Listen here
The place: The old oil mill in Magdeburg, now renovated into quiet offices with large windows. It is an autumn morning, and leaves are blowing across the pavement. A VW bus stops outside a door with 'MR confon' written above it and honks its horn. Frank Baumgart, a man in his mid-fifties with stubble and kind eyes, gets out. He unlocks the door and the first thing he does is head for a bowl of liquorice sweets. "I live on the stuff," he says. Instead of coffee and cake there are sweets, and instead of modesty, a great claim: "What I offer is the best in the world."
Frank Baumgart sells headphones. His products, however, are not available in electronic shops, but in research institutes all around the world. Externally, they are similar to the hearing protection worn by construction or forestry workers, but they have been developed by Baumgart for use in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners. That was back in 1994, when the Bremerhaven-born Baumgart came to Magdeburg and the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology. There, scientists were working on the idea of making the brain's processes visible with the aid of an MRI: A revolutionary idea at the time. While the visual cortex had already been explored, the question of how and where listening, language and learning were processed in the brain was still unknown territory.
Baumgart explained the problem: "In order to observe how the acoustic cortex works, it needs to be stimulated."
Subjects were required to listen attentively - in spite of the loud knocking and cracking noises of the MRI. Normal headphones, however, contain magnets which would turn them into dangerous projectiles in the MRI's strong magnetic field. The materials used also play an important roll: Even certain colours on the headphones could change the scan's results, due to their composition. This is because MRIs measure variations in the magnetic fields in the brain, which are themselves extremely weak.
A puzzling task for physical chemist Baumgart, but a solvable one. He developed a headset that dampens external noise, and transmits sounds via a microphone, allowing uninterrupted communication. Baumgart and his colleagues managed to detect the location in the brain where sound localisation is processed. This, incidentally, is an extremely well-developed ability in humans because, contrary to almost all animals, our field of vision measures only 180 degrees. "Our sound localisation virtually keeps track of the remainder," Baumgart explains.
In 2001, Baumgart founded MR confon, with the idea of making his headphones available to other researchers. Requests from scientific institutes all around the world started to pile up. For a long time Baumgart was based in the city on the river Elbe, where he lived with his wife, Monika, and their children, Julian and Myriel, in a nearby housing estate. As someone who had lived in Berlin for 18 years, this was not a matter of course. "Here, however, there was a spirit of optimism, after the fall of the wall, which inspired me. And finding a house barely six kilometres from the city centre in Berlin would have been impossible."
He remained at the institute for neurobiology until 2005, when he began focussing all his attentions on his company. It was a sobering experience. Business was not going well. "In hindsight i'd say we made a lot of stupid stuff. Too much research and not enough customer acquisition. We spent money making good products better, instead of first making the headphones available to the public." In his opinion, this is a classic error made by companies who are just starting out. There was a further problem, something Baumgarten calls a lack of long-term confidence. "Although we had promoted at trade fairs and conventions, hardly anyone was buying our products. Our good reputation as Leibniz researchers was not enough."
Baumgart changed sides, separating himself from employees and producers. Despite concerns about his dwindling finances, he held out. Today he has two Magdeburg companies producing for him, his numbers are well into the black, and the order books are full. Instead of a marketing campaign, he relies on word of mouth: the success that his headphones bring customers certainly gets around. The company now has a reputation of offering high quality, durable products - and complete packages. "My clients want to do research, not deal with technology. Because of this, I sell audio systems that are completely ready to use, even down to the last screw." Baumgart has no qualms with packing his van up with instruments and parts, and visiting users in London, Barcelona or Geneva in order to check installations and carry out tests. "If it was ever worthwhile," he says.
Even though he now spends a lot of time on the phone and dealing with customs regulations in target countries, he always gets some spare time to leave his office for the workbench. Here he builds and tests prototypes. "I definitely need that time; it's what makes my job so exciting." For months, he has also been working on a project which will bring his products to the forefront of the world market. He cannot reveal much. There is, to put it modestly, a certain understanding that the quality of his headphones is still unattainable. After all: If a sharp mind were to come together with a large partner ,who is established in the market and has a strong distribution network, Baumgart would have new-found freedom to continue working on his headphones. It wouldn't only be the liquorice manufacturer who would thank him for that.
Author: Kathrin Wöhler
Contact:
MR confon GmbH
Brenneckestraße 6
E-mail: office.ignore@mr-confon.de
Web: www.mr-confon.de