About ten years ago, I took my father to a rifle range for his first shooting experience. He picked up a pair of foam earplugs from the counter — the kind that comes in a jar by the register. He inserted them the way anyone would who had never been shown how. I didn't know that it wasn't common knowledge that they back out and constantly need to be reinserted. It didn't even occur to me that he had never used earplugs before. They looked right from the outside. They weren't.

He had no frame of reference for the pain he was feeling. He assumed the discomfort was just part of it — that shooting was supposed to be unpleasant. He kept shooting. By the time we left, the damage was done.

The hearing loss was severe, permanent, and formally diagnosed. He wears hearing aids today.

I was wearing DrumShields. I wasn't affected.

The difference wasn't the foam. It was the fit.

"DrumShield started as a way to solve a personal inconvenience. That day at the range made clear it was something else entirely — an obvious necessity that too many people didn't have access to."

— Franco Valdivieso, Founder · Think Tank Designs · Port Neches, Texas