Shred Launches Sunglasses Kickstarter — A Better Way To See The World
All too often, sunglasses designed for active endeavors make compromises. Whether through their frame design, lens quality, or the materials they use, ordinary shades sacrifice performance to enhance style or make an extra buck. Simply put, the technology found in the world’s best optics has not been available in shades built for life in motion—until now.
Shred Boost sunglasses offer unrivaled clarity, contrast, and performance in optics built to endure the great outdoors. Made in Italy and paired with the finest lenses from Japan, these shades showcase a crisp appearance and unparalleled craftsmanship.
Their passion runs deep—and so does their experience. Throughout the past ten years, this has enabled Shred to emerge as a quiet leader in craftsmanship and innovation. Shred is the brainchild of Ted Ligety and Carlo Salmini. In addition to snagging two Olympic gold medals in alpine skiing, Ted is a five-time World Champ. Carlo is a materials engineer, avid skier and biker, and a graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management. United by a passion for refining their equipment, they’ve crafted new products whenever those on the market have failed to meet their needs and expectations. As a result, they’ve attained a slew of patents and Shred’s helmets, goggles, and protective gear have earned no shortage of accolades and a loyal following among fans and athletes. Ted and Carlo are also joined by a tight-knit crew of engineers, product managers, athletes, and friends.
Today, they’re turning to you and the Kickstarter community to help fuel innovation and bring these shades to market. As a small, independent company in an industry dominated by giants, your support is essential.
Stop. Take a minute to name all of the brands you can think of that make sunglasses for an active lifestyle. There’s a good chance that every single brand you named uses either CR-39 or polycarbonate lenses. After all, approximately eighty percent of the world’s shades feature them. Despite their prevalence, these lenses are deeply flawed.
Polycarbonate lenses are injection molded. Essentially, they are created by shooting resin into a mold. Because this resin flows into the mold in a turbulent fashion and immediately begins cooling, it fails to solidify at a uniform rate. This subjects the lenses to stress and produces inconsistencies in their structure, which creates optical distortion and makes them brittle.
Despite having good optical properties, CR-39 offers extremely poor impact resistance. Because it is especially brittle, lenses that use CR-39 must be thick—which also makes them heavy—to avoid shattering with the slightest tumble. These lenses also have very poor heat resistance. Just leaving your shades on the dashboard during a sunny day, for example, can compromise the optical precision of these lenses. Consequently, CR-39 is not fit for an active lifestyle. Simply put, both CR-39 and polycarbonate lenses are riddled with compromises and offer sub par performance.
In lieu of CR-39 or polycarbonate lenses, Shred uses liquid-cast urethane lenses of the highest optical grade, which also offer the best impact resistance and durability. By liquid casting lenses in glass molds, we ensure they’re free of distortion. In addition to offering crystal clear vision, urethane lenses are exceptionally light and provide excellent scratch and shatter resistance. Rather than making compromises, the lenses offer unrivaled performance.
Less than fourteen percent of the world’s sunglasses feature lenses crafted from urethane-based materials. And, representing just a sliver of this fourteen percent, Shred and a handful of other brands use high-grade urethane. These other brands are synonymous with excellence in optic precision and quality.
Yet none of these other brands has applied this technology to products designed for an active lifestyle. Armed with a wealth of experience and a thirst for change, Shred is addressing this need—and forging our own path. They are proud to craft frames that deliver fresh style and plenty of performance while also featuring some of the finest lenses in the world. Whether you’re bombing trails on your bike or riding to work in your finest suit, our shades are the perfect complement to your active lifestyle.
It wasn’t enough to make our lenses free of distortion. We also wanted them to enhance image definition, contrast, and the vividness of colors. Driven by this desire, they created Contrast Boosting Lens (CBL) technology.
For the CBL technology used in sunglasses, Shred developed a dye that is optimized for compatibility and performance with the high-grade urethane used to make our lenses. This dye is tailored to the conditions that shape the active lifestyle for which sunglasses are designed, making specific color ranges warmer and richer. When creating this dye, Shred worked to ensure it was especially versatile. While some companies tout contrast formulations that are highly specialized, the resulting lenses are extremely limiting. Consequently, Shred created a single lens tint that could handle all terrain and conditions. After all, you shouldn’t need a garage full of sunglasses just to meet the needs of your active lifestyle.
CBL enables you to see nuances that would otherwise escape detection with a traditional lens. By making the colors and details that truly matter pop, the lenses amplify your experience. This stands to boost your confidence, safety, and ability to enjoy the moment. Thanks to CBL, you can see more—and see better.
While Shred developed a single tint for CBL lenses to ensure they’re especially versatile, they offer Shred Boost sunglasses in a range of designs and lens treatments to better meet your needs—and budget. Each model is available in polarized and non-polarized versions, as well as with mirrored and non-mirrored lenses.
Shred polarized lenses filter out scattered and reflected light to minimize glare while further enhancing contrast and your ability to perceive color. This stands to improve comfort by reducing strain on your eyes—even during the brightest days of summer. For those searching for additional style, mirrored lenses provide an appearance that’s both bold and timeless.
To help ensure that their clarity stands the test of time, all of the lenses feature a permanent oleo and hydrophobic protective treatment on the inside of the lens to make its surface water and grease repellent.
For exceptional quality and to further enhance durability, they use physical vapor deposition (PVD)—rather than dip coatings—to create mirrored lenses and oleo and hydrophobic treatments. Although many companies use dip coatings to cut costs, they result in uneven treatments and are often compromised by the accidental inclusion of contaminant particles. With physical vapor deposition, however, the molecules used to create mirrored lenses and protective treatments are deposited layer-by-layer at incredibly high speeds in an ultra-low pressure environment. This process allows us to better control the thickness and composition of our protective layer and ensure the treatment is exceptionally clean, free of contaminant particles, and extremely durable.
One of the greatest ways to improve the comfort of a pair of sunglasses is to reduce its weight. Guided by this belief, Shred designed their NoWeight frames to be especially light. The result of extensive structural engineering studies, these frames use minimal material while maximizing stability and performance.
The exterior of the NoWeight frames provides a clean, streamlined appearance while their interior sports a sophisticated design. On the frame’s interior sides, they have reduced the material used in areas subject to minimal stress while reinforcing target areas for maximum durability. This significantly reduces the weight of the frames. This difference is immediately evident when you put on our shades.
Yet don’t be fooled by their weight—the sunglasses showcase an exceptional attention to detail. To lessen CO2 emissions, we make our frames with a specially formulated polyamide that is partially bio-based, as fifty-four percent of this polymer’s raw material comes from renewable resources (measured in accordance with the ASTM D6866 standard).
Led by co-founder Ted Ligety, our team includes professional snowboarders Romain De Marchi, Tadashi Fuse, Kevin Backstrom, Brandon Cocard, and Antti Autti, as well as mountain bikers Reece Wallace and KC Deane. They’re joined by a roster of skiers anchored by Lara Gut, Resi Stiegler, Duncan Adams, Tom Wallisch, Alexis Pinturault, and Mike Hornbeck.
Shred’s friends, athletes, and advocates have tested our optics on the snow and in the dirt—day in and day out for numerous seasons. Needless to say, they come to Kickstarter with a refined product rather than the sketch on a napkin. And although they’ve ensured shades can withstand the harsh conditions that shape life in the mountains, they’re truly at home anywhere.
The eyewear industry is dominated by giants that saturate the retail channel. Rather than using their resources to drive innovation, these brands have often stifled it. In lieu of craftsmanship and performance, they’ve prioritized smooth marketing and clever gimmicks, often forcing small, independent and innovative companies to the periphery.
Luckily, Kickstarter allows Shred to directly connect with you and other kindred spirits. As Shred is one of these smaller, independent companies, this is crucial. It provides an alternative means to garner the support and resources necessary to bring the technology and innovation in our new collection of shades to the market.
Kickstarted page is here:
