Prescription glasses for cycling - Rudy Project, RXSport, and why I hate Oakley

Cheryl at RXSport. Web-only means low overheads.

Not so long ago prescription glasses for sport seemed to be taboo. If you were an athlete, then you were assumed to have perfect vision. Here is my tale about how I finally, after quite alot of difficulty, located the right pair of shades at the wrong price, instead of the wrong pair at the right price.

If you love contact lenses then no need to read on. Personally, I do not think they work well for cycling. One piece of grit and you're doomed.

But prescription glasses for athletes? This industry is still in the dark ages. It is monopolised by very few dominant players and the prices are ludicrously high.

On that, more later.

But let's just rehearse how to actually find the perfect pair of prescription shades for cycling, price no object. It is not nearly as easy as you'd think.

For context, I already have the cheaper but clunkier Optilabs cycling shades, actually glazed by a company called Lubisol (although the UK-based trading company is in Croydon, south of London). The frames are a bit clunky, but I love the transition lenses, perfect for the low light cycle of much of an English calendar year. "For winter training," I said to myself as Spring came around. But now let's get something cool.

So earlier this year I started over, all fresh and excited in the hunt for the perfect pair. For this clean sheet exercise I went down to the Oakley boutique in Covent Garden. 

And indeed, all the bright young assistants help you try on all the cycling shades that Oakley make, and because they have a grip on the pro-peleton, they're the brand you want. The boutique even has a wind machine so you can get a subjective sense of protection.

But when I asked about prescription options, I was told that no one knew anything and furthermore they were not allowed to tell me anything. All I had to do was go to affiliate brand high street optician David Clulow, across the square. They could advise on prescription, but worry not, they carry the entire Oakley range!

So over I went to David Clulow. Now this is a cautionary tale. They do not carry the entire range of Oakleys, and most of it is not on the premises. Furthermore, the frames I wanted, the Racejackets (AKA Jawbones, of Mark Cavendish fame) could not be glazed (I was told firmly) even with a simple, single prescription. So that was the end of that! I was dejected.

I then went back online to RXSport (www.rxsport.co.uk), who I had looked at before. They are a web-only supplier of prescription sports glasses, offering many brands and shipping them all over the world. I called up, and low and behold, "Yes, you can have a prescription for Racejackets, and yes it is not an insert (clip-in addition) nor an implant (where they glaze the prescription bit on top of the regular shade, adding quite a bit to weight in the process)."

So little independent RXSport can do what the mighty Oakley cannot, bearing in mind that the mighty Oakley is actually a minnow within the truly mighty Luxottica conglomerate - the largest eyewear company in the world. Why they are so crassly incompetent I do not know, but it is probably a result of being part of something too big.

By then I was sufficiently unhappy with Oakley to want to explore all the other brands, and there are many.

RXSport sent out two pairs of frames on a 'home trial' which costs £4.95 plus return carriage (which was £8.00 because I wanted full insurance for the return. These items get stolen alot.)

So now I had a pair of trial Rudy Project Rydons alongside the Oakley Racejackets, to examine them side by side. I instinctively preferred the Rudy Projects. They had thin arms that fitted well under a time trial helmet, and had been well reviewed as well. Plus, they fitted my quite-narrow head well, unlike the Oakleys. Great but not perfect. The lenses were shallow in the vertical dimension, so you were aware of seeing 'out' of the bottom. Not fully protected in other words.

By now I was starting to despair.

But being a journalist, I decided to escalate everything to another level and visit RXSport. To my amazement they said it was possible, despite not having any retail premises, and yes, they had enough stock for me to try everything on.

So I pre-booked a train to Peterborough, north-east of London one hour, and took my bike with me. From the station, with iPhone mapping my only assistant, it was a terrifying case of negotiating main roads to get out of town and 14 kms to Thorney, an idyllic village. Always a reality check compared to the superb cycling culture London now has.

At one point I thought the whole mission was a stupid waste of time and a folly. Especially when I strayed onto the A47, which is a single lane highway clogged with big trucks.

But drawn on by my own curiosity, I eventually found an idyllic country lane leading to Thorney, a heritage village with a medieval abbey, in the grounds of which sit a gorgeous mansion and a converted stableblock. The stableblock houses eight desks and eight sales experts who between them, if my maths is correct, take £20-40,000 a day in sales for sporty eyewear for RXSport (based on 20 orders per person per day, which is average I was told, each sale with a median value of £200). A brilliant, highly profitable niche to exploit, and it's nowhere near saturated and growing rapidly. I hope someone reads this and goes into it too, if only to increase the competition.

Cheryl had spoken to me on the phone and we quickly located a Rudy Project frame that had the slightly deeper lens. It's called the Magster.

That's the end of the story. I placed an order; the finished item will come to me from a lab in 2-3 weeks. I've listed a few tips and insights at the bottom of this blog.

But here's the kicker footnote, and it concerns the industry.

There is only one laboratory in Europe than can handle delicate, single-glaze prescriptions in the curvy, wraparound style that we have come to take for normal on cycling shades. It's called Shamir and it's in Portugal. (http://www.shamir.pt/) That's where mine will come from.

From the RXSport website you can go for the 'official' Rudy Project glasses, which for a Magster with transitions comes to, wait for it, £589.99. Yep, you read correctly. That's near enough a thousand bucks for any Americans reading this.

If you source the RX version you get the same thing (but with a couple of deleted photochromic emerald green-type lens finish options) from the same lab, but for A LOT LESS.

But not SO MUCH less that RXSport aren't doing pretty nicely thank you in an industry premised on monopoly and extremes of greed premised on equally high levels of self-esteem among us, the customers. Remember the adage, that you can't put a price on vanity? It applies to cyclists and eyewear.

My Magsters cost £340.02. That makes me pretty vain I guess, but not as vain as £589.99.

So there are two other observations left to make in this little tale. The first is that Milan-based Luxottica coins in almost half a billion euros a year in net profit, and has a stranglehold on all the brands you thought were different but are not. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica

The second is that James Murrey Wells, the young chap who founded Glasses Direct, a UK company, is to be considered a hero, for exposing the fact that the industry is a giant rip-off. He sells prescription spectacles from £6, which is all you need to know about the real cost of producing a pair.

Maybe there is a third point. It is that when Wells tried to set up Glasses Direct he was the object of hatred in the industry, for exposing their dirty secret. He was bullied.

That tells you everything you need to know about the sector.

It would sweeten the bitter pill if Oakley could actually be competent as well, but by artificially dividing the non-prescription business from the prescription business, they've done themselves no favours. I know even less about Rudy Project, who are to all intents and purposes another Oakley, but in the end, I was just glad NOT to go with  Luxottica-owned brand.

TIPS and INSIGHTS
1. By a ratio of 5:1, northern Europeans prefer brown tint to grey, because it makes the world look warmer. I opted for a brown tint.
2. Getting the most expensive protective and non-reflective coatings is probably money well-spent.
3. Transitional lenses are now ubiquitous and make the glasses far more versatile than having to cart around multiple lenses for different conditions (another Oakley trick, 'persimmon for the evening and dark brown for noonday sun, and here's a special bag for carrying them all.')
4. Use the home trial service from web providers to examine as many pairs as you can before actually buying. Fit to different heads/faces is unique to each individual.
5. There is no truly budget sports glasses with prescription solution currently available, and Glasses Direct does not sell cycling glasses.
6. Shamir is one of very few labs in the world that can handle tricky prescriptions for cycling glasses
7. RXSport send out orders all over the world, via Portugal but from a UK base, suggesting that this is still a very specialised industry when it need not be.
8. Even allowing generously for expenses, the estimated profit margin on a pair of official Rudy Project Magsters at £589.99 is about 80%, compared to an average luxury goods gross margin of 60%.