Brothers Bryan and Bradford Manning were each 7 years old when they were separately diagnosed with a disease that would eventually make them blind.
On the day Bradford was informed he had the disease, his mother permitted him to do things she’d normally not allow, such as eating a ton of ice cream and staying up late to watch videos.
“I got this massive sundae I’d normally never be allowed to eat” after that diagnosis, co-founder Bradford told the audience at OCTANe’s annual Ophthalmology Technology Summit.
“It was the best day of my life.”
For Bryan, the disease was humiliating. He started at a new high school where nobody knew about his blindness so he hid it from everyone on the first day—only to be confronted face-to-face with a teacher who asked him to read something he couldn’t see.
Both eventually graduated from the University of Virginia and currently live in New York.
After struggling to shop for clothes, the brothers decided to start their own clothing company, Two Blind Brothers, with all the profits going to funding research.
About 70% of its employees are visually impaired. The super soft shirts feature braille tags that indicate size and color to the shopper.
It won the support of Sir Richard Branson, who learned about the company when playing chess with Bradford on the former’s Caribbean island of Necker.
“I mustered up the courage to ask his advice on this little brand we were launching called Two Blind Brothers,” Bradford wrote in a blog post. “After explaining the idea behind it to him, he loved it so much that he not only offered up his support, but he also agreed to make a video for social media with me and purchased 1,000 shirts to sell at the shop on Necker.”
The two brothers made a video to promote their brand and “it went viral in the course of a few weeks.”
Bryan recalls waking up to the frightening text, “Hey man. Saw you on the internet. Crazy.” Ellen Degeneres featured the pair on her show.
“We’re in business to cure blindness,” the website said. “The scientific community is racing towards a breakthrough as you read this.”
—A. Leigh Corbett
