Biggest Eyewear Company Signs On With Google Glass
Google on Monday announced a partnership with the Luxottica Group, the largest eyeglass company in the world, to design, manufacture and distribute frames for Google Glass, the Internet-connected eyewear.
The announcement is Google’s biggest effort yet to make Glass attractive and available to mainstream consumers as it prepares to sell it more widely later this year. In January, Google announced that it would partner with VSP, the nation’s biggest optical health insurance provider, to offer subsidized frames and prescription lenses for Glass.
Yet Google has struggled to gain mainstream acceptance for Glass. Certain bars have barred patrons from wearing it, lawmakers are grappling with whether to allow people to wear it while driving, and a man in Ohio was removed from a theater and interrogated by Homeland Security agents after wearing Glass to a movie. Less conspicuous types of wearable computers, like wristbands, are catching on more quickly.
Though Google is expanding into the device business, its expertise is as a software builder, not as a hardware manufacturer, retailer or fashion designer.
Even if consumers have not heard of Luxottica, most eyeglass owners have bought a pair from the company. Based in Milan, it owns brands like Ray-Ban, Oakley and Persol, licenses brands like Giorgio Armani and Prada and manages retail chains like LensCrafters and Sunglass Hut. To start, Google will develop Ray-Ban and Oakley frames for Glass and work with Luxottica to design its own frames. Luxottica will manufacture all Google Glass frames and lead wholesale and retail sales of them. Google will also continue to sell the device directly to consumers online.
“Luxottica understands how to build, distribute and sell great products that their clients and consumers love — something we care deeply about at Glass, too,” Google said in a statement. Luxottica said in a statement, “We now have both a technology push and a consumer pull for wearable technology products and applications.” It added, “We believe that a strategic partnership with a leading player like Google is the ideal platform for developing a new way forward in our industry.”
Glass, which is available to only a limited group of users, costs $1,500, not including designer frames and prescription lenses. Google has said it will lower the price when the consumer version is available later this year. Google is taking a different approach as it expands into other types of wearable computers, giving free software to hardware manufacturers — the same strategy that led it to success in smartphones.
