Hi Ya'll
Thanks for the spirited comments. Wouldn't be ST otherwise, I suppose.
While I'd always prefer someone to ask instead of blast, I'd be happy to explain the origin story, rationale, etc for all of what we're doing. :) :) Am very active in the forums personally and have been posting for a few years, doing my best to answer questions, to help people out, and to explain why we're doing what we're doing.
Here is some background, unsolicited, in the hopes of explaining our perspective on this category.
This is a big move for our brand, and we're pumped. Over the past few years, we've quietly built an amazing team of in-house designers and developers to attack a variety of different product categories where we've seen opportunity. We're well capitalized, and it's a multi-year vision. We're only a few years in.
In the case of eyewear, we began working in earnest on this category a few years ago after recognizing that we had deep expertise in injection molding and optics, and after seeing an opportunity with how the category as a whole works globally. With the big monopolies running the show, we think there is a huge opportunity for innovation.
We are indeed going after the biggest brands in the space, and it's going to be a multi-year effort, for sure. We are humble but ambitious. The comment that we can never beat Oakley is off base to me, especially in light of how Luxottica has absolutely gutted Oakley post-acquisition. Huge respect for them and what they have done, but they have had significant turnover, and innovation always come from below on big brands. There is no reason why we can't take them or anyone else on. As people who want the best products and performance, we all should be championing young brands who are trying to take on the big dogs, not pick them apart.
Speaking of how we "can't beat" Oakley, to build certain in-house expertise we felt we needed to get started in the space, we actually hired the former head of r&d / advanced projects at Oakley, who was there for 14 yrs and had since moved on to Skullcandy and Apple. He was at O in the early days through the Lux buyout and knows his way around the global supply chain and has deep expertise in developing performance product and with enterprise-level quality control. We also hired a high performing, consumer facing engineer from Apple with deep experience in injection molding and another senior mechanical engineer with 25 yrs of dfm/cad experience. We also added an experienced eyewear developer who had done both sport and fashion design and development at a very high level. And we threw some other internal design and development resources behind it. Behind the scenes, we've partnered with some of the best factories in the world and done a ton of work on the category, building it from scratch. We're not buying OEM product or licensing, as many companies do. Instead, we're doing our own design, tooling, etc. We have high res 3D printers and ISO fit form tools onsite, and we're taking on as much of the rapid prototyping as we can. We're treating eyewear like its own business, with all the resources you'd need for liftoff. So it's a considered effort.
Re: Jesse. He was our first athlete, and we've long discussed making him a better aviator sunglass. Awesome guy and awesome story, so he's definitely been an inspiration. Whether Jesse needs high performance sunglasses or not is sort of a silly question in my opinion. Of course he does. Just because he started with $10 gas station aviators, doesn't mean he should have to stick with them if they don't do the job. He is a professional athlete! And the truth is that the $10 gas station aviators just don't actually perform that well. Overall, the optics are poor, they fog, get smudges and spots on them, they don't have great retention, and they just don't offer the bells and whistles of modern, high-performance sunwear.
Jesse definitely confirmed for us that not everyone wants to race in "sport" frames that take design cues from science fiction. Some do, and that's fine, but some don't. Once we started exploring that, we recognized a much bigger category opportunity than just making a better aviator for Jesse. The idea could be applied across styles and well beyond triathlon.
Had we wanted to just exploit the marketing opp with Jesse, we could have made some quick improvements and gotten out a pair of shades out in 2012 and shown up at Wildflower with "Jesse Thomas" aviators for $50. We would have sold thousands, I'm sure. Much faster and much more cheaply than what we're doing. But neither he nor us felt good about that. Instead, we took the human factors insight from him and started from ground zero, saying, "if we wanted to retain some fashion styling but blow this thing out performance-wise to give it the ultimate tune-up, what would we do?"
Ultralight? Titanium, 20 grams. Check. .
Great optics? Zeiss. Impact resistant, low distortion nylon lenses. Better than PC lenses in our opinion. Check.
Durability/performance/function? Several permanent coatings to address fog, smudge, scratches, etc. Check.
Great fit and retention? We developed a proprietary elastomer for the nose pads and temples that gets stickier when wet but won't get nasty from sunblock, make-up, hairspray and other chemicals. We used biomimicry to create a traction design that stays put and doesn't snag women's hair. We designed the frames on an ISO standard head form and did tons of fit trials. Check.
Great quality? Optics? Zeiss again. Check. Frames? We partnered with THE best metal framemaker in the world, in Japan. Check.
When you run down that list, we are confident that what we're launching this week is a 100% authentic best effort at the best possible aviator.
Jesse has raced and won in it, and is stoked on it, and so are we. Does it make sense with his brand? I think it does. Just as he is no longer racing on a borrowed bike, a borrowed wetsuit, etc., his eyewear deserves an upgrade. He's gone from an unknown pro at Wildflower to a 6x champion and 2x Ironman champ. He's a pro athlete who expects the best from his racing and training gear. The cheap aviators just are good enough anymore, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Looking ahead, we have an extensive performance eyewear collection building, with a variety of styles, both metal and injected, that cross from performance sport to lifestyle. We're also working on a couple traditional "sport" frames that you'd expect in an application like cycling. We don't have any illusions that the first few styles are optimal for cycling, and we're not marketing them as such. I mentioned that earlier. So obviously a shield from Oakley, Smith, or an integrated helmet shield would be better. That goes without saying. If I were racing a 70.3 tomorrow and seriously worried about aero, I wouldn't wear our sunglasses for that use. Would I wear them for a casual Saturday ride with family and friends? Sure. YMMV.
What we have built, however, are sunglasses that are awesome for running and any number of other uses, both everyday and other sports. For example, I wore a pair of Phantoms with some prototype Cat. 4 glacier lenses on a high-altitude mountaineering trip earlier this year, and in my opinion they crushed the Julbo and Vuarnet lenses that I brought for comparison. The Vuarnet's were $500, for reference, so price is a relative discussion. Our sunglasses were super comfortable, super light, great optics. Never fogged. Was awesome.
Why just three styles to start? Because we are a small brand, and we have to focus on winners for our first entry in the space. We're not going to rush stuff though, and while we have numerous other styles in development, they weren't ready yet.
Why an aviator? Totally separate from Jesse Thomas, our market research says that the aviator is the #1 selling sunglass style in the world. So in that sense, the aviator is bigger than Jesse for us. We'd make it whether he was an athlete of ours or not. The Vendée takes its cues from the super popular wayfarer style, and the Kona takes its cues from the ever present square frame styles. All of the established players in the space make all of these styles. So yes, they were inspired by Jesse, and at IM Lanzarote he absolutely validated their use, but the collection and the category are bigger than him.
Re: pricing and the price of the Phantom specifically. We have put a ton of r&d into it, and we are using the best factory in the world with the best materials. No compromise. When you do that, it costs money. We have to recoup some of that cost. Our cost of goods is ridiculously high. Our injected styles are less expensive to make, and the price reflects that. If you look at comps, I don't think we're off given how much more we put into them than some competitors. Perhaps you all aren't aware of some of the comps. Smith has an aviator at $279 as someone pointed out. I own it, and it's ok. Good optics, light. For us, fit is lacking though, and there is poor retention. We also prefer our styling. At that price point, we believe we're delivering more for the money than they are. Looking on the fashion side, someone made a comment about a $120 fashion frame. True high fashion brands like Tom Ford and Oliver Peoples sell aviators for $500+ in some cases. So price is definitely relative. We can debate who the right competitors are in sport and fashion, and we may be selling at a premium in some cases relative to certain competitors, but overall we have done extensive competitive pricing analysis and are aware what is out there. It's possible we can diffuse our technology into other price points in the future as we have done in other categories, but in the meantime we'd rather put our best foot forward and not compromise. If we sell fewer units, we can live with that at this stage. Max volume at this stage is not necessarily the goal if it means we have to compromise a flagship product.
More to come. Thanks for the interest and feedback. We really appreciate everyone's support of our brand as we've grown over the past few years. Hope you give us at shot if and when it makes sense.
Best,
Rob
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rob canales
ceo + co-founder at ROKA
http://www.roka.com