the product you want and then check with the supplier to see if the product will meet your needs.

3.5 Qualifications

Hearing aids are medical devices with a high entry barrier. For European countries, CE certificate is a must. For USA market, FDA registration is necessary both for exporter and importer, if it is marketed as “hearing aids”.

That being said you should check with suppliers about their qualification.

3.6 Warranty & Sales service

In addition to the product, price, and leading time, supplier’s  service is important. Whether it’s the ability to answer your questions timely, or the ability to help you deal with your after-sales problems, these things can affect your business operation.

You can keep an eye on vendor’s performance during the communication and see if they have these experiences and ability to provide good service.

Chapter 4: Top Hearing Aid Manufacturers in China

You may be wondering who are the top hearing aid manufacturer? The truth is that it’s hard to say since different buyer has different needs and criteria.

Anyway, here we list a few suppliers for your reference. You could contact them to get your own conclusion.

Lisound Hearing Aid Co. Ltd： LiSound was established in 1996 as a comprehensive hearing aid manufacturer integrating R&D, production, sales and training.

NewSound Hearing：Established in 2004 with extensive experience. The product line is complete, and the programmable products and software is superior of same kind.

AZ Hearing：Five years of OEM&ODM experience, rechargeable products are hot in recent two years. The team has extensive after-sales experience and market knowledge. Although factory history may not as long as others, it’s growing fast with distributors focus on traditional OTC sales  and new emerging e-commerce online sales.

Austar Hearing：Founded in 2003, products are compact. AST has been working on chip and algorithm for years, they have flexible product solution for you to choose.

AcoSound： ACOSOUND TECHNOLOY (CANADA) INC, the parent company of Acoustiguide, is a professional manufacturer of mid-to-high-end hearing aids in Vancouver, Canada, targeting the European and American markets.

Jinghao Medical：JH’s rechargeable products have been well received in the market. The design is attractive and compact.

Retone Hearing：Founded in 2012, Retone is focused on one thing only – the development and manufacturing of DTC digital hearing aids. There are a number of invention patents and products are constantly being introduced.

Note: There are too many hearing aid suppliers in China to list them all. Order does not imply ranking. And we are sure that there are great hearing aid suppliers may not be in above list. We only recommend the above suppliers based on our knowledge.

Chapter 5: Tips for Importing Hearing Aids from China

Different markets have different requirement for distributing hearing aids.

Take USA as the example, hearing aids are Class IIa Medical Devices, normally importers are also required to be registered with the FDA and the annual registration cost is about $5k. 

Hearing amplifiers are not restricted to that regulation as electronics.

Besides, the import tariff rate for these two categories is different. For sound amplifier (HTS: 8518.00), it is approximately 1.2%; and the import tariff rate for hearing aids (HTS: 9021.40) is currently zero.

You can start by considering how you want to sell in the U.S.，what are your main sales channels, then check again with your supplier’s qualifications to ensure that your sales is compliant with regulation.

Chapter 6: How AZ Hearing Will Help Your Business

As a supplier with 5 years of manufacturing experience, we can meet your needs with customized products, offering complete packaging with your brand.

We also have plenty of experience in after-sales handling for heavy buyers, so you could be assured about our sales service. 100% inspection of all outgoing products are required in our factory.

We export to the United States, Canada, South America, the Middle East, India, Australia and many other countries, and we have been well accepted by our customers. We believe that by choosing us, you could get more value with your business.

In addition, we can provide a range of marketing support, including HD images, video editing, website building, Google Ads promotion and more. Because AZ Hearing has experience in all these areas, we believe we could communicate and gain useful information and experience.

At AZ Hearing, our most important core value is our people, many of our people have more than 10 years’ experience because before they join us, they already worked in the hearing aid factory.

Our sales also have many years of experience in the hearing aid industry and travel abroad every year to visit our customers. If you encounter any problems in your daily work, feel free to call or communicate with our sales team via online chat tools like WeChat, WhatsApp, Skype. For more information about our factory services, you can visit other pages to learn more.

Above is our guide for purchasing hearing aids in China, we hope it could give you some thought during your procurement.  If you have questions, feel free to let us know in the comments below and we will get back to you within 24h.