Foothill Ranch-based sunglasses and apparel maker Oakley Inc. has partnered with Ferrari SPA to produce an eyewear collection that carries the name of the famed automaker and a price tag of around $450 a pair.
“We were looking to work with design-driven innovative companies, and Ferrari is the absolute pinnacle of engineering and technical excellence within motorsports,” said Tom Cartmale, Oakley’s global brand communications director.
The new line, called Ferrari Carbon Blade, debuted last month in Barcelona, Spain. The event marked an early milestone in a multiyear partnership that sets up Oakley as the Scuderia Ferrari racing team’s official eyewear licensee—the deal calls for drivers Fernando Alonzo, Kimi Räikkönen, Pedro de la Rosa and Marc Gené to wear Oakley glasses on and off the track, and carry the company’s logo on their helmets throughout the 2014 Grand Prix racing season.
The prices for the new collection range from $170 to $450.
Design Philosophies
The partnership also brought the two companies and their design philosophies together to produce the new eyewear collection, which builds on an earlier Oakley sponsorship of Alonzo and other drivers.
“We always had long-standing athlete relationships within the motorsports (industry),” Cartmale said. “We wanted to build around that and do more than just standard license product collection. We wanted to have a deeper collaboration on the engineering side.”
Oakley’s design engineers Ryan Calilung and Ryan Saylor drew inspiration for the Carbon Blade from motorsports and automotive engineering—Formula 1’s chassis shape influenced their design for the sunglasses’ frame.
Carbon Fiber
But the biggest inspiration behind the collection is in the materials used to create it, specifically the carbon fiber, according to Calilung.
“Carbon fiber is central to the engineering process at Scuderia Ferrari, and we wanted to reflect that passion for excellence and cutting-edge innovation in the Carbon Blade,” he said. “Carbon fiber has been used before in eyewear, but never in this way. Rather than shaping pieces from flat rigid plates, we molded the carbon layers into a flexible frame structure, creating a highly engineered solution.”
The result, Cartmale said, is lighter, more flexible and stronger eyewear, a “true collaboration of shared insights between the two brands.”
The design teams—one in Foothill Ranch and the other in Ferrari’s head office in Maranello, Italy—are now busy working on “evolution of the collection, which will go deeper into elements that connect the two brands,” he said, adding that the new product line is set to debut “early next season, in April or May.”
Oakley also worked with Ferrari to develop content for its global marketing campaign promoting the partnership. It will encompass print advertising in men’s lifestyle and Formula 1 media, such as Men’s Health or Motor Sport Magazine, Cartmale said.
A digital and video component that “shows how the products are made … lives within a traditional media campaign,” he said.
New Ad Agency
Separately, Oakley hired Eleven Inc. in San Francisco as its advertising agency of record to work on the “2015 evolution of the Disrupted by Design” branding campaign announced in March. Ferrari-related content, however, was created in-house, according to Cartmale.
In other news, Marvel Entertainment LLC’s character Cyclops wore a revised version of Oakley’s RadarLock glasses in the “X-Men: Days of Future Past” movie, which hit theaters last month. The movie was produced by 21st Century Fox and has grossed more than $609 million so far.
The brand spent $11.3 million on ad placements in 2013, according to New York-based Kantar Media.
It did not disclose what portion of this year’s marketing budget was dedicated to the Ferrari partnership or X-Men cameo.
Oakley has 163 stores in the U.S. and another 242 in 19 other countries. Its estimated revenue is $1.5 billion.
The company is part of Italy-based Luxottica Group SPA, which also owns the Chanel, Prada, Ray-Ban, Dolce & Gabbana, and Tiffany & Co. brands.Â
