eyewear
Stoggles thinks protective eyewear can be fashionable, too
Despite being profitable and their line of eyewear hitting it off with the healthcare community, the Stoggles founders decided to go after their first round of venture capital.
Pair Eyewear focuses on adult glasses as it takes in $60M
If Pair’s announcement is any indication, the direct-to-consumer eyewear market is doing quite well.
At ‘Lens Fest,’ Snap debuts creations tools for more sophisticated augmented reality experiences
As Snap’s creators begin to experiment with the company’s augmented reality Spectacles hardware, the company is delving deeper into juicing the capabilities of its Lens Studio to build augmented reality…
Facebook warned over ‘very small’ indicator LED on smart glasses, as EU DPAs flag privacy concerns
Facebook’s lead privacy regulator in Europe has raised concerns about a pair of “smart” Ray-Ban sunglasses the tech giant is now selling. The glasses include a face-mounted camera that can…
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Review: Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories make the case for smart glasses
Facebook’s first pair of smart glasses doesn’t feel like much of a Facebook product. You won’t find the Facebook logo emblazoned on them or even its name in small print by the serial code. They aren’t “Facebook Stories” or “Ray-Ban’s Facebook Stories” or even “Ray-Ban Stories in collaboration with Facebook.” Unlike other Facebook-designed hardware like…
Cheeterz Club wants to make reading glasses hip
Can reading glasses actually be cool? A new eyewear company called Cheeterz Club thinks so. The startup is working to change the perception of reading glasses from being just cheap,…
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D2C specs purveyor Warby Parker files to go public
Warby Parker has two main sales channels, largely attractive economics, falling losses and rising adjusted profitability. You could even argue it handled the pandemic well. So what’s it worth?
Angling to be eyewear’s next big thing, Futuremood launches with mood-altering sunglasses
Austin Soldner and Michael Schaecher, the co-founders of the new sunglasses brand Futuremood, met at the newly formed San Francisco research and development lab created by the high-end audio tech…
3D-printed glasses startup Fitz is making custom protective eyewear for healthcare workers
A lot of startups have answered the call for more personal protective equipment (PPE) and other essentials to support healthcare workers in their efforts to curb the spread and impact…
North ending production of current Focals smart glasses to focus on Focals 2.0
Smart glasses maker North announced today that it will be ending production of its first-generation Focals glasses, which it brought to market for consumers last year. The company says it…
Simple Contacts has a new service letting users cheaply switch contact lens prescriptions
Simple Contacts has launched a new service letting users try out new contact lenses for as little as $3. The company launched a little over three years ago as a…
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Snapchat Spectacles 3 review: Pretty, pricey
No one’s going to pay $380 for decent point-of-view video glasses and some trippy filters. But that’s kind of the point of Snapchat Spectacles 3. They’re merely a stepping stone toward true augmented reality eyewear — a public hardware beta for the Snap Lab R&D team that Apple and Facebook aren’t getting as they tinker…
North now offers Focals smart glasses fittings and purchases via app
North’s Focals smart glasses are the first in the category to even approach mainstream appeal, but to date, the only way to get a pair has been to go into…
Snap introduces Spectacles 3, with two HD cameras and 3D effects on Snapchat
Snap has introduced a third generation of its Spectacles wearable sunglass cameras, and these include new 3D effects for use in Snapchat: You can capture 3D snaps, with a slight…
Bosch is working on glasses-free 3D displays for in-car use
German auto industry giant Bosch is developing new technology that will add glasses-free 3D imaging to future versions of its in-car digital display technology. These 3D displays use passive 3D…
Trendy luggage brand Away packs on $100M, rolls past $1.4B valuation
Away’s new lofty valuation proves how far you can get with excellent branding.
With $50M in fresh funding, Allbirds will open new stores in the US, UK and Asia
Allbirds’ wool runners have been a VC favorite since the beginning. Now, the company is worth $1.4 billion.
A new eyewear brand is taking on Luxottica with a single wire, some seed funding and a sustainability story
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 indestructible. But to get their eyewear in the hands of…
Is AR eyewear ready for consumers? Are consumers ready for AR eyewear?
Augmented reality marked a major milestone this year. It’s too early to know what the new ecosystem of software and hardware designed to provide AR experiences will evolve into in…
Topology lets you try before you buy glasses using AR in an app
Topology Eyewear is an augmented reality app providing custom-fit glasses from a 3D scan of your face. Most glasses are mass manufactured to fit a supposedly symmetric head. The problem…
These 3D-printed sunglasses will fit your oddly-shaped head
I’m not saying your head is oddly shaped, per se, but if you have trouble finding glasses that fit then a team from Cambridge, Massachusetts has a pair for you.…
Lensabl makes it easy to put new lenses in a favorite pair of shades or glasses
Optometrists don’t make it easy to buy new lenses for a favorite old pair of glasses or shades. Especially shades! Who even does that? Lens replacements through an optometrist can…
Meet Yousif Ashoor, the creator of these of amazing automatic sunglasses
If you’re a gamer you’ll recognize the trope: a hero steps into the harsh glare of a desert planet or a blasted cityscape and her sunglasses automatically slide into place…
Spain’s sunglasses startup Hawkers nabs $56M to take on the Ray-Bans of the world
The world of sunglasses may be long in the cool stakes but has up to now been somewhat short on innovation. Now, the winds of technology are shifting those sands. You may…
Germany’s Brillen.de raises $49M from TCV to take its eyewear marketplace international
Brillen.de, a bootstrapped, family-run company in Germany that has built an online business selling its own eyewear by tapping into a network of independent and local opticians, has raised €45 million ($49…
Augmedix nabs $17M to ‘rehumanize’ doctor/patient relations using Google Glass
Google Glass is no longer being marketed to consumers, but its enterprise business continues to pick up pace, and today one of the more promising companies developing medical services using Google’s connected eyewear…
Intel Teams With Luxottica To Build The Future Of Smart Eyewear
It’s pretty clear at this point that Intel wants to own face computing: The company has been pegged as providing the chip powering the next version of Google Glass, and…
Warby-As-A-Service? Backed By Reddit, Posterous Founders, Eponym Helps Brands Build And Distribute Their Own Eyewear
Over the last few years, a new wave of startups has emerged to tackle a range of inefficient, ignored or offline segments within the massive world of fashion and retail.…
Warby Parker Opens Retail Store In NYC, With Boston Up Next, Beats Google & Amazon To The Offline Punch
Hip online eyewear startup Warby Parker has, over the last two years, been partnering with boutiques to open “stores-within-stores,” or small Warby Parker showrooms, where customers could try on their…
With A Focus On Growth, GlassesDirect Owner Prescription Eyewear Raises $19.3M, Uses The Bulk To Buy Contact Lens Specialist LensOn
Some “focus” and consolidation afoot in the world of online eyewear sales. Prescription Eyewear, the parent company of GlassesDirect.com, high-end myOptique.com and SunglassesShop.com, has acquired LensOn.com, a Northern European leader…
