INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A U.K.-based startup has come up with a new design for high-end, direct-to-consumer sunglasses that are original, modular, and virtually
But to get their eyewear in the hands of consumers, they&ll have to compete with some industry giants, including Luxottica Group of Italy,
whose brands include Ray-Ban and Oakley among others.
Their company, Wires Glasses, isn&t competing on price
At $380 per pair, its sunglasses cost as much as other designer eyewear
If Wires succeeds, it will largely owe instead to its unusual single-wire design, patented invisible hinge, and, perhaps most important, the
narrative it tells about design and sustainability
Indeed, in a day and age where new brands are launched every day, storytelling can mean the difference between barely surviving and
thriving, something this team seems to understand.
A new, albeit undisclosed, amount of seed funding from theearly-stage venture firm True
Ventures should also help
True has helped grow a number of consumer companies, including Blue Bottle Coffee, the doorbell startup Ring, and the wearables company
Presumably, its team has lessons from those varied experiences to share.
We talked with Wires cofounder Yair Neuman last week to learn more
about how Wires came to be and how they work
Our chat has been edited for length.
TC: You&re a London-based designer
You&ve created visuals for big artists, and ceramic speakers, and projects for Samsung
How did you wind up starting Wires
YN: It started with me needing a pair of glasses when I went on Spanish holiday
I took a piece of soft wire and created a frame and 3D printed lenses in my studio
That only happened because I didn&t want to take Ray-Bans with me
This was a design-y holiday with other designers
But the glasses started to get a lot of attention
I thought it was maybe something I should develop, so when I got back to my studio, I started working on it.
Soon after I met a guy who was
born in Zimbamwe, where they often make what they don&t have
They&ll take wires from electrical products and create toys or products or art
And he put together a team inHarare to produce designs for me
We&d send money and clothes and tools, and they&d ship back these frames that we&d combine with 3D printed parts, and suddenly we had these
glasses that people liked and we started selling them.
TC: But they are now made in Italy.
YN: We eventually need more precision and
know-how, and we get that in Italy
Cadore, Italy, was long said to be the center of eyewear production
In the &80s, there were more than 3,000 factories there
But at the end of the &90s, Luxottica took over [other brands] and moved all the production to China and the area collapsed economically
Still, the workshops and machinery and people with knowledge are all there
So we found a small, family-run business and we make our frames with them, though they have to really rethink the process because our frames
are very different.
TC: How so, exactly
YN: The first version of the glasses functioned more as a fashion accessory
But it was important to me to build a functional product that they could fold and put away.
I didn&t want to include hinges as we know them
— these mechanisms on the sides of our eyes
I wanted to keep the consistency of the wire, to journey from one ear to the other without obstacles
I took a few months to focus only on that, and came up with our protected [intellectual property], which is the invisible hinge
There basically a wire and a mechanism inside [the hinge] that allows [the wire] to fold.
TC: Would you potentially license that hinge
&technology& to Luxottica
YN: It depends on the offer
If there was the potential to create something interesting while also focusing on the environment, then it might be interesting to explore
But I don&t want to create another object that no one really needs but we&re going to mass produce anyway.
TC: Tell us more about your
products, which are modular
What does that mean
YN: Our system is based on the fact that we have one wire, and you can assemble a few different designs around it
This first collection has seven different lense shapes in two [wire] colors — black and white, so if you want to change your look, you
don&t need to buy another frame, just a pair of lenses that you pop on the same wire
We have classic round [lenses] but also avante-garde [options] and [lenses that are] easy on the eye — that people don&t really need to
show off with.
TC: Do extra lenses come with each pair of glasses
YN: If you add another pair of [lenses], they cost $70.
TC: How did you
decide on pricing
YN: It wasn&t a decision so much as the reality of production, plus profits, plus expenses
It costs us the same to make them, so we didn&t go down the route of should we charge more for this or that.
TC: The glasses go on sale
Can you accommodate a lot of interest from a production standpoint
YN: Normally in this market, you&d have lead time of three to four months
For us, because we 3D print them, we just need three weeks
So we can react very quickly.
TC: How will you keep the lenses &fresh& from a fashion perspective
YN: Before we introduce new Wires, we
think there a lot we can do, not just with the shapes but with the types of lenses we make
If you&re a cyclist, for example, and you want to pop in your water-repellent lenses, of you&re skiing and want to pop in lenses that
filters the light from the snow
.
TC: Aren&t the frames a bit delicate for sportswear
YN: They look delicate, but they aren&t at all
Even if you sit on these, the worse thing that happens is we have to disassemble the lenses from the wire; there are no screws or parts to
The arms are also highly adjustable so that you can fit them to your head as snugly as you like.
TC: You talk about sustainability in your
marketing materials, but you&re shipping glasses from overseas.
YN: We&re a direct-to-consumer business, but we&re still in fashion, and as
much as we like the digital world, that just not where it at, so we&ll have a pop-up stores in Paris as soon as next month
We&re also planning permanent boutiques in New York and San Francisco to give people the opportunity to go to a shop and see the real thing
and not send anything back to us, because it is a lot of carbon.
Also, when we make our glasses, we&re only printing what we need, which is
Glasses are typically cut from a much bigger sheet of material, with a lot of negative spaces that just become waste
For us, we make sure not to create waste and to use the lowest amount of energy
And when the end comes The metal is all stainless steel
You recycle these with your normal recyclables, so that easy as well.
Pictured above: model-turned-entrepreneur (and friend of Neuman) Lily
