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PAYSON — A Payson man created a company to produce wooden sunglasses, and his Kickstarter campaign has raised over $22,000.
As someone who wears prescription eyeglasses, University of Utah student Spencer Perkins said he got the idea for his wooden-framed product when a basketball hit him in the face and broke his glasses. Perkins said he had already broken three different pairs of glasses in a 12-month period, so he decided to save money and create his own.
Perkins chose to make the glasses out of wood because it was “the most attainable resource.” After he carved and designed his prescription glasses, he liked how they looked so he decided to create a line of sunglasses.
“(Wood) is really natural and it’s really stylish,” he said. “It’s really unique because every single pair of sunglasses is going to be completely different because no wood grain is exactly the same. So you are always going to have variations and it’s going to be unique.”
Hatchet Eyewear was started in 2011 and at first, Perkins said he cut and designed all of the glasses himself in an attic using a band saw and a dremel tool. In an effort to improve his woodworking skills, Perkins said he got a job at a local woodworking shop. While working there, he caught his hand on the table saw and almost completely cut off his index finger. He needed surgery and had to keep his hand in a custom cast for four months.
After the accident, Perkins said he continued to run the business, but he set up a contract with a company in China to create the wooden sunglasses. He created the Kickstarter page in July to raise money to help him expand his line internationally. The campaign raised over $22,000 with five days left.
“We weren’t really expecting it to be this big,” Perkins said. “We had no idea, so it was a pleasant surprise.”
Perkins said he has sold over 2,000 pairs of the sunglasses and uses mostly zebra wood, black walnut, dew wood and ebony wood to create them. He said a big part of his initiative was to help the environment.
“Wood is not necessarily more durable, but it’s definitely more green and better for the environment and more natural,” he said. “That was a big part was (keeping it) natural and having individuality.”
Hatchet Eyewear has mainly sold sunglasses, but Perkins said he is branching out to include prescription eyeglasses in the near future.
