Marc Levinson
John Mauriello
Novedge: Tell us a bit about who you are and
what you do
Marc Levinson: I am an Industrial Designer by trade
and I am passionate about creating innovative, well designed products
and the businesses around them.
John Mauriello: I am a
product designer. I am in charge of designing the eyewear frames,
ensuring that the quality of our products are of a high fit and
finish, and ensuring that the values of Protos Eyewear are communicated
through the designs. I have worked for design consultancies in the
past and worked with the smallest start-ups and the largest
corporations doing industrial/product design. I am currently the
chief design officer at Protos.
Novedge: Why 3D printed glasses?
Marc Levinson: Protos' mission is to use this new
technology to solve meaningful problems. With traditional methods of
manufacturing, companies need to mass produce tens of thousands of
the same exact product. With 3D printing we are not constrained by
the same rules or properties so each product can be unique. 3D
printing is also much more flexible when it comes to the actual
design, as a result, we can make striking designs and shapes that
couldn't exist through other means.
We decided eyewear is the perfect
application to start with. Eyewear is integral to every day life,
It's the only product that we wear on our faces every day. A pair of
glasses majorly impacts the way we see but also the way people see
us. Slight changes in the fit of a frame, even by a fraction of a
millimeter, can drastically change the way a person looks. Instead of
searching through a sea of poorly made, mass produced eyewear frames
for a pair that almost fits. Protos Eyewear creates one of a kind
pairs of glasses that fit you perfectly.
John Mauriello: When I was still in college, I had
an internship at a design consultancy that did a lot of eyewear
frames/sunglasses. I fell in love with the idea of designing
sunglasses because even a seemingly tiny change of one or two
millimeters can completely change the character of a design. Glasses
are very expressive and fun. The style of glasses that a person wears
says a lot about their personality and what they're trying to convey
to the world. Eyewear also requires a high level of technical
understanding and precise attention to detail when it comes to fit
and finish. The frame has to be ergonomic, comfortable, and
functional. This combination of emotional expression and attention to
technical detail is very appealing to me.
My friend Doug Ponciano had
been messing around with software algorithms to make rapid changes to
3D models in CAD. Marc Levinson had been working in the 3D
printing/rapid prototyping studio in our school and was interested in
experimenting with new manufacturing processes. I was interested in
designing eyewear at the time, but never really gave it much thought.
One day we were trying to figure out how to combine our talents.
Doug was fidgeting with the glasses he was wearing and kept pushing
them back up onto the bridge of his nose. That's when it hit us. The
problem that we needed to tackle was literally right in front our
faces. We realized that there was a really major need for custom-fit
eyewear. It turned out that 3D printing offers rapid customizability
since you are not restricted by a mold or having to produce large
volumes of products (often 10,000+ frames at a time), so it's a
perfect platform to offer custom products. Our friend Richart Ruddie
joined us to develop a website and help us work through
sales/marketing.
About two years later, James
Peo joined our team. He has over 15 years of experience in the eyewear
industry. He has designed frames for high end eyewear companies. He
has personally styled countless people with eyewear, many of whom are
high profile celebrities. His knowledge of eyewear and the industry
has been game-changing for us.
Novedge: Can you talk about what
makes Protos Eyewear unique?
Marc Levinson: The most unique thing about Protos is
our team, we are a team of experts in a range of disciplines. We have
worked together for years on developing a very unique product. Our software makes it possible to
quickly and effectively customize a pair of frames to a persons face.
Beyond the ergonomics, it also uses information based on years of
experience from our teams optician and celebrity stylist so the
frames also look amazing. Our designers have worked closely with
manufacturers to develop a proprietary material and process that
allows us to create products that are truly consumer grade. The last part is design, we spend a lot
of energy making sure our products are outstanding from an industrial
design perspective.
John Mauriello: Once we release our crowd funding
campaign, we will be offering a service that allows us to custom fit
a pair of frames to a user's facial dimensions and personal style.
We have built James' 15 years
of experience on how to properly fit eyewear into the algorithm. We
have developed a robust software that is able to analyze the metrics
and dimensions of a user's face based on two pictures. The user also
takes a survey that gives us an idea of what style/fashion sense they
most identify with. We then offer the user three potential options
for frames based on their facial structure and how they answered the
survey questions. The user picks the frame(s) that they like, and we
send the file to get printed. We have developed a
proprietary material that is extremely durable. You can literally
bend the temples past 180 degrees and they won't crack or break. We will be offering 24
beautiful designs that are sure to fit your style. We can make
adjustments to any of these frames so they fit you both stylistically
and functionally.
Novedge: What 3D printers do you use
for your glasses?
Marc Levinson: We use a few different printers but one
of the main process is called Selective Laser Sintering (SLS). It's a
lot more expensive and has more capabilities than a desktop 3D
printer or other cheaper "FDM" machines. Even still there
is a huge difference between prototypes that come off of a common SLS
printer and the high fidelity products that we ship.
Novedge: What are some of the
rewards and challenges of founding and being part of a start-up
company?
Marc Levinson: It's exciting to be building a new
business, we have a lot of flexibility and we're able to move a lot
more quickly than larger companies. Being so small also puts a lot of
pressure on us, we don't have room to spend time on projects that
might not be viable or don't create immediate value. This is usually
a blessing in disguise because it pushes us to come up with truly
disruptive ideas that add real value to people's lives.
John Mauriello: I am very passionate about what I do,
and so are all of the guys at Protos. Not only are these guys great
business partners, but they're great people and great friends. I
couldn't ask for a more highly motivated and qualified team. We've
dedicated tens of thousands of hours to developing this product to be
of a high consumer grade quality, and it required a lot of
collaboration and patience.Coming up with a good idea is easy. That's
just the beginning. Following through with that idea and cultivating
it to be a real, viable solution is a major challenge, but it's also
incredibly rewarding. There's nothing more exciting than seeing your
creation physically manifest itself after years of development.
Pushing these technologies to the absolute limit to create a great
product is an amazing experience.
Being so passionate and
motivated about our craft naturally leads to strong opinions on how
things ought to be done. There is often a lot of deliberation over
what direction/decisions are in the best interest of the company.
Just like any strong relationship, working through decisions and
making compromises is a definite challenge, but it makes the company
stronger each time we resolve an issue.
Novedge: Are we in the midst of a 3D
printing revolution?
Marc Levinson: There are a lot of facets to 3D
printing and a lot of very revolutionary things happening already.
From 3D printing trinkets at home to the production of aerospace
parts, costs are coming down and the innovation is exploding. There is huge potential in world of end
user products, we can change entire industries with the use of 3D
printing. There are still a lot of factors that are keeping people
from creating things that users would take seriously as actual
products so this industry is very much in its infancy. With the
assets Protos has in place, we are very excited to be leading the
revolution on this front.
John Mauriello: Yes. The technology is just beginning
to blossom and it has required years of research and development to
get to where we are now. For most 3D printing processes (there's many
different types of 3D printing), there's no waste material, there are
no tooling costs, you can simply send a file anywhere and get it
printed which could drastically cut down on the need for shipping
someday, the products can be rapidly edited and customized, etc.
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