About Us

FAÇADE Team
 

At FAÇADE, while we strive for originality, it is our goal to improve our lives by creating innovative products stylish and attractive. Since the first patent was granted for our unique eyeglasses in 2008, our painstaking effort to produce our new ready-to-wear reading glasses, sunglasses, and PC glasses finally became a reality. Despite the fact that the statistics show nearly ninety-eight percent of registered patents never make it to the market, we believe that innovative ideas could become a successful product one day if it has the combined element of function, style, and quality.
 

We hope our effort to produce unique quality products will make a positive difference in someone’s life. Your feedback is always appreciated at FAÇADE!

 

How FAÇADE Eyewear was born
 

One day when I was in my late 40’s, I finally got tired of keep loosing my pricy designer reading glasses. I was not about to wear a granny chain with my glasses either, so out of my own necessity, I started designing simple, convenient and stylish reading glasses for all baby boomers. I then applied for utility and design patents for my idea, and they were granted in 2008 and 2009. Since then, the second and the third design patents for the variation of designs were granted. The second utility patent is now pending.

Unlike ordinary eyewear frames, FAÇADE Eyewear is made completely in one piece; there are no adjustments that could be made at the hinges, so the frames had to be made perfectly down to one tenth of a millimeter. But creating a perfect CAD for our unique frame was not simple, and finding technically capable of producing unconventional one-piece frame by an injection mold was almost impossible. I finally understood why functional and attractive one-piece frame eyewear that has been injected by a mold has never been produced anywhere in the world.

After a few unsuccessful mold productions and minor design modifications, we finally had produced a valuable product that is not only practical, but also pure and vibrant.
 

In the meantime, international shipping rate, import/export taxes, and FDA registration have been increasing in addition to the cost of production significantly with China's rapid economic growth and constant changes in currency exchange rates, and our original idea of producing a unique, stylish, and convenient eyewear that anyone could afford was becoming extremely difficult. But we are committed to keep producing the unique products for our customers around the world.

About the Founder
 

I was born in 1950 into a family of prominent artists and educators in Tokyo. When I was 3 years old, my parents divorced; my mother had decided to pursue her career as a textile designer instead of being a wife and a mother. Since then, I was raised by my aging grandparents and a nanny. When I was 15, my grandfather passed away at age 90, and I lost my grandmother in the following year. When I was growing up, I always enjoyed improving everything I could think of, but I had a difficult time in school because I did not know that I was dyslexic at that time. But by the time I was in high school, I remember trying much harder than anyone else to achieve my goals.
 

I obtained the degrees in design and education, but by the time I graduated from college, I was more interested in creating functional and beautiful living space. I decided to visit Florence and Rome to get the inspiration from where Renaissance began. On Labor Day weekend, September 3rd, 1972, I had an opportunity to come to California for the first time. As soon as I stepped out of the plane at San Francisco Airport, I was blinded by bright sunshine and endless blue sky that I have not seen anywhere else. I thought I had to make this sunny place my home. In hindsight, I obviously underestimated the extreme hardship of starting a new life alone in a totally unfamiliar culture without being able to speak the language. I was young, fearless, and naïve.

If I could create even one job through this project anywhere in the world and be able to afford to provide better eyesight with our eyeglasses to people in underdeveloped countries to see the world in their own eyes, it would be worth every struggle I had because life without hope is no life, so quitting was never an option for me.

My deepest gratitude to my late grandparents for giving me the foundation of life, to my closest friends as well as friends who passed away for their years of support, and to our customers who have been the inspirations to our project. I hope you will enjoy our eyewear for many years to come.

Karen McLaughlin

Inventor/Founder

FAÇADE LLC

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