At a time when taking on big problems can feel overwhelming or unapproachable, Whistler-based eyewear start-up Coast Optics is showing the unlikely is not the same as impossible. The two-person operation, founded by Sam and Alex, is taking on the established eyewear giants with its greener approach to the competitive sector.
A clear vision for a greener future
There’s the old saying “build it and they will come.” In this case, Coast Optics showed if you build something better, you can overcome brand loyalty. The brand was founded on a combination of a sense that cycling eyewear could be made better, and made greener. Sam and Alex’s work together at Evolution bike shop in Whistler is the basis of both the frustration and the knowledge they used to see a greener path forward.
“We were just getting frustrated with how other brands were conducting business. There didn’t seem to be much care,” Sam explains. Their frustration focused on packaging, seeing an industry that like to claim to be green shipping sunglasses and goggles in layer upon layer of plastics. “One brand was using a fully plastic box, and then had it wrapped in a plastic bag. That’s just rediculus. It’s just not needed. And I think you only seee the extend of it, sometimes, behind the scenes. When the product is on the shelf, you don’t see that backstory.”
“Alex made a fleeting comment that someone could do better than this and I said, “let’s give it a go,” Sam recalls. “It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ever since.”
Rider driven development helps launches Coast Optics at full speed
Three years in, the founding pair is now able to call Coast Optics their primary, and only source of employment. That comes after three years of hustling hard, pulling full time shifts at Evolution, then going home and putting in as many hours developing their own business. While not relying on a hug outside investment made the double days a necessity, Sam says it was also instrumental to the success they’ve found in a relatively short period since launching. The pair used their work at Evolution as a source of guerilla market research. On top of being riders themselves, Sam and Alex learned what riders wanted better than the competition by, well, asking them what they wanted.
“We had tons of cumstomers coming in daily for goggles. So we’d ask them a lot of questions, like, to the point it almost got kind of weird,” Sam says with a laugh. “So we’d…
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