Lloyd, Lisa and Mitch Carnes
Hi, my name is Lisa Carnes, the founder of AlohaEyes.com. I love sunglasses. I love style and fashion. My distance eyesight is great and I always wear sunglasses to protect my eyes (imperative), but I need reading glasses to see anything smaller than a grape. This is my story....
Back in 2005, I was spending a lot of time outdoors with my horses (still do). But I couldn't read the directions on a bottle of horse medicine or read a text message wearing regular sunglasses. I would have to run to the house to find a pair of my reading glasses. Meanwhile, back at the barn, I would realize I left my sunglasses back in the house, and vice versa. It was a problem.
I tried wearing my sunglasses on top of my readers. I looked ridiculous and felt really old. It was embarrassing.
Next, I went to the eye doctor and spent a small fortune for a pair of prescription bifocal sunglasses. Back at the barn, I destroyed them within a week. I was so aggravated. I didn't want to do that again.
I could not stop thinking that surely there were plenty of other people just like me. Ready-to-wear bifocal sunglasses would the perfect solution. But searching high and low I found that they weren't available anywhere.
I decided to take a risk and create them myself. I designed and manufactured a small line of women's sun readers and reading glasses and I opened my first internet eyewear store, RitzyReaders.com in 2006. My "warehouse" was the spare bedroom and "shipping and receiving" was the kitchen table.
Then came the unexpected. In just a few weeks I was receiving emails every day from people thanking me for solving the "two pairs of glasses" dilemma, and even men were writing asking me for sporty men's bifocal sunglasses. I soon realized that men and women want to look good and feel great about themselves wearing youthful and attractive readers and reading sunglasses. Naturally, I expanded my product line to include the guys.
Within six moths, Ritzy Readers was off and running. I could not find my bedroom door for all the boxes of glasses all over the house. I needed help, and who better than my own family. Thankfully, my husband, Lloyd, and my son, Mitch, agreed to pitch in. Our mission? Stamp out ugly glasses!!!
We discovered that people in general need all sorts of practical and fashionable eyewear products such as sunglasses, goggles, prescription frames and much more. We put our heads together and by 2014 we had several web-stores stores for all of the different eyewear products. At some point we decided it made more sense to integrate all of the various readers, sunglasses, and frames into a "one stop shopping experience." Thus the birth of AlohaEyes.com.
Today, we design and manufacture sunglasses, readers, and reading sunglasses, prescription eyewear frames and more for people like us who believe that life is a wonderful adventure, and fashion is an important part of it. Looking great and feeling fabulous wearing Aloha fashions is what we are all about. Whether you want to look cool, casual, sophisticated or even “over the top,” AlohaEyes.com has you covered.
P.S. I'll never have to wear two pairs of glasses again :-)