ucdavis4PT0gpa
I should Work at Oakley
I wish they would do an annual lens release for old x metal frames just for like a month every year. Produce a few hundred pairs of lenses in each color for each metal frame. If they don't sell by the next year then don't make more till they do sell out. Just seems like it would be inexpensive enough to do this and would make a lot of people really happy. Same with rubber sets. I mean what's it cost to make these lenses? 50 cents?
They don't want people giving new life to old models. While I understand where you're coming from and agree with you, I've made the argument in the past that Lux had its eye on killing the X-Metal line from day one if for no other reason than a) it was a line that couldn't be outsourced to China due to the production complexity and b) they are made too f-ing well. The frames are near indestructible or refurbishable with coating techniques - so outside of lenses, the owner can keep the product in good functional and aesthetic order indefinitely. The company wants you buying new product- not getting by with old. Now I can definitely make the argument that if Oakley did with X-Metals (and other Golden Era) models what Nike and Jordan do with retros they'd make a ton of money but the retooling etc needed to produce a Juliet or Splice vs these newer frames is more involved than it is for sneakers.
There's nothing they can really do about people custom cutting lenses unless they deliberately start designing new lenses to not be compatible with popular custom cut models....or just cut down on replacement lens offerings which, to be honest, I'm surprised the haven't done that to force the consumer to buy a new frame to get new lenses