Silmo 2013 - Part 2

We were now getting in to the swing of things and gearing up for a busy show.  Taking our time over the first day to explore the halls, find the locations for our appointments already scheduled and start to find out any new and exciting suppliers was time well spent.  We had business to do, however, and now was the time to do it!

Moving on from Rolf, we headed to the ic! berlin stand.  As an innovative and imaginative company, visiting ic! berlin is always an exciting experience.  When we had spent time with them in New York there had been a live DJ provided a great soundtrack to the experience.  Paris is closer to their home in Berlin, so what was going to await us here?

We were not disappointed!

ic! berlin Stand at Silmo

At the back of the stand was a massive food truck in a very retro camper, shiny, bright and turning out quite amazing food!  The things they were doing with goats cheese was quite incredible.  Over at the other corner sat a car completely shrouded in black cloth - why?  Well you have to park it somewhere!  It was Ralph's own car (the owner and founder of ic! berlin) and he had driven it down to Paris for the show.

While the energy on the stand is excellent, the great thing with ic! berlin is that you know it is backed up by a great selection of eyewear.  Their ranges are unique, well designed, fabulously manufactured and manage to straddle the fine line between cutting edge and perfectly wearable exceptionally well.  The new electric colours available in the ranges were beautiful and selecting pieces to add to our collection in Halifax was easy, these frames won't hang around long!

What about the music?  There was no DJ this time, instead we were entertained by Friederich Liechenstein.  He's a German entertainer (apparently) and a bit of a YouTube celebrity, great fun to listen to and certainly knows how to entertain a crowd!  He's easy to find on YouTube:

After enjoying some wonderful German hospitality, we moved on to our next appointment.  This was one of our Silmo finds from the previous day and right now we are going to tease you a little and keep this one a secret.  We are hoping to have this range with us in early 2014, we have put together a fabulous selection and you know that they are going to bring something new to Nova Scotia if we have selected them, so please don't get all activist like on us and be patient!

Day two was almost complete, however, we had one last appointment to go to - TD Tom Davies.  When we had met with Nathan from TD at New York, twice we ended up leaving the show after the show had closed!  This time we had allowed plenty of time!  It was great to meet up with Nathan and Tom again and to also meet some of the other representatives who cover different parts of the world.  Meetings like this provide a great opportunity to share ideas with some very creative people.

When it comes to frame design and manufacture, there is no denying that Tom Davies has added something completely new and unique to the market.  Being able to say that we are the only company east of Toronto being able to offer this bespoke service really helps to set Ocean apart.  Choosing eyewear should be like choosing a tailored garment, we are all unique after all.  The meetings, though, are a great opportunity for a two-way dialogue and we were able to share a little of our knowledge and enthusiasm for lens technology with Tom as he is working through the process of developing a completely new line of sports eyewear.

A couple of hours later we were all done, new frames ordered, new sample colours organised, the show was closing and it was time to head back to the hotel.  It was a good day, a productive day, but a long day.

Tonight's dinner was in a Japanese restaurant!

Silmo 2013 - Part 1

Dr John Wilson and Dr Euan McGinty headed to Paris at the end of September to visit the Silmo 2013 exhibition.  Silmo is one of the eye events in the calendar each year and is a real destination event, alongside Mido in Milan and Vision Expo East in New York.  It was a big commitment to decide to take the time out of our diary to go and not something that John or Euan decided to do lightly, so, was it worth it?

While it might sound glamorous to say that we head to these shows, unfortunately the truth is quite different.  Travelling east to Europe invariably involves an overnight flight and our routing was even more frustrating as we had to first travel west for a couple of hours to connect via the big TO!  We were on our way, though!

On our way to Paris!

The morning that we arrived, we quickly cleared through French customs and immigration and headed directly to the show from the plane, there really is no time to lose.  Thankfully we had decided to keep our appointments to the minimum for the very first day, using the time to get our bearings and get adjust for the time zone.

In saying that we were looking at a range of beautiful hand crafted Japanese frames within forty minutes of arriving!  Choosing the eyewear ranges that we stock is a bit of a strange blend of business sense, science in manufacture, the art of the frame design and I guess it would only be right to say je ne sais quoi!  These frames weren't for us.

Jason & Karen Kirk

We continued to explore the exhibition halls, looking at frame collections, examining instrument and
technology developments and immersing ourselves in an atmosphere which is definitely an eye geek's heaven.  With great delight on the first day we also met with Jason and Karen Kirk who have moved on from twenty years of Kirk Originals to create Kirk & Kirk.  This definitely looks to be an exciting development by these eyewear innovators and something we are going to be keeping a very keen eye on.

With day one done, we were both flagging and it was time to find our hotel!  We both felt that the first day had been a great way to start our visit, we had discovered some exhibitors that we knew we wanted to re-visit and were excited for our upcoming appointments.

Tonight's dinner was in an Indian restaurant!

Day two started bright and early, well set up by a lovely French breakfast we ventured on to the Paris light rail system and navigated our way to the show.  Our first appointment was not until 11 am, so with a couple of hours to spare we set about exploring an area of the halls that we didn't get to the day before.  It may sound strange but with almost a thousand exhibitors in 80,000 square metres of floor space, this is quite the show.

Bernhard - Rolf Eyewear

The appointed hour came and we met with Bernhard from Rolf Eyewear.  We are incredibly excited to be working with Rolf Eyewear.  They are the masters of eyewear made from natural products and there is quite simply nothing that comes close to their frames.  We had ordered frames from Rolf when we met with them in March in New York (honestly, it only sounds glamorous!) and as of yet we had not received a single item from them.  So why were we meeting with them?

The initial frames we are stocking are made completely from wood, including the spring joint!  Manufacturing the frames is a lengthy process and this was something we were aware of from the outset.  So we had arranged our meeting with a view to finding out what was also available, what was in development and also to look at ordering stock for the following six months.  We were not disappointed!  Rolf has mastered the art of eyewear in materials not just including wood, but also stone and buffalo horn.  While there may be other buffalo horn and wooden frame ranges available (one of our other favourites is Drift Eyewear) there simply is nothing like Rolf Eyewear's take on it.  You'll be amazed when you see them!

That took us through to beyond mid-day on the second day, so that's a perfect place to stop.  Find out more in Part 2!

October is Children's Vision Month

We love seeing children at Ocean Optometry, and we love helping children to be able to see!

This month is Children's Vision Month, so if you need to make an appointment for a child or children you know then please give us a call or send us an e-mail!