8 Eyewear: From Idea, to Launch, to Growth (And Quitting the Job)

[LibertyForMe]

Maybe make a version that floats? I've bought polarized sunglasses before that had that feature; they were nice.

 

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[Vick]

Maybe make a version that floats? I've bought polarized sunglasses before that had that feature; they were nice.

Yup, definitely, I'm gonna ask about that. Been pondering that as well.

I'm sure they have the materials for that.

 

[Vick]

Just an image. Thought it looked cool. The sunglasses in this image I haven't shown yet. Just a tease shot.

 

[Vick]

Revised design for V.1

concept 1





concept 2

 

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[Vick]

V.1 concept 3

 

[Eskil]

Really nice renders! I like that teaser shot too.

 

[nevergiveup]

Your renders look awesome! The only bad thing about thick frame sunglasses is the tan lines that are left after long days out in the sun.

 

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[Vick]

Quick Turntable video. no music for now.

[video=youtube;wQ6qCWgrRIA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ6qCWgrRIA[/video]

 

[Bigguns50]

I'm drooling. No really. I am.

 

[Vick]

lol thanks bud.


now i just gotta make them...... with quality and maintain the design.


oh boy.

 

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[Disciplined]

Polarized? If so....(seriously)

 

[Vick]

lol

YUP!

Polarized Baby!

It's all were gonna offer.

No point in offering crap lenses

 

[LibertyForMe]

Send a couple free samples to some professional bass fishermen. If they like them, you will get lots of word of mouth goin'.

 

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[Vick]

Send a couple free samples to some professional bass fishermen. If they like them, you will get lots of word of mouth goin'.

yup

We'll be giving away a lot of sunglasses out for free, too certain people. People that can help generate interest.

We actually have one idea to send maybe 25-30 free pairs to Super Car owners. We'll only ask that they take a few pictures of them wearing them in and next to their cars. And that we can post the images to our facebook page. Should be a great way to get some facebook interest. If they agree of course.

Also, we'll be sending out freebies to Amateur extreme sports athletes who aren't sponsored yet.

Giving some away at local Wakeboarding competitions. Beach events, ETC ETC

so ya. were gonna be giving a lot away.

 

[skylizard]

Also, we'll be sending out freebies to Amateur extreme sports athletes who aren't sponsored yet.

Giving some away at local Wakeboarding competitions. Beach events, ETC ETC

I was just going to suggest this! Keep on rocking!

 

[Vick]

Just to elaborate a bit more about giving them way.

I'm having 1200 made.

And if we sell 60 units at full price, we break even in terms of production and operating costs.

our margins are really good.

just have to make them and sell them.

I already have about 30-40 people who have offered me money right now to buy them. but we'll see if they open their wallets up when the times comes. and these arent just friends, people i dont even know from Facebook.

I'm sure Evan has some people interested as well.

 

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[Bigguns50]

Vick....I know a professional fisherman. I graduated with him. PM me if you want me to contact him.

 

[Vick]

Vick....I know a professional fisherman. I graduated with him. PM me if you want me to contact him.

Yup! There's a lot of pics on my Facebook page. Tell him to have a look search Mark Vick on Facebook.

Thanks

 

[LibertyForMe]

Same here; I have relationships with a few few pros, one REALLY BIG guy. Just lemme know.

 

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[Vick]

Same here; I have relationships with a few few pros, one REALLY BIG guy. Just lemme know.

yup! just direct him to my facebook page, tell them to have a quick look

https://www.facebook.com/mark.vick1

 

[Bigguns50]

Hey Disciplined....7 layers of Polarization bud...oh yea !

 

[mrsilva]

We actually have one idea to send maybe 25-30 free pairs to Super Car owners. We'll only ask that they take a few pictures of them wearing them in and next to their cars. And that we can post the images to our facebook page. Should be a great way to get some facebook interest. If they agree of course.

Giving some away at local Wakeboarding competitions. Beach events, ETC ETC

Vick,

You need to have professional pictures taken with the exotic cars and their owners. You don't want a crappy iPhone picture on your Facebook page.

Is the same example of ADV1 wheels. They start as 360 Forged and all they did was having a pro photographer with them taking sick pictures and that generate a lot of interest online.

My biz partner is a pro-wakeboard and his network is very big into that. If you want I can help you! Send me a PM.

Good luck!

 

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[Vick]

Vick,

You need to have professional pictures taken with the exotic cars and their owners. You don't want a crappy iPhone picture on your Facebook page.

Is the same example of ADV1 wheels. They start as 360 Forged and all they did was having a pro photographer with them taking sick pictures and that generate a lot of interest online.

My biz partner is a pro-wakeboard and his network is very big into that. If you want I can help you! Send me a PM.

Good luck!

Ok. sounds good. I'll contact you when were ready

thanks

the problem is, car owners are gonna be from all over the place.

am i suppose to hire a photographer for every customer around North America.

sounds expensive.

 

[Disciplined]

Hey Disciplined....7 layers of Polarization bud...oh yea !

I didn't read the whole thread at first, when I was done I chastised myself for being lazy!

 

[Disciplined]

the problem is, car owners are gonna be from all over the place.

am i suppose to hire a photographer for every customer around North America.

sounds expensive.

If only there was a guy on this forum that we knew loved/had a Lamborghini that might be able to give his input....

One thing to think about is if these are guys with cars that cost more than lots of houses, they might have a nice camera on hand and a friend that could easily snap a picture.

It does get a little complicated because guys with a high net worth are more than likely very protective of their time, but that might be an option. Could you send them two pairs? One to take the photo with a nice camera, then another pair to thank them for the effort of downloading the pic and sending it to you? Use two carrots instead of just one

Something else to think about if you go this route, these pics will be huge (i.e. probably larger than what you could attach to an email) so you'd probably want to setup something where they could easily upload the image for you.

 

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[Vick]

well. idk about giving 2 away. its costly at the start. we have to use our free pairs wisely.

if they don't agree to a free pair, for sending me a picture. then its ok.

not gonna stress about it.

its just 1 example of marketing our product.

there are many more ways.

EDIT - not worried about file transfer.

 

[Vick]

For the record, I'll post this here as well.

Voting results for our 4 launch colors are done, we spread this survey across 3 forums and Facebook.

Our final launch colors will be.

- Matte Jet Black with Gloss Black accents
- Gloss Black with Lime accents
- Gloss Black with Red
- White with Black accents.

Logo and side panel for all variations will be Black Anodized Aluminum.

The overall design is being finalized tonight, with slight changes to this model.

Thank you to all my friends for voting ! Cheers

On another note, we have one more style we are launching with, which I'll be sharing soon

 

[Vick]

Update. fabulous fabluous update.

I think the best way to do this is just share my emails back and forth with my supplier.

So I locked down a supplier, and sent them an email with detailed images of our design. So that we could verify if they could make them. Seeing as our design was kinda detailed, we were expecting many changes to be made.

Here's what she said. kinda hard to make out, had to read it about 15 times. anyway.

------------------
Hi Mark,

We have checked your design sunglasses in details,there have some questions：

1. for your metal logo”8”part ,we suggest you open the mold together with the logo letter”8”directly.and use a hollow square metal frame cover the letter”8” .

2. for your printing logo”V1,EIGHT” inside and outside temple letter,we also suggest you open the mold including the letter directly.

as for the inner side temple is no easy to use printing logo on it.we would like to know if you can accept the same color about frame color and logo”V1,EIGHT”

but outside logo “EIGHT”,we try to print as your request color.

3. please confirm if your glasses tips materials are rubber.and frame materials are TR90.

4. if you want inner sider logo and tips in different color ,our MOQ is 5000pcs per color.we suggest you choose tips and inner side logo in same color,it is also obvious ,and MOQ is 1200pcs per color.

5. please confirm all your logo and letter part are use convex logo

Only after you confirm these details, so that we can estimated the mold charge to you.
-------------------

so slight changes to be made, which is understandable. In fact, it was a lot better then I thought. So that was good.

what wasn't good, was the MOQ (minimum order quantity) in fact it was crazy.

she obviously high balled me. which meant it was open for negotiation. I just didnt realize by how much, so I decided to go in at my original plan and budget limit.

Our budget is very tight for our first order. I have a budget of about 8,000 K I've managed to pool together from various sources.

What i did was made some small changes to our design, to help with the ease of production on there end. As well as a little note about what we can afford for MOQ. I went in with the numbers I originally planned for, which was 150 units per color totaling 1200 units, which is obviously a lot lower then there 5000 per color, 1200 per color if we had to remove the colored letters on the inside, which wasn't an option for me. I was expecting a huge battle with this. So what I did was milked it a little, tried to explain what was in it for them as well. As well as change the model to have colored printed letters instead of colored convex letters(Double Injection), easing there production slightly.

here's what I sent her, with her answers in bold.

------------------

Hi Tina,

Please see below the answers to your questions.

Please note, I have made changes to our design based on your questions, that will hopefully help simplify the production process.

1. Yes, this is ok. But the square hollow metal piece has to be held on VERY secure. Can it be held on with small screws some how, through the back side of frame, to secure it in place? It's important for our sunglasses to not have things fall off easily, it is part of our business model to have very strong construction. This goes for the side metal piece as well.

Tina:For the square metal parts ,Please be assured .it will not easy to take off.many of our customers have made it like this,and without any problems.

2. Please see attached image showing how we would like to approach the logo letters for "V1, EIGHT". Instead of the letters being convex plus different color, we thought it would be easier to just have them printed on with different color, like shown in the example in the image. I'm assuming this will be easier on your end, because your simply printing letters on, as opposed to double injection.

Ok,well noted.

I have also removed the rubber on the inner-arm tips.

do you mean that you would like to make the glasses without rubber tips?

Also, the "8" logo on the back of inner-arm is part of the frame now, as well as on the front-inner-top-left frame. So both 8 logos can be part of mold and same color as the frame. These "8" logos must have slight convex to show logo pop out slightly. Please see attached image for clarity.

Yes,I can see it clearly.

3. Yes. Frame materials are TR90. And Rubber on the nose area. Please note that the rubber for nose area, must be VERY secure, possibly held on with small screws. Please remember that we also need Metal for the Side arm panel and surrounding the '8' logo on front. Do you have anodized aluminum for metal? if not what kind of light-weight metal can we use? metal must be shiny.

Tina:we are use aluminum/chrome for metal(attached our glasses photo with metal logo on temple for your reference.

4. Please see below about MOQ

5. As stated above. Only "8" logo on back of inner arm and inner front top are convex. All other letters we would like printed as shown in the attached images. The '8' logo on front in between metal piece is obviously convex too.

MOQ:

Hopefully the changes to the design are better now for production on your end, and easier to produce.

As for the MOQ. We are a new company and just starting. We cannot afford to order that many units for our first production run. We will however be able to purchase MUCH larger orders in the near future. As we already have many buyers lined up. We just need to sell our first production run to produce the capital needed to purchase a 2nd much larger order. Also, we have many other styles that we would like to produce with your company in the near future. But everything depends on this 1st order.

With that said, can you allow us to order 150 units per color for our first order, totaling 1200 units? Then our 2nd order later will be much larger. Again, we will also be producing multiple styles in the future to grow our company and help yours as well.

Let me know if this is something your company is willing to consider, to help us get started.

Tina:Normally,our MOQ is 300pcs per color,in view of this is our first time to cooperate,we would like to give you a special order,so we can accept your order 150 units per color for your first order, total :1200 units.

PS:we will let you know the exactly mold charge later.


We appreciate all your help and assistance thus far, and look forward to a good partnership in the future.

Best,

Mark

----------------

A lesson in dealing with suppliers. They will always high ball you to the extreme. Always negotiate to the extreme.

What I decided to do, was simply offer them some value by helping us. By promising to order much larger runs in the future as well as ease there manufacturing process slightly. In turn, they didnt even try to counter. They simply agreed. Not sure why she originally qouted 5000 then jsut said 300. that's a little odd, she should have said that in the first email. anyway

I managed to get them down from 5000 per color, which would total 40,000 units(8 colors) To 150 per color, totaling 1200 units(8 colors) With very slight changes to our final model.

Which means were back on track, and on budget, and they can produce them to almost exactly what we wanted.

happy day

 

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[JudoTom]

Thanks for sharing that email. Very cool to get a clear example!

to be honest i was on the fence about ordering but I have to order a pair now just to do a small part to thank you for this great thread!

 

[Vick]

your welcome and thanks