BySimone Melvin,
Forbes Staff.
O
n his way back from lunch in New York City’s Financial District, Loop cofounder and CEO Dimitri O—yes, that is his full legal name—spots a handful of passersby wearing his brand’s stylish earplugs. Across town, his cofounder, Maarten Bodewes, finds himself similarly distracted watching visitors at the Museum of Modern Art. If the duo made their way out of Manhattan that night, they might have spotted more Loop customers wearing a potpourri of colors and styles at a Brooklyn nightclub. None of this comes as a surprise to the two entrepreneurs, who brought in around $220 million in revenue last year for their Belgium-based startup—almost half from sales in the United States.
Since its founding in in Antwerp in 2016, Loop has become a best-selling, highly imitated earplug brand, racking up collaborations from Coachella to McLaren to Swarovski. When Bodewes and O, childhood friends who bonded over a mutual love of music festivals and motorcycles, began suffering from tinnitus in their late twenties, they found a gap in the market for affordable but stylish earplugs.
