Race spectators could read their handiwork from the stands. According to Takumi, hands-on methods that might involve sketching and clay modeling have retained their value, even with competition from digital tools.
Today's Best Deals. Type keyword s to search. Today's Top Stories. Two Creatives on Their Journeys to Sustainability. For virtually all of , the investment banking firm Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown's answer has been a polite no. It rated Oakley's stock "market perform," brokerese for "don't buy. Say what the skeptics will, Oakley is convinced that broad-brand expansion is the logical and natural next step.
With their sunglasses already endorsed by an army of sponsored athletes that includes Michael Jordan, Jannard and Baden believe that wider success is, in part, a matter of having a giant coming-out party - and to throw it, Oakley installed a marketing expert from Gatorade as CEO. What Oakley creates, he insists, is not sunglasses, but sculpture. Baden certainly kicks off the company tour in original fashion.
I follow him out of the lobby, through a conference room, and past a hidden door. We walk to an opening where several black helmets sit on top of 12 gym lockers.
A chalkboard to one side is scrawled with words like delta, flash, and trouble. He sold motorcycle parts out of a Honda Civic, naming his distribution company after his English setter, Oakley.
Jannard had always been mechanically minded; as a kid growing up outside LA, he drew engine pieces and built a helium-balloon flying machine. So it was natural for him to start thinking about improvements on the handlebar grips he was peddling.
The grips led to motorcycle goggles in the late s and, later, to ski goggles. Then, during a particularly sun-blinded drive from San Diego to LA in , Jannard started thinking about his next move: "I figured, 'Why not put goggle characteristics like peripheral protection and face fit into sunglasses? Jannard worked on the design for more than a year before Oakley's Terminator -look shields, first called Factory Pilots and later Eyeshades, debuted in Other sunglasses execs guffawed at what looked like goggle lenses that had been orphaned and attached to spindly temples.
When he finished second in the Tour de France, the shades were legitimized overnight. More aesthetically pleasing models called Blades and Razor Blades quickly followed the Eyeshades. By , Jannard and his approximately person company released the dual-lens, wraparound-style Eye Jacket. The Eye Jacket offered a level of precise craftsmanship unprecedented in the industry. Jannard claims they're the first pair of sunglasses with frames formed solely from computerized data.
Since that digital breakthrough, Oakley has created increasingly complex frames and lenses while exploring new materials. Along the way, the company stockpiled patents - it now has of them, compared with the that year-old Ray-Ban owns.
And Oakley comes down aggressively on copycats: It has flushed out numerous small-time operations that make knockoffs. To hear Weeks and Jannard tell it, major sunglasses manufacturers are busy swiping Oakley's designs as well. Oakley has sued each of them for patent infringement and has won hundreds of such cases against large and small firms alike.
Jannard's company is now tangling with Nike. Nike's lawyers counter that the patent isn't valid, because it's based on widely known optical principles. Many of Oakley's browbeaten competitors would love to see Nike win the trial, coming up sometime late next year. A federal judge has already issued a preliminary ruling in Oakley's favor. Since , when he took Oakley public to boost a then-sagging cash flow, Jannard has been a multimillionaire, and he's become increasingly secretive.
He lives with his wife in seclusion on one of the San Juan Islands in Washington State and commutes to the Oakley offices every other week by private aircraft. He refuses to have his picture taken, almost never gives interviews, and turns his public appearances into performance art. Last summer, when Oakley opened its one-of-a-kind O Store in a SoCal mall, Jannard was there wearing a gas mask and giving his speech through a megaphone.
So I'm not especially shocked when, the first time we plan to meet, Jannard stands me up. I'm at Oakley HQ, but it turns out he's not even in town. Baden is showing me the fluorescent-lit Oakley design department, a sprawling space with windowed offices around its perimeter. Tacked to one workspace wall is a drawing of a vicious-looking, masklike object. On a table in another room is a clay carving of a rounded piece of armor that appears to snap over one's ears, with a slit for the eyes.
I take a point-and-shoot from my shoulder bag and aim it at a desk covered with sketches. Baden and I walk over to his open, tidy office area, and he grabs some drawings from a table behind his desk. The company's eyewear evolves from random creations and drawings by Oakley's six designers. I'm shown a number of sunglasses temples that look like arrows; ideas for hinging mechanisms and other parts have been borrowed from the landing gear of a jet and the door handle of a Porsche.
It can take months to approve a designer's concept, but getting the final OK is refreshingly unbureaucratic: Jannard and Baden simply give a thumbs-up. Baden landed his job at Oakley, aptly enough, by surprising Jannard. In he was a partner at a Bellevue, Washington, architecture firm when he met Oakley's founder, who was looking to build a house. Jannard showed Baden a couple of drawings and a clip from Blade Runner. Then he gave the candidate a pencil and 45 minutes.
Baden produced a weird-looking pyramid, cut in half, with a freight train running over the top of it. Baden's hyperbolic sensibility clicked with Jannard. He hired Baden's firm to continue drawing homes, and two years later, Baden blueprinted Oakley's headquarters.
By the architect became the company's design director; earlier this year Jannard made him president. We head to the rear of the department, stepping into a windowless room with two white-metal-and-glass boxes that look like kitchen cabinets. Baden motions to a guy standing in front of a keyboard and monitor, and suddenly one of the empty kitchen cabinets comes alive. There's a racket as the beam snakes around the resin in blue bolts of light delivered via digital commands. After six hours of this, a pair of prototype sunglasses frames will emerge, bearing the precise specs the designer called for.
He motions me to follow him out the door. We walk into another room, where several CAD stations are set up. At various stages - hand-sculpting, prototyping, and scanning - an embryonic pair of Oakleys ends up on one of the monitors. Even now, the best scanning equipment available can provide Oakley CAD modelers with a 3-D image of the frame that's only about 25 percent accurate. The real touch-up is done using a mouse as if it were sandpaper. Getting a pair of glasses just so - Baden and his designers nitpick over details smaller than five-thousandths of an inch - can take a modeler a solid month of hour days.
The lines flow like the body on a race car. Then he sets the Minutes down and picks up a black-framed pair of sunglasses made by a competitor. They don't even line up! And look at the dents on the nose bridge!
The nose bridge ". As I study the two pairs, I realize he's right. The Oakleys do look like sculpture. Premium Membership. User Albums New media New comments Search user albums. Members Current visitors New profile posts Search profile posts. Log in Register. What's new Search Search Everywhere This blog. Search titles only. Search Advanced search…. Lenses and Parts. Oakley Reviews and Guides. Log in. Install the app. Contact us. Close Menu.
Guides Oakley Reviews and Guides. JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly. You should upgrade or use an alternative browser. Do you really know the history of Oakley Sunglasses? Related: Oakley Ruby Iridium vs. Fire Iridium Lenses - What's the difference?
Created this site because of the lack of a place for the Oakley Community to talk. Feel free to Message me any time with feedback for the site, tips o View all articles. View thread 5 replies. Well done, Boss! OakleyBoss Moderator Staff member. Premium Member. Click to expand Lifetime Member. On the subject of history, here's a great video for those who haven't seen it yet I should Work at Oakley.
Good idea Boss, let's read and learn about our history before morons erase it. I need to read a history watch Oakley please.
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