Selling specialty spectacles at eye-popping prices is a $35 million-a-year business for Optical Shop of Aspen International founder Larry Sands.
Two years ago, Sands moved his company from Arizona to a 13,000-square-foot facility in Aliso Viejo. He already owned a vacation home in Southern California, but wanted to live here year-round.
The move drove up operational costs by about 25%, but the added expense was well worth it, he said.
“This is where we want to be, and we love it here,” Sands said.
A rock ‘n’ roller who sports a beard and earring, Sands prefers that reporters don’t draw attention to his age by mentioning how many grandchildren he has. Suffice it to say he’s 50-ish.
The Optical Shop of Aspen, which has about 45 employees company-wide, sells 60 brands of eyewear retailing from about $190 for its own private-label brand to about $1,000 for the gold and titanium frames sold under the Kieselstein-Cord brand.
Customers include rock stars, sports icons and Hollywood celebrities.
The eyeglasses are sold in Optical Shop of Aspen and Emporio Optic stores. Among the brands sold at the stores are Oliver Peoples, Paul Smith, Lunor, Oakley and Cartier. The stores are in upscale playgrounds such as Aspen, Newport Beach (there are two in Fashion Island), Laguna Beach and Beverly Hills.
The company’s branded eyewear also is sold to about 600 retailers in the U.S., including Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. And the company added about 200 accounts in Europe late last year.
Since moving to Orange County two years ago, Optical Shop of Aspen has grown to 11 stores in five states. A Santa Monica location was added in the past year. Two more stores in California and one in Scottsdale, Ariz., are planned for this year.
Sands believes packaging is one of the most important aspects of his business. The shops are decorated with Oriental rugs, fireplaces and leather furniture, with mahogany, green granite and antique rosewood fixtures. His most expensive location, the 1,500-square-foot Optical Shop in Fashion Island, cost $400 per square foot to build, Sands said.
“Customers go to chain stores when they need a pair of glasses, but they come to a store like ours because they want a pair of glasses,” Bill Barton, Optical Shops of Aspen president, said matter-of-factly.
Barton, who has worked for Sands since 1984, holds a minority stake in the company. He started out as a salesman and Sands trained him to become an optician and later general manager of the retail division.
Barton is married to one of Sands’ three daughters, who is one of four children.
Sands and Barton started the wholesales business in 1988 to design, make and distribute eyewear under four brands: Kieselstein-Cord Eyewear, Matsuda Eyewear Collection, Hiero House and its own private label vintage brand, Clayton Franklin Spectacles.
The products are made in Japan and Italy under the design direction of Sands, Barton and a team of designers in Japan.
Designer Barry Kieselstein-Cord oversees his line of eyewear, considered one of the most expensive in the world. His fine jewelry and sculptures are on display at museums such as the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Washington, D.C.
The company’s design team is working on a new line of eyeglasses under the Kieselstein-Cord name that will feature detachable art such as heart-shaped lockets and hair berets, due out in spring 2001.
Dubbed one of the founders of the fashion eyewear business, Sands was a hippie in the 1960s playing guitar and singing in the Bartok’s Mountain band, which opened for legends such as Led Zeppelin, the Birds and Sly and the Family Stone.
Sands had begun grinding lenses at age 15 for an optometrist in Farmington, Mo. He opened his first eyewear boutique, Optical Nouveau, in Kansas City, Mo., with a $2,500 investment. That was back in 1970, and the optical business was primarily a medical practice dominated by optometrists. His funky frames featured tinted lenses that caught the eyes of fashion-conscious customers.
The bulk of his business was selling wire frames for John Lennon wannabes. But two years later he opened a store in Aspen and began making custom frames.
“Don Henley and Glen Fry would hang out there and they used to mooch sunglasses off me and tell me how they were going to make it,” said Sands, who remains friends with the two musicians from the band the Eagles. He said he’s twice closed down his store to outfit them and their crew with new shades.
Another early shopper was Elton John, who first requested custom frames in 1974. Sands has provided John with some of his most unusual glasses, including a pair trimmed with white feathers and another studded with rhinestones.
“Elton is a freak for eyeglasses. I don’t remember if he asked me specifically for feathers. I think he said. ‘Make me something different and bizarre’ ” Sands said. “He could buy 30 or 40 pairs of eyeglasses at one time and go through the entire inventory and just wreck it.”
But it wasn’t Elton John who ordered the most unusual pair. In 1977, a rich Texan laid down $12,000 to buy his ex-wife custom gold frames shaped like the state of Texas with lenses two inches wide and a longhorn-shaped ivory bridge.
And there was a Saudi prince who once doled out $30,000 for 11 pairs of glasses from Sands.
Kieselstein-Cord came up with the retailer’s most expensive pair of glasses: an 18-carat gold, creation studded with diamonds and rubies that sold for $18,000.
“We made three of those, and we sold three of those,” said Sands, explaining that the eyeglasses traveled across the country on a tour for Neiman Marcus department stores.
The Kieselstein-Cord brand is dominated by its signature gold and silver-plated alligators, turtles and frogs with diamonds and rubies for their eyes. Sands admits that another designer topped his company by making a pair of eyeglasses that retailed for $200,000, but he points out that those glasses never sold.
