The best way to be successful at starting a business is to solve a problem. And a problem that many people that wear eyeglasses have is that they can’t find the right glasses that reflect their personality.
Many times, they have to choose something that may be in the ballpark of how they want to present themselves but to really zero in, they don’t seem to find the right look.
The best part is that you don’t have to be a fashionista to make a successful business out of creating compelling eyewear for people. You have to have good design chops, but it’s better to understand what makes good design and function work together than just somebody who loves fashion as glasses also need to be practical. It helps big time to be driven by an entrepreneurial spirit as well.
In this article, I will go over how you can make a living designing and selling your own eyewear line.
Understand how lenses work with the frame
It’s one thing for the glasses to look good and quite another for them to work well. Some prescription lenses are not going to fit into some eccentrically designed frames. In some cases, you may have to alter your vision for the frames to work with certain types of lenses.
Understanding lens index guidelines is a good start to have an idea of how glasses need to work for different vision types.
Have a Good Relationship with a Manufacturer
Starting out, you may want to do both the design and crafting of the frames yourself. This gives you a lot of room for creativity. Eventually, however, you won’t be able to keep up with the production. Which is a good problem to have!
However, a lot of times outsourcing the production means that your ideas are not fully understood and the design falls flat. This is not going to help you stand out in the eyewear world.
Make sure that you have a good relationship with a trusted manufacturer that understands your ideas and will help you create a frame that can be produced in bigger numbers without losing the original idea on the drawing board.
Seek out smaller producers rather than ones that mass produce frames and you are more likely to see the results you are looking for.
Be a marketer
It doesn’t matter just how stylish your glass frames are if nobody knows they exist. You’ll need to have a solid marketing strategy that can get the world out and create some fans. Remember, you are looking for fans and not customers because when people get excited about a product they stay loyal and also bring other people into their fandom.
Start out with a good social media presence that caters to the ideal audience that you are looking for. Have an idea of who the exact person is that would want to wear your glasses and then try to find the platform that they use the most. Study the other brands that these people are following to see what type of posts are resonating with them.
Then find a way to craft your message according to what these future fans will want to see.
Find an influencer that fits the profile of your audience and then try to work alongside them to wear your glasses in their posts to bring awareness to your brand. Even if you don’t see an immediate uptick in sales, it will help you find a spot in the consciousness of the audience you are going for.
Start out Small
You may have big dreams, but you can’t start out big. You need to start small and then grow. Find a way to test your ideas like having an Etsy store where you sell some small production eyewear and then see what is working.
This is a good way to do some product research before committing to a big scale production. You’ll find the designs that are working and which ones aren’t so you know where to focus your attention. Etsy is a great place to start since there are millions of people on the platform everyday looking for something unique.
As your orders grow and you aren’t able to handle the workload then you can look into investing into growing the business and scaling it up.
Conclusion
The world of eyeglasses is a good start for somebody who is creative and looking for an outlet for their business. It is not oversaturated as you might think and you can carve out a small little niche for yourself in which you can find yourself making a nice living.
