A theo Tomorrow | The Optical Journal

I will let you in on a secret… shhhh…I love to travel. I love to get on an airplane, sometimes as long as 17 hours to explore an optical trade show somewhere around the world. I love to explore the latest eyewear designs. I love to see how companies express their identities in their booths. I love to see how designers choose to express themselves and their vision for our industry.

I love to experience new cultures and very old ones as well. I love to see how a city feels to walk through. How it feels to eat and drink and shop there. How it feels to sleep there. I like to experience how businesses fit in with their city, be they a restaurant or a retailer. I especially like visiting an eyewear company if I am lucky enough to be invited to do so.

Last month after SILMO Paris, I chose to spend a few days touring Belgium. I have seen pictures of Ghent and Brugges and they do not do justice to the magic that is walking around each of those storied old towns. From there it was off to Antwerp, a city I knew by reputation, having at one time been in the diamond business.

Antwerp is also the home of one of my favorite eyewear lines, theo. Another secret you may not know about me is my abstinence of color. Those who know me, know how staid and colorless I like to dress. (laugh). No, those who know me, know I love color. I love to wear colorful shirts and colorful eyewear. For all my years in optical though, I’ve never owned a pair of theo frames.

I was invited to visit the headquarters of theo and since I arrived a few minutes early that Friday morning, took a walk around the building to survey the neighborhood. theo is located just off the banks of Scheldt River in Antwerp. It is housed in a very unassuming red brick building that you might walk past every morning not knowing that one of the leaders in bright colorful optical designs has its home inside.

Inside things were buzzing on the first floor as people were busy filling orders. The first floor also has a bicycle storage area as many of the employees from the top down ride their bicycles into the office most days. It was very nice to see a company not only preach sustainability but practice it as well. The top floor is a very open office layout where the Somers brothers (Mik, Jan, and Toon) and other top executives and guests can find space to work. Instead of separate traditional office spaces, this layout exemplifies the openness that is theo.

Theo is a storied frame manufacturer whose own story goes back to 1989 when it was founded by Wim Somers and Patrick Hoet. The second generation of Somers now leads the company with as much storytelling genius as their father. Every visit to theo at a trade show or their Antwerp office has a wonderful story for the year in how their eyewear continues to be developed and sold. In their Antwerp office, Mik shared a new story with me on future designs where he challenges the designers on a numerical system between 1 and 10, 1 being the most common design of eyewear and 10 being the boldest most innovative design. Theo likes to live between 2 and 8 on that scale and each season he asks his designers to fill in the numbers. While an 8 may be way out there for most consumers, an 8 is where theo has made its story known and where we as optical professionals look to the company each trade show season. Theo knows that a design that falls between 4 and 6 will sell best but without the 8’s and the 2’s the theo brand would not exist.

It is this knowledge of who they are and where they fit in the optical universe that makes theo such a success. I think back to my days in the diamond business and the owner of that business knew exactly where his stores stood in a similar scale of upscale jeweler or bargain discounter. He never tried to be all things to all people. This is perhaps something people from Antwerp know as theo knows as well where they stand in the optical arena and have never tried to be all things to all people.

I was also treated to a visit to the story basement of theo. Downstairs is row after row, box after box of every style,  every color, every design theo has ever made. One could get lost for days looking at over 30 years of optical styles and colors big and small. Some have been tremendously successful, others have just as quickly been dropped, but never forgotten. As the old Santayana quote goes, “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. It is in this basement repository that the stories of theo come alive and the stories of theo’s future are born.

After a wonderful lunch together with Mik Somers and Janneke Van Leemput, theo’s P.R. contact, I headed to somers optiek, the theo family store near the Antwerp Modern Art Museum. Theo not only manufacturer’s eyewear but sells it in their own store, allowing them to experience everything eyecare professionals around the world do when fitting and selling eyewear. I truly applaud companies who experience how easy or difficult their eyewear is to fit and dispense along with the rest of us.

This store was exquisitely beautiful and my pictures don’t do it justice. One of the things that I really like was that it was not a showcase for every style and every color. They sit down with you first to try and figure out what you are looking for before showing you everything. This way they only show you what you seek and don’t try to overwhelm you with the vast variety of sizes, shapes, and colors, theo is known for. Perhaps that is something many of us can look forward to doing in our shops as well.

Yes, I was gifted my first pair of theo frames and I can’t wait to show them to you. However, you will have to wait until I get a set of lenses that are every bit as good-looking to go in them to show them to you.