KITS releases its first limited edition smart glasses to make it more accessible to pair the latest eyewear tech with prescriptions

KITS, the Vancouver-based eyecare brand, has launched its first limited-edition smart glasses to make it affordable and easier to pair the latest eyewear tech with prescriptions.

Named the Pangolin 1, the smart glasses allow wearers to listen to music, send messages, and search the web with simple voice commands. It’s compatible with iPhone and Android devices and has a battery life of up to 10 hours on a single charge. 

“Whether it's asking ChatGPT for directions, listening to podcasts, answering calls, writing texts, or staying connected to your favourite AI chat tools, Pangolins make it all possible hands-free and with superior audio quality,” KITS wrote in a press release.

Unlike typical smart glasses, the Pangolin is offered for $149, rather than the $300-to-$400 of competitors. It also does not require going to an optical shop to add prescription lenses, since KITS has its own lab which can make, ship, and deliver orders in as little as one day. Prescription options include digital progressive, transitions, single vision, and more.

As for what’s next, KITS shared it’s working on developing additional smart glasses powered by AI, as it’s seeing growth in sales in this area.

Smart glasses have become more popular since the launch of Meta’s Ray-Ban product, which offers a crisp camera that can take photos, videos, and live streams. Before then, many found previous smart glasses not useful or any better than what their phones offered. Yet, tech giants like Meta, Google, and Apple are set on changing that, as they believe smart glasses will be critical in building the next computing platform.

Co-founded by Canada’s “king of e-commerce”

KITS co-founder and CEO Roger Hardy has a knack for predicting trends in eyewear, beginning with his online contact lens company — which became the world’s largest internet retailer of its kind.

In 1999, Hardy, then a door-to-door salesman, sold contact lenses to optometrists’ offices. He witnessed the inefficiency of patients getting a prescription, having to go home and wait for a call when their order was ready, and then returning to the office to pick them up. Hardy also observed the wide margins: contacts were sold to offices for $12, while offices sold them to customers for $70.

Like with KITS’s smart glasses, Hardy wanted to make it affordable and easier to get prescription contacts. So he built his own website, Clearly Contacts, and flew to San Francisco to meet with a search engine to get it listed. The deal required Hardy to clear his life savings — a risk he felt was worth taking. Growing up in Ottawa’s Kanata as it became Canada’s largest tech park, he saw the rewards that come from taking a leap.

“There’s a moment where entrepreneurs have to decouple from the linear progression of things, step off the ledge, and take a risk,” Hardy shared in an interview. “For me, it was an easier step to take because I had seen all the opportunities and excitement [in Kanata] and the things that come out of growing a business.”

Still, Hardy was nervous to launch, as optometrists warned him that people would never buy contacts online. Within a month, the company’s sales totalled $68K, and in that same year, Clearly was acquired by More — a San Francisco-based online drugstore — for an offer that Hardy couldn’t refuse.

Hardy stayed with Clearly and even saved it after the fall of More. With aspirations to become an online marketplace like Amazon, More raised $150 million in preparation for an IPO and spent it all in six months. After internet stocks crashed in 2000, Hardy bought back Clearly for a fraction of the amount he sold it for.

Hardy and sister Michaela Tokarski, a chemical engineer pursuing an MBA at UVic, then teamed up to revive Clearly under the name Coastal Contacts. In 2004, Coastal went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Four years later, the company expanded into manufacturing and selling eyewear and built its own facility in Vancouver. Between 2012 and 2014, Coastal would surpass $1 billion in cumulative sales, list on the Nasdaq, and be sold to French lens giant Essilor for $450 million in cash.

Growth spearheaded by an impressive team

In 2018, Hardy would co-found KITS with Sabrina Liak and Joseph Thompson. 

The three envisioned building a company with “more selection, unbeatable value, and the best convenience in the industry,” as they saw a growing number of adults requiring glasses or contact lenses to get through the day. 

Before KITS, Liak was a private equity portfolio manager at Goldman Sachs Investments Partners, and the former managing director at Goldman Sachs. She was previously KITS’ CFO and raised the company’s initial capital before serving as its president until this year. Liak was also the recipient of a B.C. CFO award.

Thompson, meanwhile, was an associate director at Procter & Gamble and the former general manager of retail at Amazon, managing a multi-billion-dollar vision. He now serves as KITS’ COO.

Within four years, Hardy, Liak, and Thompson would build KITS into one of North America’s fastest-growing eyecare brands and take the company public on the TSX. According to KITS, the brand has served over a million customers and attained a 2023 revenue increase of 32 per cent year-over-year, to $120.5 million.

Along with its own line of glasses, KITS offers designer frames and contact lenses. Its manufacturing lab was built in Vancouver, and its flagship store and cafe is located at 1500 Yew St.

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