Smart glasses manufacturer Innovative Eyewear is slowly growing its sales and increasing its brand cache by securing brand licenses with known apparel brand manufacturers including Eddie Bauer, Nautica and most recently, Reebok.
In April, Innovative eyewear debuted its Reebok smart eyewear line on its own site, Lucyd.co, and on Amazon. It secured the Reebok license and developed the line of products over the previous 18 months. And after a successful launch and uptick in sales, Reebok is now selling the product on its own site.
The placement on Reebok.com is great news for Lucyd, as it exposing the brand to all of Reebok’s shoppers and is generating sales every day, Innovative Eyewear and Lucyd CEO Harrison Gross said.
“The Reebok.com site is really strong, organic traffic — high intent traffic,” Gross said. “People don’t just end up on that site. Usually you’re looking for a Reebok shoe or a tracksuit. They put us right on the homepage, which is great. So now everybody that’s going to shop for a Reebok tracksuit, they’re going to learn about our product.”
The growth path to Reebok smart glasses
Innovative Eyewear has manufactured products since 2018 and has ridden the rollercoaster of smart glasses popularity. Its smart safety glasses were a breakout product for the brand, as it addressed a niche market with an easy-to-understand solution, Gross said.
The safety glasses are the internet-connected version of typical safety glasses, in which construction workers, general contractors and do-it-yourself consumers can access instructions for their project, communicate with others and listen to entertainment within the glasses. These glasses are Innovative Eyewear’s No. 1 seller for the past few years, Gross said.
“The safety glasses have been absolutely crushing it — outselling all the rest of the SKUs of the company put together,” Gross said.
And that’s what Lucyd is trying to do with the Reebok glasses for the athletic market. It aims to show consumers the value of having the internet and audio content on your face without needing to look at your phone, watch or earbuds.
Influencers and user-generated content are a key way Lucyd is marketing them and sharing the value of smart glasses for athletics.
“It is just immediately clear to the customer, this is a Reebok product,” Gross said about the influencer content. “It’s going to have these performance standards, it’s going to be cool and it’s going to feel good. There’s never been a smart glass product that had that around it.”
For full-scale marketing initiatives, Reebok has oversight and approval for the models Lucyd uses to ensure the piece is on-brand and meets its standards, Gross said.
Sales accelerate for Reebok smart glasses
So far, these marketing initiatives are working as the Reebok glasses are now the second-best selling product for Lucyd, behind the safety glasses. The line includes eight SKUs, which are bringing in daily sales totaling thousands of unit sales. Multiple styles gives Lucyd more real estate on the retailer websites and consequently more shopper eyeballs and sales. In addition, early customers are rating the product at a 4.0-4.5 on Amazon, which also helps visibility and sales.
“We’re seeing the accelerating growth and I think it could really be one of the hottest gifts for this Black Friday,” Gross said.
In fact, Amazon already requested thousands more of each Reebok SKU ahead of Q4 to have in stock, which is a great sign, Gross said.
Reebok receives a royalty for each pair of glasses sold. For the smart glasses sold on Reebok.com, Lucyd still receives the customer data to email shoppers about shipping, submitting a review and remarketing.
Importance of brand licenses
Beyond sales growth, one of the largest benefits to the Reebok brand license is the credibility it gives Lucyd when negotiating other brand licenses and retail agreements.
“It’s a big risk for a Target to work with you or a Walmart to work with you. Their reputation is on the line when they bring on a new product,” Gross said. “But when you come in with a Reebok and with a Nautica (license), it just gives a certain level of confidence in what we’re doing. That these major brands have trusted us to be their smart eyewear provider, but also that there’s a known quality standard associated with the brands.
“That gives the retailers some comfort in working with a new category, working with a new company. For us to say we have the global license to Reebok, it’s a big deal.”
Brand management company Authentic Brands Group owns Reebok and dozens of apparel, sport and lifestyle brands. Having the licenses for global brands has helped move negotiations forward and brings in new investors to Innovative Eyewear.
‘Inflection point’ for smart glasses
Smart glasses have gone in and out of consumer consciousness over the years, as several big tech players like Google and Meta have introduced products.
Because of Meta’s recent investments, such as its advertisement during the 2025 Superbowl, smart glasses are moving out of the early adopter tech niche, Gross said.
“That just means inherently whatever we have coming out now is going to have more momentum. Consumers are just looking for this category more,” he said.
And because there is more consumer awareness, retailers are more interested the category. The largest example is Walmart optical selling the AI-enabled frames from Meta.
“If the retailers aren’t willing to commit to the category, there’s nothing we can do but just try to grow our e-com business,” Gross said. “But now we’re in a point where the retailers are genuinely committing to the category.”
Lucyd’s next goal is to get the Reebok eyewear into Dick’s Sporting Goods and REI, Gross said.
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