Julie Allinson

Seeing Clearly: “A dear friend is an optician and was happy to sell me hip reading glasses, but at a price that I couldn’t afford,” Allinson says. “So he showed me alternatives—at Walgreens. ‘Isn’t there anything in between?’ I asked, ‘Not really,’ he said. “That was my aha moment.”

Eye for Business: With a degree in finance, Allinson was a stockbroker and a president for a children’s clothing company. “I have always wanted to have my own business, but want-ing a business and starting a business are two different things,” she says. “You really have to find something you have a passion for in order to quit your job and stick your life savings into it.”

View from Here: “The first year, I was the only salesperson, packer, shipper, and bookkeeper. I went to lunch with the mailman twice a week just to have human interaction. The people who work at eyebobs today are the best thing to happen to this company—each one is a hardworking nut case and I derive so much positive energy from them. Now we sell more readers in one day than we did the entire first year of business.”

Eye Candy: Even though the glasses look perfectly modern, many of Allinson’s designs have a retro influence. “I’ll watch an old movie and end up focusing on the eyewear,” she says. “I’ll page through a magazine and say to myself, ‘What frame should that person be wearing?’ When working on a design, we think about the personality of the individual who might wear it and what that person would want to communicate about themselves.”

Eye-catching: “I am very involved in the design process, but I am also highly dependent on Kim Craft, my sales manager, who has twenty years of experience in the optical business,” says Allinson. “I like eyewear that’s nonconforming, a little twisted, and that says something about the nature of the person wearing it. We want to appeal to the most discerning as well as people like ourselves, the irreverent and slightly jaded.”

Prices range from $60 to $99 and are available locally at Hubert White, Judith McGrann & Friends, InVision, Art of Optiks, JV & Co., and Nordstrom as well as at eyebobs.com.