- This is the headquarters of Oakley.
You could probably guess, I see,
from the view behind me.
Now, in there, the legendary eyewear
is both designed and manufactured.
Not to mention a whole load
of their other products,
like indeed, their helmets.
We have been given the rare opportunity
of having a look around
and you, are coming too.
(upbeat music)
It's located in southern California,
Orange County to be precise
and just a stone's throw
from the Pacific Ocean.
This aerial view of the
facility gives you an idea
of the scale of the place.
This is where we are currently
and to the left, our sales
and marketing offices
and to the right, manufacturing.
Unlike most factories, this
one is designed to impress
and I think it does,
with good reason though
because the public are
allowed in here as well.
There is a shop over there
and a customer services point,
even a chap to clean your glasses for you.
It does sound a little
bit quieter than normal,
but that's because we asked
them to turn the music off
so that we could film.
Now, in total, this building
is 600,000 square feet.
Over a thousand people work here
and most of them in manufacturing.
Which I've gotta say, took me by surprise
because, I'll confess, I
didn't realize that any Oakleys
were still made in California
let alone over 70% of all Oakleys sold.
Now we get on to that point in name,
There is a story to tell.
We've got a meeting with a man
who literally wrote the book on Oakley.
He's gonna help us talk us through it.
(upbeat music)
Brian, as we are about to
go back into the history,
the official Oakley
tour with Brian Takumi,
who's the VP of Product Creative.
Before we get stuck in, Brian,
what actually is your role in Oakley now?
- So my role now, is to actually work
with the brand team overseas
and talking when we roadmap product,
what is the direction of the products
we're gonna make to
work with the brand team
to make sure we align with how we see
the brand coming to life
and what it stands for.
And so what we'll do is write
the stories and narratives
behind the emotional
reasons why our product exists,
besides just the features
and benefits of it.
- Oakley was started
in 1975 by Jim Jannard.
And his first product was handlebar grips
for motocross bikes.
Now, by all accounts, he wanted to create
a grip that actually made a difference.
And so he designed something quite radical
by the standards of
the day, and he sourced
a specific material that actually becomes
gripper in the wet.
A material still used
on the eyewear today.
It wasn't until 1980 that the first
eyewear appeared, though.
And it was the O-Frame goggles,
followed by ski goggles in 1983.
Right, so phase one, I guess was motocross
and BMX grips and goggles.
Phase two then, is that when we start
getting on to eyewear?
- Yep, what we'll walk
to next in this next bay,
we'll look at some of
the history and origins
about how he started eyewear.
- Cool, let's do it.
- One of the things he asked himself
is why isn't there a piece of eyewear
on the market, a sunglass,
that has the same coverage as a goggle?
And so he said well, I make goggles,
I bet I can go back and make one.
So what he did, was he
went back to his shop,
took a goggle lens,
cut out a slightly smaller
shape than a goggle,
took a coat hanger and made
some ear stems out of it.
- [Simon] I thought
that was kind of a joke,
but this is legit, is it?
- That's not the original one,
but that pretty much recreates
what he did back in the day.
- [Simon] Can I put these on?
- You can try and put them on,
I don't know how comfortable they'll be.
- Yeah, I think my ears are too big.
- But basically from that,
the eyeshade was born.
The sports performance
optics category was born.
'Til that day nothing
really existed like that,
you basically had a
goggle that you could wear
as a piece of sunglasses.
- So these in 1984, right?
- That is 1984, yeah.
- And that's the like, sweat pads?
- Yep, this is an original
eyeshade from back in the day.
So even for something back then,
when you look at that, having
the face foam like a goggle,
the other thing was having
the adjustable ear stems
that nothing in eyewear
had really ever seen,
been done like that.
Really, he was trying to make
obviously like a goggle
strap's adjustable,
he wanted to make the ear stems adjustable
'cause obviously people's
heads are different sizes.
So you can see even at that stage
how much technology he was trying
to put into the eyewear at the time.
So what you'll see here,
the Blades were born.
- [Simon] Yeah.
- Which had that more square shape,
not as much of a literal goggle shape.
The ear stems were interchangeable.
- And these are '85?
- Those are roughly around '85.
And then around '86 you had
the Razor Blades come in.
Which was one of the things
they noticed about this was,
the size of it was great
because of its coverage it came,
but for smaller faces
and things like that,
they need something a little smaller.
So the Razor Blade lens was born.
Which you can see here,
which was a little lower
profile than the Blades.
On top of that, this is where really
the technology component came in.
Because one of the things that happened
was if you change the height of this lens,
what it does is it will
actually change the rake
of how the lens sits on your face.
So one of the things as he was going down
the path of making technology,
he wanted to make sure
that angle stayed the same.
So the thing that was born
now was the Trigger ear stems.
Because now that the
height of the lens change,
putting this kink in
it actually helped keep
the rake of the lens ar the
same angle as the Blade.
- I've always wondered why
you got that kink in it,
I thought it was an aesthetic thing.
- Yeah, everyone thinks
an aesthetic thing,
and this is why Razor
Blades have probably become
so iconic, is 'cause of that kink.
It was actually done for
a performance reason.
- We could go on, through Mumbos,
through M Frames, Racing Jackets,
I mean the list of classics is a long one.
But there is a more recent development
that Oakley are particularly proud of.
Their first range of helmets.
(upbeat music)
Now how is this for a piece of history?
Check out those initials, there.
Greg LeMond's actual jersey.
That's amazing, isn't it?
(upbeat music)
They're not lying when they
say authorized personnel only.
This is the design lab,
and not only are we not allowed in there,
but also half of Oakley are
not allowed in there either.
But do not worry, because
we've got an appointment
with a couple of designers
at a fake design lab
that we're gonna set up.
(upbeat music)
This is Daniel, who is
the design lead at Oakley
and a part of the team that created
the new range of helmets.
His job was to sculpt a shape
that performed both from
an aero perspective,
as well as looking like something
you'd actually want to wear.
The shapes that you would expect
to be fast are not that fast.
We started with these elongated
speedy looking, teardrop looking shapes.
If you look at Ferraris you expect them
to be this really slippery form
in the aerodynamic chamber but it's not.
It's actually the Prius that's got
the lowest drag coefficient.
So that's the thing, like I
can't put a Prius on your head,
because although it will be fast,
it's not gonna look fast
and you're not gonna
feel good putting that
on your head, right?
- Yeah.
So the trick then, is to design
something that looks like a Ferrari
but functions like a Prius.
- Absolutely.
Venting and non-vented areas,
that balance is probably key to making
a fast helmet because you
can make it really fast
and close the whole thing up,
but say you're cycling
and you're heating up
then you lose performance
and slow down that way.
I have a need to build some
nice shapes here for ventilation.
But second, this is what you see on TV,
and if every other helmet looks
like a Swiss cheese, you know,
you can't really recognize who's is who's.
So that was kind of the biggest thing
is okay, how can we create something
really identifiable from brand perspective
in the front, here?
So there's a lot of little
things here and there like that
that took a lot of consideration.
(upbeat music)
- Right, so we're still
in our fake design lab,
but instead of going with the aesthetics
and talking to Daniel about it,
we've now got the
engineering brains behind it.
So Chad, you head up that side of things,
effectively taking the sketches
and then making them into real things.
Is that right?
So we've talked about making it look cool,
we've talked about making it fast,
but I guess the primary function
that really no one wants
to talk about with helmets
is the fact that it's gotta be safe,
it's gotta hopefully one day
potentially save your life.
When you're starting from scratch,
how easy is it to actually come up
with something that functions correctly
in those situations?
- It's really hard, so
what we essentially do
is we just base everything
off of an offset,
and then we give Daniel just
the plainest looking offset.
We start with a head and we offset it
and we say okay, here's
our thickness, go ahead.
And they start sketching
and if they violate
any of those thicknesses,
then we have a conversation.
- So you know that the EPS foam
has to be a certain thickness
in order to function correctly.
And then it's a case of removing bits
that don't affect the functionality of it.
- Yeah, more or less.
Like here's a really good example.
We have these giant vents here,
they don't pass.
We learned that the hard way.
So now we're like, now what do we do?
So we put this big plastic
bar across the front of it.
That kinda helps pull everything together
and now you have a
successful vent, essentially.
(upbeat music)
- In here, believe it or not,
was Michael Jordan's
private basketball court
until about six years go.
There's also this 450 seater auditorium
tucked away, complete with a tire mark
from a Harley Davidson
that was doing a burnout
and another one, this
time from a motocross bike
that rode in and out
during the product launch.
Now this rather unassuming door
leads us to the vision performance lab,
so this is like the R&D center for Oakley.
(knocks)
Hey, Wayne.
- Come on in.
- Thanks.
This is the boss.
I'm expecting to see some toys in here,
have you got all the kit?
- We got plenty of things to show you.
(upbeat music)
So one tool that's really been valuable
for the Advancer's element,
Flight Jacket and Field Jacket
is this environmental chamber.
- [Simon] Okay.
- [Wayne] Right now we
have the Advancer Frame
on a sweaty head.
- [Simon] A sweaty head?
- Right, so we developed this guy
to pull some hot moisture
out onto some skin.
We have a cold environment
that typically pulls
steam on the lens, right, fogging.
So we use this to really iterate
how far we have to advance the frame
in order to have that lens clear.
So the Advancer frame for us,
we've found the key was to advance it
roughly five millimeters.
That worked on virtually everybody.
And within roughly five seconds of moving,
all your fog dissipates.
(upbeat music)
Essentially we're gonna shoot this guy
with a quarter inch steel ball.
One of these guys right here.
- Like a ball bearing.
- It's a ball bearing.
And there's test requirements for this
that say you have to shoot this guy
at 150 feet per second,
which is around 100 miles an hour.
So this laser's right where
we're gonna hit the lens.
- Okay.
- We're gonna close this glass here.
You wanna get up here close to see this.
(dramatic music)
So if we look at the damage to this lens,
it typically looks like a scratch.
- [Simon] Yeah.
- Right, you can feel a little bit
on the front side of the lens, there.
Feel the backside.
You don't really see
anything, feel anything there.
- That's nothing (chuckles).
- So the lens material
is incredibly strong.
But what's important is
everything's engineered as a unit.
- Okay.
- So when we're talking about
we have to engineer the lens
and the frame together to pass optics,
as well as impact.
(upbeat music)
- Now this, frankly
terrifying looking bit of kit,
is the high mass impact test.
So different to the one we've seen before
and we've got a much bigger weight,
this is 500 grams.
But it is fortunately
traveling slightly slower.
We're gonna drop it from a
height of 127 centimeters
onto our poor head form here.
But we are gonna at least give him
a pair of glasses to start with,
the kind of pair that you
might find in a gas station.
(upbeat music)
Ouch.
So apparently, that lens
is made from a plastic
called CR 39.
And doesn't look like it's exactly tough.
Next up then, pair of Oakleys.
(upbeat music)
There we go.
Little bit of a difference, isn't it?
Now, that isn't obviously gonna represent
something being flicked up off the road,
that more like if you fall off your bike
and headbutt your brake lever
or something equally horrific like that.
I'm guessing that was an impact test
that went wrong, that one.
Now this looks like quite
a cool bit of kit, Wayne.
What exactly are we gonna
be looking at, here?
- This is where we test optics.
So for this brand, optics are
really what we're built on.
What we'll see with the laser
is we have a laser 35 feet away.
On this monitor you can see a bullseye.
And ultimately what we
want is minimal change.
- Yeah.
- Right?
If we have minimal change,
then essentially light's
passing right through that lens
and entering your eye at a proper angle,
allowing you to see.
- [Simon] Okay.
- So that's an Oakley frame
there, minimal change.
If I show you, this
happens to be a competitor,
we won't talk about it, but ...
- Wow.
- What matters is that we still
have a curve to that frame,
and we see a lot of deviation.
On this guy up here,
what we need to maintain
is lines of definition, right?
So the test requirement says
you have to meet 20 lines of resolution
on all four sides.
So two groups of three all the way around,
you see the 20 on the right.
- Yep.
- If you can hit 20 lines of resolution
you've met the highest
optical standard in the world.
That's an industrial standard for optics.
And you can see with this
frame we're nearly double.
40 lines of resolution.
For us in this building,
20 is just a bench mark,
a minimum requirement.
We achieve for the best optics we can.
- And then on to the manufacturing.
Unfortunately, despite being shown around,
we weren't actually allowed to film.
Which is a real shame because,
well frankly it was amazing.
Firstly, the raw materials coming in,
being melted down, and then
with the necessary tints
then added for each type of lens.
Then nor so, the fact that the molds
for the lenses cost up to
half a million dollars, each.
And potentially you'd
need up to five molds
for the most popular ranges of sunglasses.
It kinda makes you think how much it costs
to actually design and manufacture
a new pair of glasses in the first place.
I did ask that question, and I was told
it was about one million dollars.
Now after the mold, the lenses are cut
to an accuracy of not quite
point five millimeters.
This apparently ensures that the lenses
are a perfect fit in the frames
because any compression
of them to get them to fit
would actually distort the lens.
However fractionally, but
enough to get rejected
by Oakley's quality control.
After the lens is cut, it gets taken
to have its coating applied.
Now this is a separate
process from the tint.
It's a time consuming one,
different shades iridium take
different amounts of time.
Apparently jade iridium takes upwards
of four hours to complete.
(upbeat music)
Now before we leave for Hill Ranch,
we have one last piece of
tech to find out more about.
Prizm technology, which
is where certain tints
added to the lenses and then
filter out certain colors
and enhance others.
It's specific to certain sports.
The aim being to improve
the vision of the wearer.
- So with cycling, if you
look at a road surface
it's actually absorbing
a lot of the light,
so you're void of contrast.
And so one of the leverages
is our eye sensitivities,
bring in more of the
good light where our eyes
are more sensitive to seeing details
and filter more of the bad light out
so that we can get better contrast.
If you wanna get really in depth,
we actually take a device called
our hyper spectral camera
out onto the field,
onto different environments and measure
exactly what light is
reflecting off of the surfaces.
So we can tune the lenses
for that.
- So you literally go
to a piece of pavement or tarmac
and then say this is reflecting
this amount.
- Exactly these wavelengths.
It would be a similar graph showing us
what wavelengths are
reflecting off of that surface.
So when we put a Prizm lens
on in front of our eyes,
you can tell that it's
filtering light very differently
from that gray lens.
The manufacturing process of a Prizm lens
is the same as our other lenses.
The difference, the magic,
is in the Prizm dyes.
So we actually mix the
dyes in different recipes,
depending on the lens and the
profile that we wanna create
and I'll show you kinda
what that looks like.
So this is an individual dye,
heres another individual dye.
And you can see when we mix the dyes
we start to get somewhat similar
to that profile that you saw.
- [Simon] Yeah.
- And depending on how
much we use of each one,
we can make a profile for any
of the environments that we have.
- Those dyes then, that
actually affects the color
of the lens itself.
But what about the coatings then,
so the iridium coating that goes on top,
does that interact with the Prizm dyes,
or is that completely separate?
- The iridium is a coating that goes
on the front of the lens,
and it's actually reflecting light.
So if you look at the lens,
you can see what light
is reflecting off of the front.
- So that would affect what
your eyes is detecting.
- Right.
If you're reflecting
light that means it's not
getting through to your eyes.
We use the iridium coating in conjunction
with the Prizm recipes so that we can get
the exact profile that we want.
So we take into account what light
is gonna be reflected off
of the front of the iridium.
- Now that sounds like quite
a complicated process, then,
given how many different
colored iridium coatings
or how many Prizm leans profiles, right?
And each one has to be factored in.
And do you need to take into consideration
the different lenses as well,
the different shapes?
Or is that like a given?
- No so the lens shape we can make,
for example, this Road Prizm lens,
it comes in different lens shapes.
We actually develop it to work
with different lens shapes.
As far as the iridiums,
we choose the iridiums
based on that lens base and vice versa.
So if we want a certain iridium color,
like a green iridium, we'd
make sure that the base
works in conjunction with that color.
For Road, we've found that
this iridium worked best
with that road base to bring
in the colors that we want.
(upbeat music)
- Well this brings us to the end
of our factory tour from here at Oakley.
I'm currently waiting on
their very own helipad
for my lift home.
Waiting, perhaps, a bit optimistically.
I could be here for some time.
But while we wait, do make
sure you give this video
a big thumbs up, say thank
you very much to Oakley
for showing us around.
Remember to get involved in the comments
and also stay tuned to GCN as well
'cause we've got a load more videos
coming up from right here at Hill Ranch.
Well there we go.
Gotta say I wasn't expecting that
but that was very nice of them.
