When two Raleigh-area students had problems buying sunglasses, they didn’t settle for less. Instead, they started their own company, which will launch its first line of products this summer

Chase Denison, a senior at Apex High School and Kyle May, a sophomore in business administration at N.C. State, have been creating a product that they feel will fill a current niche in the market.

The two friends, who met eight years ago playing baseball, started Vybe Sunglasses, a business that will produce customizable sunglasses, in the spring of 2014. Pre-orders will be accepted March 15.  

“We’re going to launch [pre-orders] on Indiegogo, a website for small businesses similar to Kickstarter, [March 15],” Dension said. “We’re going to try and crowd fund and see what happens.”

Denison and May said they were inspired to create Vybe because they are tired of spending money for expensive name brand sunglasses that were not exactly what they want.

“Instead of having to buy your Oakley’s or Ray-Ban’s for hundreds of dollars, you can just get a customizable pair,” May said. “This is addressing a definite problem in our generation.”

Denison, the Founder of Vybe Sunglasses, said he came up with the idea the day before his brother’s graduation, when he went into the Oakley store to buy a new pair of sunglasses.

“I was looking for a pair of completely matte black pair with matte black polarized lenses that didn’t have Oakley’s name written on the side in white letters,” Denison said. “I received a pair that was misprinted, but all black. At Oakley, nothing interchanges, and the most you can do is customize the colors when you buy online.” 

Denison said he wanted to be able to buy a pair of glasses that were completely customizable.

After contacting Oakley about his idea to have a pair of sunglasses that was completely one color, Denison was told that the company doesn’t take “random requests.”

However, Denison said he just couldn’t get the idea out of his head.

“I had just spent 200 bucks on a pair of sunglasses,” Denison said. “Then it hit me. This could actually be a good idea”.

That same evening, Denison and May stayed up until midnight, sketching pictures of joints and lenses.

“Even though we didn’t have any engineering experience, we still wanted to try and see how it might work,” Denison said.

With the help of a simple Google search, Denison and May decided to actually develop the product.

“Right when I came up with the idea, I looked up ‘product development Raleigh’, and got connected with Swedish designer Fredrik Perman, the creator of The Product Farm,” Denison said.

Denison said Perman has mentored him throughout the entire process, and he even recommended them to websites to help them develop a prototype for their product.

“He has been here since day one,” Denison said. “He’s been a huge help to everything we’ve done, and he’s never charged us a cent for anything”.

Per Perman’s recommendation, Denison and May used Shapeways, a website that specializes in 3-D printing and prototype design to begin designing their initial prototypes.

“We went on oDesk, which is sort of like a Craigslist for freelancing services, and posted a blurb on there,” Denison said.

Within about a week, Denison and May decided on a freelance engineer from Canada, who would help them with their first prototype. 

“We would send him dimensions, and once he edited those, we would order prototypes with those dimensions using Shapeways,” Denison said. “We ended up going back and forth a few times, and did six different edits before we got to the final prototype.”

“That was one of the better days of probably my life,” May said. “Since we found out that they actually worked.”

Denison said they had been shown Perman their original drawings, and continued to meet with him as they came up with the prototypes.

“Most people have an idea but don’t really get there, and you guys did,” Perman said, according to Denison. 

Denison and May, who did most of their research in Hunt library, said they are past the most difficult part of this process, and that they are currently expanding and building up their name.

“The biggest challenge was getting the glasses to be the way we wanted,” Denison said. “We ended up fusing three different styles”.

Even though Vybe Sunglasses is new, Denison and May said they already have ideas for the future.

“We were thinking of getting people to spread awareness about Vybe on different campuses, which could be commission based,” May said.

Denison, who will be starting his first year at New York University’s Stern School of Business in the fall, said he doesn’t think the distance will be a problem for Vybe.

“Now that hardest work is done, it’s actually a good thing that I’ll be far away because now we’ll have three locations that we can try to expand,” said Denison referring to his brother, Chris, who is the group’s chief financial officer. Chris Denison is a sophomore at Appalachian State University.

“It’s going to be tougher but we’ll still allot time each day to work on things,” May said.

Denison encourages anyone interested in Vybe Sunglasses to look it up and plan to pre-order a pair in the upcoming month.

“For Indiegogo, pre-orders will be $29, including the polarized lenses,” Denison said. “You can also continue to get updates through our website”.