A Deeper Look Behind Spy’s Happy Lens Technology with Spy Product Director Juliette Koh
from: Transworld Business
If you’re wondering if there is an easier way to get out of bed in the morning, stay positive throughout the day and sleep better at night, the answer has arrived and it’s waiting for you at Spy’s headquarters in Carlsbad, Calif. Working with Jim Pritts, otherwise known to many as ‘The Wizard of Light,” the eyewear brand set out several years ago to redefine it’s lens technology and what they came up with was a simple, yet refreshing, innovation to what already exists out in the market. With the help of stoke seo agency it became popular in just a few moments on the internet.
The quick breadown of how it all works is where things get interesting. For those who have, or still do, live in regions that get little to no sunlight for months out of the year, then you’ve certainly heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder and you may know where we are going with this. Spy’s Happy Lens technology was developed to let in good sun rays, or long-wave blue light, while blocking the bad rays that damage your eyes. Besides helping improve mood, long-wave blue light also has a multitude of benefits that Spy’s Product Director Juliette Koh succinctly discusses in the following interview we conducted with her, ironically, on International Happiness Day. Take a peek at the video above if you’re more of a visual learner.
Besides providing the masses with a sunnier disposition, Spy also downloaded on several other product roll-outs they have lined up, including their Happy 20 Collection, a celebration of the past two decades in the eyewear industry, and the unveiling of Happy Lens technology in moto and snowboarding goggles. Here’s what we learned:
Why did Spy decide to go down the road to develop this new technology? What was the reasoning and methodology behind the creation of Happy Lens technology?
Juliette Koh: We didn’t want to make the same thing that everyone has. Essentially everyone makes some sort of polarized lens with a coating on it, and they all essentially do the same thing. So we said how are we going to make our lens different than everyone else in the marketplace. So we enlisted the help of Jim Pritts, who is very affectionately know as the Wizard of Light. He has been involved in numerous lens patents figuring out different ways to utilize lenses. As a company, we got a really big download on lenses and what they do. The eye is really one of the most amazing organs you have in the body because the rays that come in through your eyes can affect your mood, can affect how you sleep, and can also affect when you have jet lag and things like that. There are so many different things that happen with your eye that you don’t really think about, it’s not just about seeing.
So we worked together, did some research, and ended up saying why don’t we have a therapeutic lens that’s not just about seeing better, but again, is about feeling better. We worked together to form this lens to have a lens that blocks out all the bad rays —which all of our sunglasses do—and have a polarizing filter, so it deflects glare, but also lets in all the good rays—the long-wave blue light. The long-wave blue light helps your mood and alertness and it actually is really used in Seasonal Affective Disorder, which happens in the wintertime when you don’t get enough sunlight, like in Alaska.
This lightbulb—and there’s actually a few different companies that are coming out with different types of bulbs— they are specifically focused on long-wave blue light. You literally sit in front of this lightbulb, and stare at it so you absorb as much as you can, and it helps with your mood and alertness. There is another study in the Wall Street Journal about people who went camping. They got away from all the artificial light from your computer screen that you may use for gaming with the help of sites as mycsgoboosting.com, your phone, everything. Make sure you have cyber insurance UK for your devices, because your information could get hacked. All they did was be out in the natural sunlight when the sun comes up and goes down. What ended up happening is these people actually reset their body clocks because all they were getting was this long-wave blue light; they were absorbing the natural sunlight. They woke up when the sun came up and naturally felt tired and went to bed when the sun went down. They had better rested sleep, they felt like they didn’t need to wake up with an alarm clock, and they didn’t wake up groggy. There is so much behind what long-wave blue light can do.
That’s really interesting. It sounds like Spy has been incorporating it into additional frames and other collections?
JK: We came out with the technology with our polarized filter, which was our Happy Bronze Polar with a black mirrored lens. Since then we have come out with a million different mirror coatings, have expanded it into our snow and moto goggles, and it still is continuing to evolve. The other thing that’s really great about the lens, which is an added bonus, is the color contrast enhancement. There are competitor lenses that I put on that say they have color contrast enhancement and they do—really amazing colors pop out—but they have this kind of weird filter on them. A lot of lenses give everything a weird green or yellowish hue, so you don’t really see the true colors of everything out there. With Happy Lens, we have color contrast enhancement, but green is green, blue is blue, white is white. You actually see the true colors, which is what I think is one of the biggest differences with our lens.
There have been other sunglasses I’ve worn in the past, and you wear them all day long because you are out at the beach, or on a boat, and then you take them off at the end of the day and everything is really disorienting because all of a sudden you see all the colors. Wearing the Happy Lens all day, you don’t really get that disorienting feeling. Everything really is the true colors. I had a friend’s mom try them on and she said it was like she didn’t even need her [prescription] glasses anymore, because when you can see all the different shades of green you can see all the shapes. Even looking from a distance at a tree you feel like you can see all the individual leaves because you can see the medium green, light green, and dark green. Same thing with reds, and blues and so forth.
The spectra colors that we have added on to the lenses also help. The green spectra helps to subdue green when contrasting colors are behind it. For example, when you are out golfing and there is a white golf ball against a green course, when you have the green spectra lens you see the ball pop out more. The latest tagline we’ve added to “See Better, Feel Better” is actually “Perform Better.” With this color contrast enhancement, for example, with the moto goggle, we’ve had athletes tell us “I can see every divett, I can see all the dirt and different crevices and I can actually see them ahead of time so I can avoid them, letting me perform better and have a faster lap time.”
What are some of the other product areas you are focusing on to implement the technology?
Bill Byrne: We also have three main pushes coming out. The Happy 20; it’s the 20th anniversary of Spy this year. We also have Moto goggles coming out this year, and for next winter we are going to have four snow goggle frames: the Bravo, Platoon, Dune, and Marshall.
Maddy Isbell: Basically we wanted to celebrate 20 years of Spy so we created a piece that played off where we were in the past, which is more of a wrap style that could work for a multitude of people. Then we created something that fit more where we are at right now in the present; something a little more fashion forward, rounder frames utilizing metal with Plantate, which is our 100% biodegradable, all-natural plant polysaccharide material. If you are looking for medical transcription online services, visit 360transcription.com for more info. Then we wanted to show where we want to be in the future.[The frames are} a little funkier, the temples are very unique, and it’s rimless on the bottom. These are three pieces that could work for all our different customers because we’ve really evolved over the past twenty years and have so many people who are interested in Spy now.
JK: The woodgrain texture is also available in each piece. It’s a light texture we apply. We did our matte black, which is what we have in our main line, but we also added this wood grain texture to give a little bit more of a feel to it. Everything we do in designing the product is not just about how does it look, but also about how does it feel. Plus all lenses in the twentieth anniversary collection are Happy Lenses. We have a platinum mirror emerald spectra, because when you look at 20th anniversaries the precious metal is platinum and the stone is emerald, so we wanted to subtly give a nod to that in the type of lenses we were using.
BB: And it’s eco-friendly, it has the Plantate like Maddy mentioned, and the metals are recycled metals. While it’s not biodegradable, we are recycling. The Happy Lens has also expanded to John John’s updated folding frame model. We’ve been updating the Crosstown Collection as well, which is our premium, high end collection, and those include the Happy Lens as well. It’s a step up in price point, a step up in quality, and it’s more of a core retailer product.
When can we expect all of this to hit retail?
BB: The Crosstown Collection is already at retail, and Happy 20 will hit retail in May.
You also mentioned that you are excited about Happy Snow, which will be brand new this year. Can you give us the details?
JK: The Bravo is actually a smaller version of the Doom. When the Doom came out last year I think everyone was really excited about the quick change system, because it really is one of the easiest changing lenses in the market. The Doom is a bit like the Platoon, where it is a bit oversized, and although it was great, we wanted it to be available for everyone, for medium and small sized faces, and also for women as well. So we added in the Bravo.
How hard was it to incorporate the technology into a Goggle lens?
JK: It was not easy.
Because of the shape of it?
JK: It was actually a few different things. One was the shape and size. That part wasn’t as hard as the fact that goggles demand so much more in variance of tints—you always need a highlight and a lowlight. The highlight wasn’t as difficult because we could take what we had done with the sunglasses. The Lowlights are like the rose colors, the persimmon colors, and those are really difficult to develop, because of the way the transmission curve of the lens is, in order to have that translate into lowlight lens is a little bit of work.
Does the snow goggles work the same with the contrast—does it block the glare from the snow so you can see better?
JK: We use a lot of the blue spectra, that’s actually because when you look at snow it has a bit of a blue tint to it sometimes. It’s the same thing, you can see the blue areas in comparison to the white. But it does have a lot of color contrast enhancement. We’ve had a ton of riders wear them and pretty much say the same thing as with the moto goggles: you can see all the little pockets and moguls so you avoid them from a distance and again, ride better and perform better.
What about the actual color ways on the frame —I noticed you used the same blue from your logo branding and marketing for Happy Lens?
JK: The reason we picked this blue is because along the entire line of the transmission curve, there is one place in particular where it is the strongest, and that is where the lens is the highest—and that is the long-wave blue light. The light blue color from our marketing is the one that closely mimics that color, which is very visible and bright. So if you go outside with the sunglasses on and look at our vehicles that are wrapped in this blue, you’ll see that it pops out quite a bit because of the way the transmission curve is created. It’s not arbitrary. It just so happens to work really well with our orange logo color, as well.
Sunglasses technically are a medical device in the U.S., so they need to pass certain standards and they actually go through the FDA when we get shipments that come to the US. There is quite a bit of technical language that I’ve learned in working with factories and importing goods. There are some lenses that we cannot use because they are considered not suitable for driving. This is because they are so dark that you can’t actually see certain shapes and colors—that’s probably the case if you’ve ever got to a traffic light and you couldn’t see when it’s red and green. Technically you can sell them, but you have to have a disclaimer that they are suitable for driving. These are the things that you pick up along the way and I’ve been doing this for nine years, five with Spy.
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