We’re not gonna lie: there’s a ton of sunglasses brands out there. Like a literal ton (okay , maybe not a literal ton but, you know what we mean -- there’s a lot). There’s big ones, small ones, totally out there ones, ones you wished you’d never bought, adventure ones, and suited n’ booted ones. It’s crazy. But every so often you’ll come across a freakin’ badass one -- and not badass in the sense that the frames are dope and the colorways are banging; but badass in the sense they do more for you, your conscience, and the whole wide world.
Cue our One4One Mission, which goes a little something like this: every time you buy a pair of Humps sunnies, we’ll donate a pair of prescription glasses to someone in need. Boom. (Translation: we’re a rare and badass sunglasses brand, just like we said -- double boom).
And here’s the thing: this mission makes us feel epic. Like nothing you’ve ever experienced epic. Like finding out your super hot high school crush had a crush on you too and, wait for it, wanted to snog you at prom and then pop it on their Insta-stories -- that kind of epic.
So, without further ado, here’s the story about how we went from being an awesome, affordable, unbreakable, semi-designer sunglasses brand and became the Robin Hood of this industry (if Robin Hood were to give sunglasses to the rad and reading glasses to the needy). Let’s do this:
Chapter 1: Eyes Wide Open
Like 99.8% of our stories, this one began with a nerve-jangling, out-of-our-depth, what-the-heck-are-we-doing adventure in some middle-of-nowhere part of the planet. But instead of just tearing up the dirt tracks and chasing the horizon, like with every other trip, we started noticing distressed, impoverished, and underprivileged people from every walk of life you can imagine. And guess what: it sucked.
It was like taking a gut punch as our hearts broke into a thousand shards, and we were left wishing we could do more to help. It was a thought that sat at the back of our minds for months, until it grew into an idea that would give back to those in need. We decided we’d help those struggling to see this gorgeous AF world, no matter what the heck it took.
Chapter 2: The Problemo
Life can be chock-full of problems, like the traffic on the 405 or the 49ers throwing the game away or standing on a piece of Lego on your 2am trip to the bathroom -- and most of the time there’s nothing you can do about it (except maybe clearing up your Lego before bed). But when we found out the whole not-being-able-to-see-thing was made worse by people simply not having access to reading glasses, damn did our brains start to spark with ideas and excitement and high fives n’ all that groovy-feeling stuff.
Of course, before we reached that stage, we were hit by a huge dollop of shock and sadness, but knowing we could help those in need a) regain their eyesight and b) drastically improve their lives, a fireworks finale of epicness went off in our minds.
Chapter 3: The Facts
Here’s the thing: when you discover a super-sucky problem in the world, you kinda have to do some research before you can come up with a solution, so that’s what we did. We hit up the internet, spoke to charities, super-glued some researcher caps to our scalps, and did all we could to educate ourselves on this problem because that’ the all-important first-step you need to take before you can fix anything. You gotta find the mess, learn about the mess, and then clean up the mess -- and here’s some of the stats we found out:
- OMG FACT NO.1: 544 million people’s vision would be corrected by nothing more than prescription glasses.
- OMG FACT NO.2: Giving someone their sight back would boost their productivity levels by a massive 35%
- OMG FACT NO.3: Oh and it would also boost their income by an epic 20% (can we get a hell yeah!).
Just think about that last fact for a split-second. Imagine if you suddenly got a 20% pay rise. Imagine all the Air Jordans you could buy, all the El Dorado Gold frames you could own, all the snowboard adventures you could go on. Now imagine what that 20% increase would do if you were living on $4 a day, which describes 50% of the developing world’s population. It would be huge, like super-huge, like a giraffe standing on its hind legs on top of the Burj Khalifa kind of huge. No. It would be bigger than that. It would be life-changing, not just for those having to live with poor sight but for their families and communities too -- and all it would take is a pair of prescription glasses.
Chapter 4: Our Super-Epic, Uber-Easy, Change-The-World Solution
Okay, we’ll admit it: there was a slight hiccup with our idea in that coming up with an idea to make the world a more badass place is a lot easier than actually making the world a more badass place. It was sort of like when you grow up being told life is ‘easy peasy lemon squeezy’ and then becoming an adult and realizing life is actually ‘difficult difficult lemon difficult’. But what do you do when you can’t do something on your own? You team up with people that can (our primary case study: The Avengers).
So, to help us better accomplish our goal (translation: make our wildly ambitious dreams at all possible), we teamed up with RestoringVision.org who, if you didn’t already know, are total freakin’ legends. They’re superheroes. They’re people who make the impossible possible and leave the world feeling a whole lot happier than they found it.
Here’s how our little Avengers setup looked: using their distribution network of 1,500 micro nonprofits dotted all over the world, we were able to send prescription glasses deep into some developing countries, to places where glasses had rarely reached before, helping those in need in ways we had only dreamed of (both literally and in the romantic sense of it all). Not only did we see our idea of helping those in need come to life and our vision for a One4One mission take off, but we’ve seen the awesome impact it’s had first hand as our prescription glasses landed on the eyes of those hard done by up until now.
And it’s all thanks to you -- the guys and gals that rock our Humps. From our Babylon Blacks to our Seafoam Blackjacks, our Venice Pink Mirrors to our Sunset Agents with the epic red lenses, and every other frame in between.
Chapter 5: How The Heck This Mission Works
Since we launched this dope AF initiative, we’ve been tweaking it and tailoring it to make the process more streamlined than an McLaren P1, and here’s what it looks like right now:
Step 1: You find us, you love us, you buy a new pair of crazy-epic polarized sunnies.
Step 2: When we receive an order, RestoringVision sends a new pair of our reading glasses to a micro non-profit somewhere around the world.
Step 3: Someone in need receives a pair of life-changing prescription glasses for free, all thanks to you.
Step 4: There is no step 4. It’s as simple as that.
It may sound more cliched than one of those “pieces of wisdom” your grandma used to throw at you (e.g. never judge a book by it’s cover, which begs the question, why bother having a cover if that’s the case?), but together we really are making a massive difference across the globe, and that’s why we want to say a massive, ginormous, off the scale thank you for being so freakin’ rad. The world is totally stunning, and more and more people are getting to see it thanks to you buying from us. Cheers.
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