My name is Geraldo Delgado. I am an eyewear designer and optician. I was born and raised in New York City. I grew up in a New York City Housing Authority apartment.

How did this journey start? I worked a lot of jobs that I didn’t love. In 2008 by chance a friend of a friend suggested becoming an optician. That idea grew in my head and by 2010, I was a licensed optician in the state of New York. I’ll spare you all the details about being an optician but I came to realize that I didn’t love the way opticals operated and how eyewear was priced.

What next?

What I did love was how eyewear was created. But where does one find this information? YouTube! No, no not really, 2010 YouTube was still the wild west back then but no information that I could use. Through word of mouth I found a retired frame maker at an industry convention that happens once a year in New York and persuaded him to train me.

Two years. Afterward, I took what I learned and started sourcing frame-building machines and components out of Europe and China. The first few frames were definitely rough since I was testing out the machines. I learned to build eyewear frames by hand with a couple of tools that generated heat in order to get the hinge and the wire core into the frame.

Eyewear machinery has come a long way. I had a CNC milling machine, a wire core inserter, and tumblers to polish the eyewear pieces.

In a two-bedroom apartment in NYC. I slept in one bedroom and had the machines in the other. I spent all my money on the materials and these machines — I couldn’t spare another cent to rent a location. I buffered the floor with workout mats and soundproofed the room the best I could. I had that setup for a year, and no one complained, so I think I did a decent job.

The frames that came out of that apartment were sold to friends and a couple of local stores. Little by little, I was able to get some traction and get an office in Harlem, NYC. Finally, I was able to hire someone to help me out part-time, and it was pretty good for a while. I had made friends in the industry, so getting business became easier. I was approached to design and manufacture frames for other brands, which also helped my bottom line. Before I knew it, I had moved my manufacturing to China because I couldn’t keep up with the volume.

We saw a couple of companies doing direct-to-consumer eyewear way back when, but the quality was terrible. I knew we could do better. We control our process, sourcing and negotiating prices for the materials we use. All design details are done in-house and then sent out to be made to our specifications. We have maintained our independence and now operate out of New York City and Cleveland. We’re a growing company, which means we all wear many hats. We’re truly proud of how far we’ve come.