Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The Luxottica Overtake

While the merger is still taking place, it appears that the Luxottica Group will most likely be the new owners of Oakley. It was announced on June 21, 2007 that Luxottica had bought Oakley for $2.1 billion, meaning Jim Jannard, founder and majority stock owner stands to make 1.65 billion out of the deal. The reason that they are not the official owners yet is due to an ocean of legal hoops to jump through, mostly monopoly/anti-trust laws. Fortunately for Luxottica, they have been recently granted early termination of the U.S. anti-trust waiting period. More information can be found in the Luxottica press release here. As for the funding needed to be raised in order to purchase Oakley, it has all been accounted for through two groups of international banks. More about that can be found in another press release here.

It looks as though this is all going to happen and Luxottica will be able to add Oakley and their recent acquisition of Oliver People's to their brand offerings. There are many people that feel as though Luxottica will now be a complete company with the addition of Oakley to their roster. Luxottica had been lacking in the sports eye-wear segment of the market and have now just filled that void with the leader in it.

Personally, I feel as though Oakley has sold out. They have always made it a point to differentiate themselves from their competitors at all costs. As a matter of fact, Luxottica was their biggest competitor and rival up until they were bought out. I guess I can understand Jim Jannard selling the company considering that he is 57 years old and recently started a new video camera company called Red.

Hopefully Oakley can still stay the way that they are but now with a much bigger bank roll that will allow them to reseach and design newer and better technologies and eyewear. Hopefully nothing terrible happens. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Collection Photos

A lot of people think that collecting things is a waste of time and money, but I feel like they haven't found something that they are truly passionate about. I am a very passionate person, so I have found several things to collect starting as a little kid collecting Hot Wheels cars and recently Disc Golf Discs, Puma Shoes and Oakley products. If you think my collections are off the wall, you will love this post since I will be showing you some collection photos of some inane Oakley collectors.

Here is a picture of my collection as of the beginning 2007:


Here it is after about 9 months minus a lot of apparel and shoes and such...also there is a watch on top and a bunch of other stuff.


For security reasons behind the policies of owning Oakley display cases, I have left the names of the owners of these collections anonymous. Take a look...they make my collection look like a joke. Each of the pics comes from a different collection as well.





Yeah, this Oakley thing might need to be classified as a clinical illness.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

The Red Shift Line

Oakley has come out with an entire new line that is military-inspired called the Red Shift line. This is the logo for it in the middle of the picture with a pin next to it:


The tagline for the line is "Standard Issue for your personal revolution"


They have almost everything you could possibly want from bags, to shoes, to hats, to even sunglasses. The styling is based off of WWII military gear with Soviet-style graphics. Here is a picture of the bags:






These are the special release of Gascans that came out with this line, called the "Soviet Gascan" They come with the pin that is pictured at the top of this post.









For a list of all items and prices as well as information on women's items in the Red Shift line, check out the link on Oakley's website here

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

A New Artist Series and the Grab Bag

It is now October, and that means that a new Artist Series piece comes out. This time it is the Todd Francis Eyepatch. At the same price as the Art Chantry Hijinx of $160 USD, I would say that these are another must-have. Check out these amazing pictures thanks to Brent Haley (Bhaley2four) from the O-Review. On a side note, if any of the links from this blog are not accessible, I would recommend signing up with the O-Review here. If new member registration is closed, just send an e-mail here. Anyways, here they are.






Next, Oakley has just begun its "Grab Bag" promotion. In essence, whenever someone buys a pair of O-Matter frames (like Hijinx, Gascan, etc.) from an O-Store they have the option of getting a Grab Bag icon. The purchaser does not know what the icon is going to look like, and there are many different icons that they can recieve. As the supply of these icons runs out, Oakley will put out new variations. Here is a picture with a few examples of what you could recieve:


There are many many more and the program is ongoing, so there will be a lot more to check out. I have a feeling that this is going to be one series that no one is going to be able to collect all of.