Video: the Oakley story

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Oakley-history

From a company making MX and BMX grips to a company making over a billion dollars a year. It’s easy to forget that Oakley company had humble beginnings as a tiny SoCal startup.

Thanks for the tip, Cafe_Racer.

  • Nick

    Cool video. I’ve always loved their style and quality. Left a $200 pair of glasses in a golf cart once. Bummer.
    My dad still has the neon green Oakley bicycling glasses he bought 25 years ago. They look like they’re new. A bit too 80′s for me, but my gold Bubba Stewart goggles aren’t very cool to him either :)

  • Frosty_spl

    Sell me the glasses!!!! Seriously!

    I was obsessed with Oakley as a BMX kid in the 80s.

    • Nick

      I’ll ask him, not sure he’ll want to part with them, though.

  • gregorbean

    That was great. Thanks.

  • nymoto

    http://www.red.com/
    Is the guy that founded oakley new hd camera company. He is a camera junkie that was pissed that there wasn’t a hd video camera that was “affordable”
    So he assembled a team and built one. Pretty cool guy.

  • Michael

    Please. I think I want to puke.

    “Passion for creating great eyewear, blah blah blah.”

    Hm. A whole video about Oakely, and not a mention of Luxottica? I wonder if it’s because Luxottica always prefers it that way?

    Who?

    Luxottica is a huge Italian-based monopoly with a stranglehold on eyewear worldwide. All of it, everywhere. OK, 99.9%, maybe.

    I exaggerate? I jest?

    Let’s see what Wikipedia has to say:

    “Brands:
    The company operates in two sectors: manufacturing & wholesale distribution, and retail distribution.

    The house brands include:

    * Arnette
    * Eye Safety Systems
    * K&L
    * Luxottica
    * Mosley Tribes
    * Oaklely
    * Oliver Peoples
    * Persol
    * Ray-Ban
    * Revo
    * Sferoflex
    * Vogue

    The company also creates eyewear under license for designer labels such as:

    * Anne Klein
    * Brooks Brothers
    * Bulgari
    * Burberry
    * Chanel
    * Chaps
    * Club Monaco
    * D&G
    * DKNY
    * Donna Karan eyewear
    * Miu Miu
    * Polo Ralph Lauren
    * Prada
    * Ralph Lauren Purple Label
    * Salvatore Ferragamo
    * Tiffany & Co.
    * Tory Burch
    * Versace
    * Versus

    …

    These brands are sold in the company’s own shops, as well as to independent distributors such as department stores, duty-free shops and opticians.

    Retail:

    As of 2008, Luxottica Retail had 6400 retail outlets in the United States, Canada, China, Australia, New Zealand,South Africa and the United Kingdom. The headquarters of the retail division is in Mason, Ohio. Their retail banners include:
    Sunglass Hut International
    LensCrafters
    OPSM
    Laubman & Pank
    Budget Eyewear
    Pearle Opticians
    Pearle Vision
    Surfeyes
    Sears Optical
    Target Optical
    K-Mart Optical
    Walmart Optical
    BJ’s Optical
    Cole Vision Care
    ICON and ILORI.
    They also own EyeMed Vision Care, one of the leading managed vision care organizations in the United States. In January 2010, Luxottica Retail announced that it might expand its current facility.”

    Just about every eyeglass brand, every eyeglass store in the world, is owned and stocked by this single aggressive blatant monopoly. I don’t care how many grips they sold to all those old dirt bikers, buy a new pair of Oakleys and you support the monopolistic global screwing of every eyeglass customer in the world.

    Maybe they were something different back in the day, but Oakley is just another house brand of a giant conglomerate.

    Somehow that gets left off the end of this little feel-good movie.

    What a total corporate jerk-job this feel-good video ‘story’ is.

    • nymoto

      Don’t really care much about it, but just to get the facts straight Jim Jannard that owned Oakley SOLD his company (or majority stake) to his rival Luxottica in 2007 for 2.1 billion. So yes you are correct it is owned currently by the eyewear giant, but don’t piss on a man’s accomplishments of starting a company from scratch, building a global brand and then selling it for billions.

      • Michael

        Not pissing on anybody, didn’t piss on anybody. My facts are straight. I’m talking about Oakley right now.

        So the guy cashed in by selling out to the same guys everyone else sells out to. Great. I’m sure he was broke before he cashed in and really needed the money. But let’s then stop the feel-good company story. That’s all gone.

        Oh yeah, the reason he sold? I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that they were getting squeezed out of Sunglass Hut (20% of sales at the time) after Luxottica bought SH. I guess losing 10% of your sales in less than a year was the writing on the wall, the start of the ‘offer’ he couldn’t refuse. Five years after SH was bought by Luxottica, the old Oakley as portrayed in this video, was gone. Luxottica is a foul, illegal monopoly and behaves as such.

        Why do quality glasses seem to cost 150-200 bucks? When every manufacturer and retail outlet is owned by the same monopoly, it’s not hard to figure out. I’m guessing Jannard saw the writing on the wall and decided it wasn’t worth the fight. Hard to sell a product when the competition owns ALL the stores. Don’t know. I do know Luxottica is evil and anyone supporting those brands is screwing themselves.

        Oh yeah, it was cool how Oakley increased severance for upper execs immediately before the buyout, but nothing similar for the peons. Those Oakley execs were all just a bunch of regular Joes living the American dream: Create something cool, sell it out to a monopoly, but not before quietly enriching those at the top at the last minute and throwing the likely-soon-to-be-laid off, formerly “we’re all family here” Oakley workers to the lupi.

        Not arguing it was a cool company. But they now suck dog balls along with every other government protected monopoly.

    • ike6116

      FIGHT THE POWER!

      • nymoto

        LoL

      • gregorbean

        or as ike6116 said in another story, Go to your window, open it up and yell “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”

  • th3w3s

    Hey Mike, if it upsets you that much, ditch the Oakleys and buy a pair of Von Zippers, Giros, Adidases or Rudy Projects. I don’t see them in that list… (not that that makes them any cheaper) ;)

    • Michael

      Thanks. Yeah, I know it sounds like I’m frothing at the mouth here. Maybe I am. Not directed at anyone, nymoto or wes. It just bugs me that such a foul company gets no bad press and no recriminations. This hagiography just set me off. I know: It’s just glasses. And the focus of the vid is on the founding. But Lux puts competing companies and stores put out of business, and consumers get robbed, all hurt to varying degrees by the illegal, anti-competitive behavior. This video never bothers to mention that all those cool happy founders don’t matter anymore, most aren’t there and they got paid big time while some front line workers got screwed as they cashed in on the way out.

      And not to get jingoistic about it, but lots of American companies on that Lux brand list got jacked illegally and profits and jobs shipped out.

      Thanks for the tips. I’m almost due for a new pair. You used to be able to put Maui Jim on your list, too, but I think their glasses got swallowed up by the Borg not too long ago.

      Imma go look at some bikes on the web, wish it was warm outside and calm down.

      • Mike

        Your ideas intrigue me and I’ll keep that list in mind when shopping for eyewear..

        Srsly, I had no idea they were hooked up with Luxottica (ooh, record high of $7.9 billion in sales this year), but I’m not surprised.

        Also, even though I too had a pair of ‘offshore’ knockoff Oakley grips on my BMX bike in the early 80s I had completely forgotten about that angle of the business – drowned out by the ‘Oakley shades dude’ memories of the late 80s/90s.. Now to be further drowned out by the corporate demon-cock memories of, well, always.

      • th3w3s

        I’m with you – there’s nothing worse than a big corporate buy out, trust me, I’ve experienced one and seen friends go through it. We can only hope that Luxotica let Oakley keep part of their culture because, let’s face it, evil corporate or not, they make some awesome eyewear, and have some great marketing to go with it.

        At the end of the day though, I can understand why Jim Jannard made the decision to sell – I probably would have done the same. No-one wants to do the same thing forever ;)

        Another random fact – Fox eyewear / goggles are made by Oakley for Fox ;)

        Signing off – I’ve looked at enough bikes this morning, it IS warm outside (here in sunny South Africa), but sadly I have work to do…

  • T Diver

    Part of the reason Oakley is so successful is that they are the main supplier of goggles to the military. (FYI)

    • Michael

      Good to know we rely on a foreign supplier for our protective military eyewear.