A good pair of sunglasses can be hard to find. Harder still if you’re an athlete: Not only do you want to look good and ward off glare, but the frames have to stay on your face.
Enter Skelmet. The Cambridge-based company hopes to launch a line of custom-fit sunglasses for the masses. No more pinching, slipping, or looking like Dame Edna.
Cofounder Rain Wang had suffered the indignity of crooked, ill-fitting sunglasses for too long. The former architect is a triathlete, and she would spend weeks searching for just the right pair of glasses that wouldn’t wiggle or slide during her events. Her cofounder, James Cau, had similar woes.
“My nose isn’t as high. My face is a little wider. My cofounder, James, has an even bigger head than me, and he wanted to pick up motorcycling. He searched all over the place and couldn’t find something that fit. We were friends, talking about it, and decided to customize things so we wouldn’t have to spend weeks trying on sunglasses,’’ she says.
Skelmet’s sunglasses, made of durable nylon plastic with anti-fog lenses, are designed using 3-D scanning. Customers can scan their face using Skelmet’s app, which analyzes 86 key facial features, from glabella (the smooth skin between your brows — yup, it has a name) to pupils. Then choose a preferred design, in colors like alpine white with lenses in quirky hues like pink and grayish green. Then, presto: Skelmet’s algorithms interpret your unique mug and generate a custom-tailored design, 3-D printers build the glasses, and users receive them within days.
The company launched a 45-day funding initiative on crowd-funding site Indiegogo this week, and the duo have tested their product at various cycling events throughout the past year. The response has been one of sheer relief, Wang says.
“With Skelmet, you can focus on getting more enjoyment out of your athletic activities,’’ she says, estimating that typical one-size-fits-all spectacles accommodate less than 15 percent of users.
Wang calls the streamlined designs “futuristic,’’ but fit is the biggest draw.
“Now, you will never, ever have to go out and try on sunglasses. Nobody is exactly the same. There are billions of people in the world, and there should be billions of sizes,’’ she says.
Visit Skelmet on www.indiego go.com.
Kara Baskin can be reached at kcbaskin@gmail.com
