Smith Sunglasses 2024 Preview

Retail Buyers Guide: Sunglasses S/S 2024 Retail Buyer‘s Guide
Brand: Smith
Interviewee: Allie Flake, Eyewear Category Manager

How was the sunglasses market overall in 2023?
From our market perspective, premium eyewear was soft, while market share leant itself towards lower price-point (sub $100) brands. We are seeing growth in prescription eyewear, as eyecare awareness, consumer need, and expanded product availability grows.

What new trends have you seen for sunglasses in board sports for 2024?
It’s a continuation of the glacier-style glasses and retro frame styles being re-issued into the market, as well as chunky, bold frames.

What segment of your offering is selling best in 2024 so far?
Performance Snow – top styles include the Embark, Pursuit, Venture, Wildcat, and Bobcat

Have you introduced any frame shapes and colours in your 2024 offer?
New colors are reminiscent of desert/nature scapes with muted greens, chalk rose, mustard yellows, and teals. We’ve also brought in marbled textured frames, and fun retro brights in our Wild Child Collection.

Which lens technologies from your 2024 offer are most in demand?
SMITH’s ChromaPop technology continues to lead our lens story. ChromaPop technology uses dyes to selectively filter light in the confusion areas on the visible light spectrum. Reducing the right amount of light from the environment in the confusion areas causes color separation which allows for sharper color perception and better optics which enhances your overall experience. New for 2024, we are offering first to market ChromaPop Glass Polarized Polarchromic lenses in two tint options in our best-selling Guide’s Choice frame and new Hookset frame, designed for on-water use.

Have you introduced any new lens colours and tints in your 2024 offering?
For 2024, 23 have a big focus on low-light tint options and our new ChromaPop Glass Polarized Photochromic (aka Polarchromic) lenses, the latter which are offered in Polarchromic Yellow Blue Mirror and Polarchromic Green Brown Mirror.

Any noteworthy sustainable practices in your production and shipping processes this year?
We continue to manufacture majority of our sunglasss range from Evolve bio-based frame material and have since launching our CORE Collection of eyewear made from post-consumer water bottles in early Spring 2022, Smith has continued its commitment to environmental improvements with the discontinuation of plastic waste across new packaging eyewear (and wintersports) products since Fall 2022 in North America, and onto the APAC region in 2023. All new retail boxes are now produced from post-consumer recycled cardboard that are designed to easily fold flat for compact storage for reuse and/or disposal.

What are your marketing stories?
ChromaPop Glass Polarized Photochromic (aka Polarchromic) lenses!!

How are you supporting retailers to sell this category?
Staff training and retail support is incredibly important to SMITH. We rely on shop employees to effectively communicate our design features and technology benefits to customers and utilize several programs – including ENDVR – to provide training tools and incentives for promoting SMITH within their locations. In addition, we’ve added significant resources to our trade marketing division to support retail displays, graphics, and point of purchase opportunities to continue driving the SMITH message in store.

Key Products:

Bobcat:
Offering complete coverage and protection across sport disciplines and seasons, the Bobcat sunglass provides the features and innovations of its best-selling counterpart, the Wildcat, in a smaller face fit and lightweight feel. The versatile crossover design with a modern fit and fierce flare pairs goggle-like performance with the airflow and comfort of a sunglass to support a vast range of adventures.

Bobcat

Guide’s Choice:
The Guide’s Choice utilize a timeless style, top-notch materials, and high-quality polarized ChromaPop™ optics that have set the standard in polarized sunglasses. Wide temples and a performance wrap ensure superior coverage from on-water glare, while premium spring hinges, plus non-slip nose and temple pads provide a secure, comfortable fit.

Guides Choice

Lowdown 2:
The thing about classics is they transcend decades. The Lowdown 2 sunglass, Smith’s iconic frame, could be from this season, next season, or 1962. Featuring an Evolve bio-based frame, color-boosting ChromaPop™ lenses, megol nosepads, and autolock hinges. Simple, sophisticated, timeless.

LOWDOWN