When daytime television host Kelly Clarkson introduced Tracy Green and Nancey Harris as “mamas in their 50s proving it’s never too late to try something big”, her guests were none too happy about having their ages on full blast.
The business partners’ mood improved when a fellow guest, Mika Brzezinski, appeared via satellite to surprise the Brooklyn-based eyewear entrepreneurs with an all-expenses-paid trip to Abu Dhabi. The MSNBC host informed the business partners that they would be attending the Forbes 30/50 Summit, a conference for women in business.
Two weeks later, Green and Harris were 6,600 miles away from home, networking with some of the world’s most prominent women, including Billie Jean King and Hillary Clinton. They traded stories with everyone from a 30-year-old app creator to other entrepreneurs in their 50s. No matter who they talked to, the message was consistent: “Ask for what you want and what you need to grow your business,” said Green. “Most importantly, don’t give up.”
Green and Harris know they aren’t reinventing the wheel. Instead, they are custom-building a wheel (an eyewear wheel, in their case) to make glasses work better for people of color. “The average pupillary distance [PD] for most European ethnicities is 56 to 60 millimeters,” Green said. “Many African Americans have a PD of 70 and higher.” The frames in their collection feature wider nose bridges and longer arms than most.
The duo’s co-venture traces back to Green’s loss of an expensive pair of glasses. She struggled to find a replacement that was to her liking. “I had a line across my nose and indentation on my cheeks [from the models on the market] and wanted more,” Green said.
According to the research firm Statista Market Insights, the US eyewear market is estimated to be worth $33.83bn. European men, notably Francesco Milleri, chairman of EssilorLuxottica, dominate the lucrative field of eyeglasses. Milleri’s Milan-based company owns LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Sunglass Hut, Target Optical and Glasses.com – not to mention licenses for eyewear from the luxury brands Chanel, Prada, Armani, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Coach, Ray-Ban, Michael Kors, Versace and Dolce & Gabbana. With their Vontélle Eyewear, Green and Harris are vying to get a piece of the pie.
Harris and Green met more than 30 years ago, as students at Morgan State University, a historically Black college in Baltimore. Green is a former chief financial officer of a hospital, and Harris spent years in corporate public relations. In early 2020, Harris was laid off and accepted a severance package. Green continued to work, until she was diagnosed with diabetes type 1.5, and quit in December. “I turned 50 on December 11, and it was a kind of birthday present, early retirement, I’m-changing-my-life moment,” Green said.
Once they agreed to try to fill the gap in the market, Harris began researching the manufacturing side of the eyewear business. Within months, while vacationing together on Martha’s Vineyard, the two were writing a business plan. They traveled together to Paris for an eyewear expo during fashion week. Among the thousands of attendees at the convention, the duo stood out. “Everybody knew who we were by the second day because we were the only Black ones,” Green said. “They’re like, ‘Hi, Nancey. Hi, Tracy.’ There were no Black-owned vendors with a booth there.”
Two years after Vontélle’s 2020 launch, Harris and Green became the first Black women-owned eyewear company to land a partnership with Paramount Consumer Products, giving them exclusive rights to make eyewear featuring Nickelodeon characters SpongeBob SquarePants, Baby Shark and Rugrats.
“We worked so hard in 2021 together, and it yielded amazing outcomes,” Green said. “We realized that we had worked hard for our employers. If we applied the same energy to our own business, we would be just as successful.”
You hear people say representation matters all the time. But why does representation matter in eyewear?
Harris: For decades, people have just been wearing what has been given to them. And we’ve been frustrated with that. But we didn’t know why. Tracy and I got to the core of it, by doing our own research and understanding that average bridge sizes [on glasses] are between 12 and 15 millimeters. Those are for people who have narrow features. The National Institutes of Health’s National Eye Institute reports that African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to have cataracts, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy than any other ethnic group. Most importantly, due to these factors, [including] high astigmatism [rates], many people cannot wear contacts. Wearing ill-fitting glasses also causes pain and headaches after prolonged wear. This includes lines across the noses, pain behind the ears and imprints on the face because glasses are too tight and not made for our faces.
Green: I was reading the New York Times a couple of months ago about how your iPhone does face recognition, but they never use African Americans in the trials. Black people have problems with facial recognition. It’s the same thing with glasses. They never use us in their trials.
How did you discover discrepancies in the way glasses fit different ethnic groups?
Harris: We started doing survey panels of friends and family first, and then we did an online expo during the pandemic and we were able to send out a survey to over 400 people that virtually attended our “booth”. We asked them about size. What were their facial dimensions? Were they experiencing tightness, discomfort, etc? Even though we didn’t have a lot of sales, we got a lot of feedback.
You launched Vontélle during the pandemic. What obstacles did you face beyond the usual startup issues?
Harris: We didn’t realize that people were holding on to their coins a little bit more because they were being laid off. People were clutching their purses just a little tighter. The retail stores were shutting their doors, so they weren’t seeing customers, and the optometrists weren’t seeing patients. So when we were reaching out to the stores, they weren’t buying glasses any more; they were trying to move the glasses they already had on the shelves.
But people sat in front of their computers all day, and they were on Zoom. Glasses happen to be an extension of who you are. People started to want glasses that reflected their personality.
Startups often struggle with fundraising. How did you raise capital and keep cash flowing?
Harris: So the very first grant that we won, Tracy applied for and I didn’t even know. And she said, “Oh, we won.” It was through an organization called Hello Alice. This particular grant was the Latinx Mosaic Grant Fund.
Green: The Latinx grant we got through Dani Garcia, who is the ex-wife of the Rock [Dwayne Johnson]. After we got that, we applied for everything.
Luckily, Nancey and I had jobs before. We had savings. And we said, “All right, we’re going to do this.” You know, we each put in $50,000 cash. We haven’t paid ourselves back yet. But we have not had to add any more of our own money.
Black people make up 20% of the consumers of luxury brands. How do you convince your target audience to pivot from Versace to Vontélle?
Green: You focus on the fit. OK, so you got the Versace and Gucci and stuff. But then I’m making stuff for our faces. I, too, own those designer glasses. I wear those glasses and I will still have a line across my nose. I would still have indentations on my cheeks after I wore them.
Sometimes we [Black people] will pay money for crap because of the name attached to it. When eye doctors get our glasses, they say, “Oh, my God, your quality is so great.” They tell us it’s better than Gucci.
When you launched, you focused on selling eyewear direct to consumers. You only targeted eye doctors later. How important is it to be nimble in business?
Green: It’s important because you can go down on your sword. If we would have said “No, no, no, we have to sell directly to consumers,” we wouldn’t be here because you don’t get the sales unless you spend millions and millions on marketing.
We just gave up on the [online] ads because we were spending so much money to get maybe one [sale]. So it didn’t work out. Then we realized we had to have other ways to make money. Selling to optical shops was the best. You make less money per unit when you sell wholesale, but you’re getting in front of the customer. The volume is there.
