Oakley makes it easy to customize your eyewear

Custom eyewear is no longer just for the pros, as Oakley rolls out its custom program online and in stores.

I recently had a chance to visit my local Oakley store and walk through the process of designing a custom pair of Racing Jacket glasses. I stopped by the store on a weekday around lunchtime and was greeted by the store manager, Eddy Byrley, Jr.

I explained to Eddy that I recently finished building up a new mountain bike, so I was ready to get a pair of shades that not only matched the bike, but also had ideal fit and light filtering for riding in the woods. Though I’m not a ‘cuff and collars’ kind of guy, I wanted something that tied into the red and white color scheme of the bike.

While the Racing Jacket seemed to have the ideal fit and protection for mountain biking, it comes stock in just 4 colors, so the custom route was the way to go to get exactly what I wanted.

Eddy directed me to the Oakley Custom alcove in the store. There, most if not all, of the glasses available in the Custom program were on display so customers could get a feel for fit,color and lens options. Though I was pretty sure about the Racing Jacket, he also took the time to walk me through some other popular options for cyclists.

Once we had settled on the Racing Jacket, we went right to the touchscreen integrated into the alcove and started designing.

For any piece of eyewear that can be customized, the touchscreen shows buttons over the parts that can be personalized. For the Racing Jacket, the options included the frame color, jaw color, thru bolt/hinge, lenses, icons and earsocks.

For the frame, I chose a nice deep Team Red from the 12 color options and then added a Bright White jaw (13 options there).

For the thru bolt, I wanted to match some of the polished aluminum parts on the mountain bike, so I chose Silver. The thru bolts are anodized aluminum, so they add a nice spark to the look of the glasses.

I matched the silver in the thru bolt with a Silver icon (the Oakley ‘O’ on the temples) and finished off the glasses with white earsocks.

Once nice thing about doing the Custom process in store is that you can see and feel everything as it comes together. Byrley also explained that, in store, the customizer only shows colors and parts that are in stock, so the customer doesn’t have the problem of designing something that they can’t take home.

With the look dialed down, it was then time to focus on the lenses. I wanted lenses that would first and foremost protect my eyes, but also help with clarity in the dimmer light conditions in the woods. After popping several options into the frame, I ended up with the G20 lens tint for road cycling and the brighter P30 Polarized for the trail (the Racing Jacket includes two sets of lenses).

With everything picked out, it took only a short amount of time for Eddy to pull all of the needed parts and assemble the glasses. With everything placed into a Vault case, I was on my way.

Going Custom does add $50 to the price of the sunglasses, by the way, but Byrley told me that an increasingly large number of customers are going the Custom route, comparing it to the popularity of the NikeID program.

The process took me about half an hour from walking in the store to completion and suffice to say that I had just the sunglasses that I wanted!