What began as an idea for a business class hatched out of a house on Eugene’s Emerald Alley nearly a year ago has evolved into a profitable business that has had its product displayed prominently at football games, around the University campus and even on ESPN.
Shady Peeps, LLC., founded by University students Jason Bolt, Caleb Iorg, Lindsay Lowen and Vijay Raghavan, has grown from a small start-up company into a recognizable business that has taken off at the University and is continuing to expand to other schools across the nation.
“I think the goal all along was to get people excited about the Ducks through using the sunglasses as kind of a driver for that,” Iorg, Shady Peeps’ marketing director, said. “It gets fans excited and gives them something to wear on their faces to go along with all of the wigs and the other crazy stuff that we all wear for the games.”
Bolt, a postbaccalaureate medical student and owner of Shady Peeps, LLC., said he came up with the concept of starting up the company based on the absence of sunglasses from the school’s spirit wear. Bolt, who founded the Oregon-based sunglasses company Visionary Lenses, LLC., said he used his background in the eyewear industry and profits from his business to create Shady Peeps’ signature Wayfarer-style sunglasses, which he sent to a few University friends to test out the potential market value of the sunglasses. The responses, Bolt said, were promising.
“The test market students loved them, and all of their friends were asking for their own pair,” Bolt said. “The responses to them have been very good, and the returns have been good as well.”
Bolt then collaborated with Iorg and two other postbaccalaureate business students in creating a marketing plan for the company as a part of their new venture planning class. The result generated the company a second place recognition in this year’s Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship Venture Quest competition.
“To see people that were established in the business world put their approval on Shady Peeps as a whole and this group was really cool to see,” Bolt said.
Group members also said they enjoyed working for the company despite the competitive nature of the challenge.
“It was a wonderful experience and a good competition,” Lowen said. “There was a lot of excitement generated from it. I think we all had a lot of fun doing it even though it was a competition.”
Although no preliminary sale estimates were available, Iorg estimates that “thousands of Duck fans have been wearing them.”
This coming summer, Bolt said he wants to expand the company’s reach to about 14 other schools across the nation, including University of Southern California, University of Washington and Oregon State University, which have all reportedly expressed interest in the company’s sunglasses. Iorg also said the company recently obtained licensing from the University to incorporate its logo onto the company’s products and will be releasing versions of the Wayfarer-style sunglasses with the University logo prominently displayed on them.
Iorg said several distinguishing features about Shady Peeps sunglasses are their flexible arm hinges, polycarbonate lenses and titanium oxide coating, which was designed to give the sunglasses a “loud,” reflective nature and give the company the option of providing consumers with more customizable color combinations.
During football season, the company hosted promotional giveaways at several home games and at the BCS National Championship Game in Glendale, Ariz. Currently, Bolt said the company carries 11 different color combinations of its Wayfarer-style sunglasses that range from green to clear. In all, Bolt said 14 retail locations in Oregon and Washington, including Rainbow Optics, the Duck Store and Hirons, currently sell the sunglasses at a retail price of $20.
So far, several retailers have reported promising results from Shady Peeps’ sales. The Duck Store, which began to sell Shady Peeps sunglasses at the beginning of the school year, saw a surge of sales during fall term, especially with the success of this year’s football team.
“It was nuts when we first got them in,” Richard Foat, a Duck Store sales associate, said. “With football, tailgating and everything, people saw them at the games with their spirit wear on, and it sold like crazy. It was tough to keep them in for the first few weeks, and we were excited about that.”
Other retailers also reported a similar surge in sales and have even said the sunglasses have attracted new customers to their stores.
“We have some posters that bring students into our store, and we feel that some of them might not have come into here in the first place,” Mike Bray, a Rainbow Optics sales associate, said. “The other thing that we’ve been really happy about is that a lot of our existing customers of all ages see it as an impulse buy. It’s a good price point, and with the Ducks getting real successful, they see the sunglasses right at the counter and they’ll just go right ahead and buy them.”
Although football season has ended, both Foat and Bray believe Shady Peeps will continue to sell.
“I don’t think that we would stop carrying it for any reason,” Foat said. “I would say that Shady Peeps are here to stay.”
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