Oakley Sunglasses

Oakley is an eyewear company that is specifically known for their high-end sunglasses and ski goggles. Oakley also has a line of watches, clothing, bags, backpacks, shoes, prescription glasses and many other accessories. The Oakley company is located at the Foothill Ranch in California.

Oakley's very distinctive 'O' logo is marked on both sides of their glasses and sunglasses. They also have a cool looking skull logo on some of their accessories and clothing. The design of both their products and their “brick and mortar” stores are a clever meld of organic and mechanical forms. The futuristic, spaceship looking outlet stores use very heavily tooled mechanical looking designs, having rivets and thick metal hoses incorporated into the design and very obviously having the store's light fixtures connected to a huge overhead pipe.

Like a lot of other high profile high priced brand name items, Oakley's sunglasses are counterfeited and sold as the real McCoy. Counterfeit Oakleys are often referred to as "Foakleys" a combination of the words faux and Oakleys or known as "Joke-leys." Counterfeit Oakleys are also called Oakeys. This name became common because of frequent misspellings of "Oakley," written on the bridge. Sometimes the misspelling is on real Oakleys and more commonly on the fake ones.

Oakley's chairman is Jim Jannard, who owns around 68% of the shares and he named his company after his English setter Oakley.

Jim Jannard started Oakley back in 1975, by selling what he called 'The Oakley Grip' out of the trunk of his car at motocross events. They were different from any other grips motocross riders had seen at the time. Although the grips were very successful with the motocross circuit, they were hidden in the palms of motocross riders as they competed, and this kept them from getting the exposure they needed. Then in 1980 Jim released a pair of motocross goggles called the O-Frame. These goggles had the 'Oakley' logo on the strap, and now people watching the motocross races could recognize the brand. In 1984, Oakley introduced a pair of sunglasses in the same shape as the O-frame and dubbed them Factory Pilot, the difference was that the Factory Pilots were made of plastic. They even had removable lenses, and were made popular by Tour de France winner Greg LeMond and several other professional cyclists. Before long Oakley introduced several new models of sunglasses, including the Blades, Razor Blades, Frogskins, and the Mumbos, which became the M-Frame series of glasses. The Oakley Corporation also owns Dragon and Fox Motorsports. In 2006, the Oakley Corp. bought the Oliver Peoples group, one of the leading makers of high-end fashion eyewear.