With lots of brands of shades available today, you'd think that the market for sunglasses is a healthy and competitive one - but you'd be wrong. Brett Arends of the Wall Street Journal writes:
Do you prefer the "quality" of Ray-Ban to Oakley? Do you think Bulgari is better than Dolce & Gabbana, or Salvatore Ferragamo is better than Prada? Wake up. They're all made by one company, Italian manufacturer Luxottica–one of the biggest consumer companies that consumers have never heard of. Luxottica also makes sunglasses branded Burberry, Chanel, Polo Ralph Lauren, Paul Smith, Stella McCartney, Tiffany, Versace, Vogue, Persol, Miu Miu, Tory Burch and Donna Karan.
"We manufacture about 70% of those brands in our factories in Italy, and the balance in America and China," says Luxottica spokesman Luca Biondolillo. "We do the design, the manufacturing, and the marketing," he adds. The company makes most of those brands under license, working closely with designers at the relevant fashion houses. But it owns several brands itself, including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Oliver Peoples and REVO. [...]
In many cases, the same company is also selling you the glasses. Luxottica also owns LensCrafters, Pearle Vision and Sunglass Hut. This is extreme vertical integration. The eye doctor telling you that you need a new pair of glasses, the sales people helping you choose them and the people who design and make the glasses all work for the same company.
More in Brett's article Are Designer Sunglasses Worth the Price?: Link
only problem is you cant try them on, but after a quick trip to any eyeglasses hut in the mall, you can get a good gist of what you want and even get frame dimensions for exact replication.
good times.
Unless the company pays me for doing their advertising...
So it may be that the same company makes them all, but, for example, a screw and the paint on a screw in a Ray Ban frame will be MUCH better than a screw in a ... "house brand" frame from Luxottica. The metal in the screw head on cheap frames feels softer, the paint is often over the screw (thus "sealing" the screw in -- a problem when I have to take the screw out to insert the lens).
So... while this may be true (and, well, obviously it is), more expensive "quality" name brand frames _typically are_ better quality.
Having said that, once the lens is in the frame it DOES make little difference, I suppose....
EIGHT DOLLARS.
WHY hasn't anyone made a website yet, where you can type in a product you're curious about, and it tells you who REALLY owns it?
I hate to death, these sneaky big corps and all their tentacles.
Though such awesomeness should really only cost $20. Why make such crappy shades?
fyi - i think it may be http://glassyeyes.blogspot.com/ as http://www.glasseyes.com/ took me to prosthesis. Though maybe better than some shades. Lol.
First of all, no more expensive glasses and new pairs every less than 2 years (too sporty for glasses to last longer than that...).
Secondly, I love the fact that when I see a cheap pair of sunglasses I can just buy it. Before I couldn't have done that as I could barely afford to have one pair of sunglasses with prescription.