Fetch Eyewear supports animal welfare while winning Vision Expo award
From left: Robert Sacks, Ann Sacks and Klix Frames USA sales VP Joe Flinn at Fetch Eyewear's Vision Expo booth.
At Portland-based Fetch Eyewear, the motto is “Look good, feel good, do good,” and with its new "Collection" interchangeable lens product, which took Second Place honors for best new product in the 2018 Vision Choice Awards during the just-completed Vision Expo at the Javits Center, they got the “look good, feel good” part down.
The “Change your lenses, change your look” Collection line allows consumers to easily change expensive lenses from one color of a favorite frame to another, thereby permitting affordable multiple frame choices with the purchase of a single lens prescription.
Making it possible is a detachable top bar on each frame facilitating quick removal of the lenses and reinsertion into another Collection frame. When reattached, the bar is secured in place via strong magnets.
The Collection includes nine eyewear styles, each available in as many as seven colors; there are also sunglass frames, so consumers, using a single pair of lenses, have the opportunity to mix-and-match among different-colored frames and lenses within each style.
Fetch’s Collection is the second innovation at the company since tile industry veteran Ann Sacks founded it in 2004. The first, also in collaboration with Klix Frames, uses Bluetooth connectivity with a smartphone to alert you when you leave them behind--with the phone both sounding an alarm and showing their last known location before you moved out of range.
Otherwise, Fetch Frames are designed to last, and are backed by a lifetime warranty.
As for the “do good” part of Fetch Eyewear’s motto, Fetch donates 100 percent of the net proceeds from purchases to support animal welfare through rescue, veterinary care, low-cost spay and neuter, and education--all in partnership with The Pixie Project, which was founded by Sacks’ daughter Amy Sacks, an animal advocate and lifelong philanthropist. Indeed, the goal of Fetch Eyewear is to be a continuing source of funding for the Pixie Project and other animal welfare organizations by way of the Ann and Robert Sacks Philanthropic Fund (Robert Sacks is Ann’s husband).
“At Fetch Eyewear, we believe that what we wear is a reflection of who we are, and what we buy is a reflection of what we care about,” asserts the company in its mission statement. “That’s why every pair of Fetch glasses you purchase helps a pet in need.”
Thanks to customer, wholesaler, partner and community support, Pixie has a 5,000 sq. ft. facility, over 20 kennels, a cattery and in-house veterinary clinic.
According to Ann Sacks, Pixie enabled 750 pet adoptions last year and 1,200 surgeries—many for senior companion animals whose owners can neither afford the expense nor the personal loss. She adds that the organization is also a beneficiary of the Paul Newman Foundation.
Sacks, by the way, came to eyewear after a successful career as founder of Ann Sacks Tile & Stone, which she started at home in 1981 and later sold to Kohler, which kept the name. In 2006 she launched Design and Direct Source as a means of creating a sophisticated but affordable collection of sustainable tile, stone, and wood that would enable designers to pursue their creative ends while balancing the timing and budget realities of commercial projects.
Having since sold Deisgn and Direct Source, too, Sacks is now focused entirely on Fetch, which she conceived after losing an expensive designer frame—an alternative to her disposable drugstore readers—days after purchase. Applying her tile industry smarts, she soon realized that such high frame prices were due to huge markups and designer licensing fees forced by the handful of giant corporations that control most of the eyewear market.
Originally called Amy Sacks Eyewear when it debuted with stylish reading glasses sold in department stores and boutiques, the name changed to Fetch Eyewear in 2012 to better jibe with its complete commitment to the Pixie Project.