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In what it calls a “reading-glasses approach” to buying hearing aids, a Minnesota-based start-up company is focusing its initial retail rollout in Iowa, offering what it says is a low-cost, off-the-shelf solution for people with mild to moderate hearing loss.

The company’s television commercials have caught the attention of the Iowa Hearing Association, whose board will consider whether the company’s product and sales approach make its salespeople subject to the state’s licensing requirements.

HearAid Co., which began selling pre-programmed digital hearing aids online in September, last month opened mall kiosks at Jordan Creek Town Center in West Des Moines and Coral Ridge Mall in Coralville. The two Iowa stores are the first physical locations for the Eden Prairie-based company, which sells hearing aids for less than $500 each.

“Our company has sort of unbundled the product and the service,” said Kirk Barton, HearAid’s director of operations. “We’ve taken the doctor and the audiologist out of the equation and are going straight to the consumer. The idea is we want to offer a low-cost, affordable hearing solution for our customers.”

The retail shops, like the company’s online store at www.hearaidstore.com, sell two versions of the product: an original version priced at $299 and a micro-version for $399.

Barton said his company is not subject to Iowa licensing requirements for hearing aid dispensers because it does not administer hearing tests or use audiogram results to fit customers with hearing aids. Instead, customers complete a self-evaluation with questions that provide a numerical score corresponding to the strength of the hearing aid needed. If their score is above a certain threshold indicating a severe or profound hearing loss, they are not a candidate for the product and are advised to consult an audiologist, he said.

By analyzing more than 400,000 audiograms, “we found there are three ranges of hearing loss common to someone with moderate to mild hearing loss,” which are the categories the majority of people with hearing losses fall within, Barton said. “Probably the best analogy would be reading glasses as opposed to prescription glasses.”

A member of the Iowa Hearing Association’s board criticized HearAid’s approach as being a “one-size-fits-all” answer to a complex disorder.

“The shotgun approach isn’t necessarily the wisest thing,” said Robert Larrance, who is a hearing instrument specialist with Hearing Unlimited in Ames. Hearing tests are not overly expensive and can uncover underlying medical problems such as tumors that could be causing a hearing loss, he said.

Larrance said the board plans to discuss the company’s offering at its next meeting and may make a recommendation to the Iowa Board of Hearing Aid Dispensers that it enforce licensing of HearAid’s on-site salespeople.

Sharon Dozier, board executive for the Iowa Board of Hearing Aid Dispensers, said licensing is required of anyone who is “actually performing the services,” which would involve someone doing more than just taking a product off the shelf and ringing up a purchase, she said. She said the board has no jurisdiction over online sales, and did not offer an opinion about whether HearAid’s kiosk salespeople should be licensed.

Before making a purchase, customers are required to sign a waiver stating that they have chosen not to go to an audiologist, Barton said, which is an option under U.S. Food and Drug Administration rules governing hearing aid sales.

Barton said his company chose Iowa for its bricks-and-mortar launch because the Minnesota market, home to six major hearing aid manufacturers, is saturated. HearAid plans to open kiosks in early 2010 in Arizona and Florida as part of what it hopes will be a national rollout.

It’s estimated that only about 25 percent of Americans with hearing loss are fitted with hearing aids, due to the cost and inconvenience involved in the current approach to fitting and selling them, Barton said.

“We’re hoping to be the leader in changing the industry,” he said.