Fabian Geyrhalter:
Welcome to the show, Charles.

Charles Brun:
Hi, Fabian. Thank you very much.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It’s so good to have you. I know you just touched down in New York. You must be chat lagged. So even more so, thank you so much for spending some time with us here today. 16 years ago, I believe, you started the French eyewear company, EZIPIZI, with two of your longtime friends. Was it all easy peasy? Take us back. Take us back to how everything came about. How did you start the company? Where did the idea come from?

Charles Brun:
Yes. It was September 2010, so 15 years and a half. Of course, no, it has not always been easy peasy. We had ups and downs. How did it start? It was a mix between meeting my partners, which were my best friends from high school, and then observing our parents, and especially our mom. We have pretty chic Parisian moms who are complaining on the fact that reading glasses were awful. I think they were a bit ashamed of getting older when they became 55, 60 years old. They had to wear reading glasses. They felt readers were awful. They were ashamed to wear them, complaining on the design of these glasses. And it gave us the idea on which we worked.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Amazing. Yeah, I have a very chic Austrian mom too, and she complained about her reading glasses too all the time. And then she bought all of those really, really cheap ones because they looked fun, but they were not good for her eyes. So I

Charles Brun:
Know

Fabian Geyrhalter:
There was a real need that you were filling. And what’s so interesting to me is, so you started with a really, really low budget. I think the three of you put together 5,000 euros each. It was a very, very small budget. For a product company, that’s super, super hard to pull off anything in product with very little money upfront. You decided in the beginning to go B2B. Tell us about that. That’s very unusual for a product company. Today, right? Obviously, so much changed in e-commerce, so much changed with Shopify. But it’s still unusual for a glasses company to start B2B. Tell us about that decision and who you sold to in the beginning.

Charles Brun:
Yes. So we switched after three years. Our first product, our first idea was, I would say, glasses for public places, because the first observation we made about Armand was that the fact that they were always forgetting their reading readers, their reading glasses. Yes. And they had problems without the readers to read the menu, to read the document in a restaurant, in public places, et cetera. So the first idea was to develop public reading glasses that we were selling to banks, posts, et cetera, to put on the counters on desks to help people who had forgotten their readers. So at first, yes, indeed, we were only in B2B, selling our products to big banks, et cetera. But after one year, one and a half year, we felt it was a bit boring. It was not really our mindset, what we wanted to do. But the good news is, as we had observed the reader’s business, then we came with this idea of designing cool reading glasses.
But this came after two years.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That is so interesting. I mean, on the one hand, you already had the manufacturing down. You already had the partners, you understood the business. But on the other hand, it’s quite a pivot because now you’re actually creating a brand. Now you’re starting to go into an already, pretty busy competitive landscape, right? Even 2010, that was a big move. So did you have a company name back then already, and then you changed it around to EZIPIZI? Or how did that come about?

Charles Brun:
Yes. At first, we were called See Concepts. It was our first name for the six first years of our company, but quickly we noticed that See Concepts, nobody noticed it, nobody could remember it. People were calling a See or Concept or nothing. And in the eyewear, in the optic industry, so many companies were called See something or I see something. And we felt it was not a name defining enough our company. So after six years, we decided to change our brand name and we came with EZIPIZI that we loved immediately that we registered early 2017. And now we are very proud of this name and nobody remembers our previous brand name.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s great.That’s a huge undertaking to take after being in business for already half a decade, right? Yes. It’s always difficult. I know it because we do this with our clients and we do this for our clients. And it has to be very, very well orchestrated. What I find interesting is that EZIPIZI, and for those of you listening, EZIPIZI is not spelled the regular way. It’s IZ, IP, I- Z-I. That sounds very complicated, but it looks super, super easy to read. It’s like the letters are very cool because you’ve got three I’s in there and two Zs. And it’s easy, right? Literally easy peasy. But what I find so interesting is that you came up with a name that is two English words, easy and peasy that is an English saying, but you’re a French brand, right? And so you must have already had that foresight back then that you want to make this a global brand, an English forward brand, right?
Because otherwise, EZIPIZI must have been even harder for people in Europe to understand in the beginning, correct?

Charles Brun:
Yes, yes. We all studied English while we were kids, and it’s a very famous English expression, but I think it’s all in Europe, of course, US. And we heard it very often being kids. And we didn’t find this brand name. We struggled for months and months to find the brand name. And luckily, we had an amazing agency helping us. They found this brand name and as soon as they proposed it, we immediately fell in love. We fell in love with the way it was pronounced and written also. It’s a palindrome so we could register it. Yes. But as you were saying before, when you decide to change your brand name, it’s such a huge change. You have to anticipate everything in advance towards your team, your customers, your products, your stocks, of course, your website, et cetera, et cetera. It has been a huge change for us.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And I did not even notice that until you just mentioned it, that you can read IZIPIZI the same way from both sides, like Sonos, right? Exactly. Which is amazing. We love brand names like that. And there’s something subliminally making it easier on you because somehow your brain just remembers that easier.That is very interesting. And I heard on, you were on the podcast of Kara Golden and she was on our

Charles Brun:
Show.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Kara Golden was on Hitting the Mark with her hint water brand a long, long time ago. But I heard you say that you started selling. When you went B2C, I guess, or B2B2C, when you started selling to the customer through stores, you started selling at the holy grail of trendsetting boutiques in Paris at Collette. I remember every time I went to Paris and when I was younger, I went to Paris a lot. I mean, I always stopped at Collette first. Whatever happened, first go to Collette, see what’s happening in the world, see what’s happening in design, see what’s happening in fashion, see what’s happening in music. I mean, Colette just checked off all the boxes, anything trendsetting. And then you spent $500 and then there was the budget for the holiday and then that was it. But it must have been so difficult for you to get into Colette, not because your product wasn’t cool, but I mean, readers were not seen as cool back then, right?
I mean, I’m sure that there was … How was that? Tell us about that. That must have been such a struggle.

Charles Brun:
I think it took us 10 meetings with Colette and her daughter Sarah to convince them because yes, as you were saying, they were not opticians and they felt that readers was not for them. There was a pharmacy near their store and they were saying, “We are not the appropriate person to sell that. ” They were friends with an optic store next to their place. But after insisting, insisting, insisting, they said, “Okay, let’s do a trial.” And luckily our products worked really well. It’s funny because our previous products before that didn’t work well. So we had the experience of having a product which was not a success. And then when we launched these really cool readers that we launched at Colette, I think she sold everything after four or five days. At that time, it was us doing everything, preparing the order, delivering, making sure the merchandising was perfect in the store, et cetera, et cetera.
And what is great is that after two, three weeks, as she saw it was working so well, they put right at the entrance of the store. She was saying that we were selling them as hardbreds, like we say in French. So it was really huge sales. I think she was selling 1000 units every month of EZIPIZI. Wow,

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Amazing.

Charles Brun:
Also, our sunglasses, et cetera. And we did collaboration, special EZIPIZI for Collette. I think we did three or four collaboration once we have a dedicated EZIPIZI window at Colette also. So it was really a great collaboration we had with Collette.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, and once you have a collaboration with Collette, it opens all the doors, every other museum store and hip boutique and everyone. And then also for collaborations, once you collaborate with Colette and you’ve got EZIPIZIX Collette or Colette X is EZIPIZI, then that opens it up too. How amazing. I’m so glad that you kept pushing, pushing, pushing for that perfect match. It is so important, right? Because it’s so much more work upfront, but then it opens up all the doors and everything is easier afterwards. So

Charles Brun:
That’s

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Great.

Charles Brun:
And at that time, Colette was really the temple of fashion. We had so many great stores all around the world saying, “Hey, I saw your products at Colette, I want to carry them, et cetera.” So it opened us doors in Africa, Middle East, Asia, North America, all around Europe. Everyone was

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Also fantastic. Everyone looked at Colette. I worked with a very hip fashion store here in Los Angeles at the time called Ron Herman. They were like next to Fred Siegel, very influential. But even with Fred Siegel and Ron Herman, it was all about Colette, right? Everyone looked at that. So there were kind of like 10 stores in the world or five stores in the world. There’s another one, I believe in Seoul that is really influential. And I think they all looked at each other like what’s going on in the world right now. And now it’s all websites. But I mean, back then it was different. It was different. You traveled to a city and you got to see what’s new. And it’s kind of sad the way that it is today where you can get everything everywhere. But yeah, so talking about that globalization a little bit or that global, which people really like, you’re a French brand, you’re from Paris, all three founders, this is really ingrained in your DNA, but your idea and your brand works around the globe, right?
So there are really no borders. I do see on some of your social media posts, some are still in French, most are in English. Tell us a little bit about who your customer is today, because obviously the age it runs from kid glasses to glasses for seniors to sports, right? You do glasses for skiing and snowboarding. It’s everyone, right? Yes.
And in marketing and in branding, the saying is if you do something for everyone, no one ever listens and no one ever buys anything. For you, it’s different because you positioned your brand as being something very specific that can work across all of these age groups. So my long-winded question is, who is your customer today? And is it important for them that you’re a French brand? Does that French fashion angle bring something to the table? Do people appreciate that?

Charles Brun:
It’s a great question. You may explain the company. Yes, indeed, we started with readers, but then we felt, okay, readers is great, but we don’t want to limit ourselves with readers. And then we launched sunglasses for adults, sunglasses for kids, screen glasses to protect your eyes from blue light, glasses for sport, as you were mentioning, skiing, sailing, golf, biking, running, et cetera. We even have a range called sleeping, which better helps you to sleep at night. So what we say is that EZIPIZI, it’s glasses for all the family, from kids to teenagers, to adults, to more elderly people, and for every moment in life, because you use EZIPIZI for reading, for working, to watch a movie, to doing sports, et cetera, et cetera. But as you said really well, the problem when you say that is that your products are for everybody, but they are for nobody also.
So we had to work on personas, personas inside the company and saying, who are we focusing on? And it changes every year we have a major focus. For 2026, our major focus is … So it’s Gen Y. So we call them cool moms and cool dads who will buy readers for themselves, but they will buy glasses for their kids and they’ll buy our readers to read books, but they’ll also need our sunglasses for the weekend and they can be running or biking or sailing. So they also buy our sport range. So it’s more urban people, I would say educated people who like design quality with the baseline of EZIPIZI. It’s great design, great quality, amazing distribution. We are very selective with this distribution, but affordable price. And since the beginning, we did everything we could to make sure all our products are affordable. Everything is sold between $50, even $40 and $110, $120, but with a very selective distribution.
So it gives a good perception of the brand. And what we are lucky about is that people who know IZIPIZI, they know it and they like it, and they talk about it to their friends. So there’s a big word to

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Mouth.That’s really impressive. It’s really hard to find that balance, I’m sure, when you have a product that is inexpensively priced, affordable priced, but it still keeps that brand name in check, right? And you still want to tell people about it, and you’re still proud of wearing it. And that is something that is really hard to come about. But I think especially in today’s climate, everyone needs to do more with less. And so the idea of having a brand by your site that helps you basically, and you can gift it easily because it’s inexpensive and you can give your kids good glasses, good quality glasses, where before you might have not been able to afford it. It’s a really big thing. And then let me read your Money Festo real quick on your website. It says, “We want to make as many people smile as possible by creating glasses that are both affordable and kind to the planet and that protect your eyes at every time in your life.” Let’s talk about the kind to the planet part.
You became a B Corp, which I know is a really, really big step. It’s not easy to do that. It’s a lot of paperwork. You need to

Charles Brun:
Change

Fabian Geyrhalter:
A lot of processes around internally with your staff, externally, how you fabricate, how you import, et cetera. Tell us a little bit about why this was an important decision to you as a company and how you go about it.

Charles Brun:
Yes. Since the beginning of our company with my partners, it was always important for us to do things in a good way, in the way we produce, in the way with the material we use, with how we are with the team, et cetera, et cetera. Because for us, we always look in the very long term. And at first, we didn’t plan to be BCOP because in our business, there were so many companies doing some green rushing and pretending they were green, but they were not, et cetera, et cetera. So our behavior since the beginning was to do things, but without really talking about it. And the thing is, we had more and more customers saying, “Hey, where are the products made? How are they made?” Et cetera, et cetera. And we felt that a label like BCorp was a good opportunity or a good label to show that we were doing things in a good way.
But we started from 2018 measuring our carbon footprints for the first time. So this was a first big step. And when we had these first measures, we said, “Okay, within three years, we want to divide our carbon footprints by two.” And this meant we changed a lot in the materials we use in how we shipped our products before there was a lot of plain shipment because we were always out of stock and we wanted to deliver quickly, et cetera, et cetera. So we completely changed our supply chain, how we do our forecast, how we manage our stocks, et cetera. And we totally replaced air shipments by both shipments between our factories and our warehouse. So these are all the things we did between 2018 and 2021, 22, I would say. And then we became BCOP certified in 2022. So this was a great opportunity to explain what we are doing.
So we are BigCorp and we are also great place to work, but we are among the greatest companies of great place to work. So for us, this was a global thing is we do everything as well as we can for everybody around us.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It’s highly impressive and congratulations to that. It’s a big step. Most probably a step that’s actually easier to do once you have a more grown company because you can take bigger shipments and you have a little more leverage to make this work, but very, very insightful. And I’m pretty sure that this stands towards the environment, especially in Europe, also helps you tremendously with finding the right talent. It must attract talent that wants to work for your company.

Charles Brun:
Yes. For talents, yes. For customers, it’s really because it depends. There’s so many people who don’t care and others who care. The thing is, compared to other companies, we don’t want people to buy IZIPIZI because we are BCorp or because we are eco-friendly. The most important for us is that people like our products. They love the design, they love the quality, they are proud to wear them, they like the packaging, they like the place where they bought it, they like the experience in our stores, they like the experience on our website. And on top of that, we are BigCop, which makes them, I would say, maybe even more happy to buy it. But for us, it shouldn’t be the reason number one. I’m saying that because I saw so many companies doing bad products, or I would say sorry, ugly design, but they were only focusing on we are BiCop, we are Eco-friendly.
But for me, a customer doesn’t buy your product only because you are B-Corp, only because you are icon for me. First of all, they should like your product for the design, for the look, for the quality. And if you are BiCOP, this is great, but it’s on top.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And it’s great for many, but it’s not great for everyone. And like you said, it’s more important to some people and less important to others. And I had numerous guests on this podcast who said, “We did this and we thought it would make a big difference, but it really doesn’t do a big difference.” The big difference that it does make is that people see you in a little bit of a better light and that you do something that you, yourself and your staff feel really good about. And I think that’s what it’s about. It’s like for you, you do this for yourself talking about yourself. So you’re three co-founders, three partners, you’re all three equals in the company. And I find this extremely interesting because this concept of co- CEOs is something that caught on, I think like 10 years ago, but I’ve never heard of a company with three co-leaders.
So all three of you are leading the company, you’re co- CEO, sometimes one person has the title, sometimes someone else, sometimes you have a certain focus and the focus has to shift, for instance, right now where you’re moving more towards the US and you’re really pushing in the US and very successfully. So I think so, right? But you adapt with the business needs, but it is so cool and it’s such a bold move to have three childhood friends basically or friends from a young age on work together through all of the turbulences that are a startup to a growing business to suddenly you’re like 200 people strong, right? Your friendship is still surviving the growth of the business, but how do you keep things even and how do you keep them balanced between the three of you where you always feel like everyone is kind of like doing the same amount of work and everyone is … How did that come about?
I mean, did you have business therapists come in halfway through the company or every year you sit in a circle like California style? Yes.

Charles Brun:
It’s a good question. But you said that we are lucky because we are three best friends. We are partners also. It’s funny because we often say that we are a trouble, a couple out of three. So we all have our wives and kids, et cetera, et cetera. But we always take a lot of time, the three of us, to talk, to share our struggles, our difficulties, our success also. And I think one of the reasons it still works is that since the beginning of our company, we always talked a lot and shared a lot. And we were obsessed by equality, equity, equality. We have the same shares, same holidays, same everything. And every Friday morning, we have a meeting with three of us during which we share all our topics. And so we have our rules, if I may say, which makes, that’s 15 years afterwards, it’s still a success.
And to answer to your question, yes, we had amazing mentors. When we started our company, we were 24 years old. So we were very young, we had finished our studies, we did some internships, but none of us really worked before. So it was a sort of first job. But since the beginning, we always tried to learn as much as possible from others. And we had amazing mentors. We had two business angers which were sort of mentors also, two very successful French men who loved our idea, who loved our friendship, and they didn’t invest in EZIPIZI to make money or they invested because we had fun together and they were sort of special anchors for us or special grandfathers, if I may say. And these guys really taught us a lot also about business, but they always said, “Your main goal is to make sure that your partnership remains a success and your priority is to focus on your trapel.” And so we really kept that in mind.
And since then, we always work on it. We spend time, the three of us, we spend time with our wives and kids, we spend time in Paris, but we also go out of Paris to do trade shows, business trips, et cetera. We try to have common experiences together to see things together and to talk about it and to learn from it, et cetera, et cetera. So this has been sort of a game also since the beginning.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s really wonderful. It’s a really refreshing attitude to business where the idea is to make it stronger, but not just the business, right? Sell more, but it’s about actually making your bond stronger. And I heard you say in another interview, you were asked if you feel like you reached success and you said something that me being a European who has been in the United States a long time now, I came here in 1996, I believe. So it’s a long, long, long time, right? It’s a very European attitude because you basically said, look, I find it is a success that you have partners that you’ve been working with for such a long time that are also your friends. You have enough time to spend with your family, you have enough time for sports, you have that kind of like balance and all of it is equally important and you find that you were able to balance all of that, you find that that’s a success.
I hope I quoted you correctly, but I found that extremely moving because if you ask most entrepreneurs here in the US, it’s like, “Well, it was huge when I reached 10 million or two billion or when our team grew to 500.” But I think in the end, what entrepreneurship really is, is finding this balance between the choice and the daily struggles that you have to go through in entrepreneurship, but finding a way to balance it and be joyful and be happy about what you’re doing, which a lot of people forget in entrepreneurship because everything matters, everything has to happen immediately, right? You never have a minute off unless you give yourself the room to have a minute off. And that takes a lot of strength and it takes years and years and years to get to that and a lot of people struggle forever with it.
So bravo, that’s really Fantastic.

Charles Brun:
Yes. But for us, it has been really important since the beginning with my partners. We said, “Okay, if we start this company, It’s for the long run, for the long term. So we say it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon, marathon. And we said, okay, if you run a marathon, you must be prepared, but you can’t be at your maximum capacities all marathon, otherwise you collapse. So for us, combining business and family matters and sports and friends has always been in our mind and in our top priorities to make sure we avoid burnout, to make sure that we avoid overstress, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that’s the good part of us also being three, is that we talk a lot and we share a lot and we help each others. And based on all these discussion we had, we built the company around us.
We have an amazing team also. Yes, you were talking about it before we are 250 people now. And luckily we have an amazing team who loves IZIPIZI, who love the projects, who are really smart people also. So of course it’s less my partners and myself. We count a lot on our team also. We rely a lot on them. So we less have to be every day involved on every topic, 24 hours out of 24.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Right. Exactly. Exactly. And you said something really important. You said it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. And you made it

Charles Brun:
Very

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Clear from the very beginning. And I think a lot of US startups are sprints, right? Let’s get it to a sale. Let’s sell the company and move on to the next one. So I think that attitude alone, I’m sure has something to do with it. Let’s look back at the first couple of years of your company. I know you had a big pivot after three years or so from the readers from B2B to B2C. What was a big breakthrough moment where the three of you looked at each other and you’re like, “You know what? I think this is actually going to turn into a brand.This is turning into something as big as we dreamt of. ” Was there a particular moment that you remember? I know it’s a lot of moments, right? And hopefully there’s a new moment every week, every month, every year. But was there a particular moment that you remember where the three of you were like, “Whoa, I think this is going to happen.”

Charles Brun:
In my two moments, the first one is when we switched from B2B to B2B2C, and our first product was a disaster. It didn’t work well. We were struggling selling it. And then when we launched these readers at Colette, as I was saying, after five days, we sold everything and we said, “Okay, now we have something here. We have a good product at the good price in the good place.” And this was a first joy I remember from my partners and myself because we knew that we had a good thing. And the second step, I would say, was when we changed our brand name from secondcept to EZIPIZI. So this was in 2017. It was a huge struggle, a huge work to change the brand name. It took us so long and it was so expensive also to change this brand name. But after six months, or no, maybe not six months, after nine months, we started having our first customers saying, “Oh, can you please remind me what was your brand name before?” And because people love BZP and they had forgotten the second set.
And so we were really proud about that because at first when we changed, we had so many people complaining, saying, “Oh, they thought EZIPIZI was a competitor or a copy of See Concept, et cetera, et cetera.” So we had to over communicate, overexplain, et cetera, et cetera. And finally, after nine months, we saw the transition, the change had been done and we were really happy about it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, that’s huge. That’s huge. It’s like coming of age, right? You suddenly feel like you’re yourself, right? The brand became itself what it always wanted to be. And finally, it is that. It’s an amazing feeling. I know exactly how that feels and that’s fantastic. Well, while we’re on the subject of branding, I mean, obviously you spent a good amount of time, even though you’re not necessarily the branding specialist in the company, right? I mean, you spent 15 and a half years building a brand and understanding what works and what doesn’t work. I’m sure that if I would’ve asked you 15 years ago, what does branding mean to you, you would’ve most probably said, “Well, it’s a logo.” But today, now that you have gone through these different iterations of your brand and all of these product launches, which many of your products are in themselves little brands because they’re collaborations or they have product names or what does branding mean to you?
How would you describe to someone over coffee what branding is or does?

Charles Brun:
Yeah, it’s a great question. I think since the beginning with our partners, with my partners, our aim was not to develop a business. It was really to build a brand. And maybe it’s because we are French and Parisians and we have always been surrounded by brands. And for me, a brand makes the whole difference between a commodity, a common product, and a brand. And I think the brand makes the difference for us. And for me, a product without a brand is not the same one. It’s all the added value, it’s everything in detail, it’s the quality, it’s the design, it’s the know- how, it’s what you say about it. And if you have two products next to each other, it could be the same one, the same product. But if one has a brand and the other one has no brand, for me, it’s not the same product.
So since the beginning, us, it was the packaging, the touch, the careful design, the material we were choosing, it’s always the display, how we present the products in a store, how we present our products in our stores, and then it’s how we talk about the company, how we talk about the brand. So it’s hard to answer precisely your question about what is a brand, but what I can say that for us, this made the difference since the beginning. I remember when we started, we were obsessed with swatch, the watches, the swatch.
We were observing the watch industry and there was on one side, the very high end watches, the luxury Swiss watches and the anti-opposite, you had a bit cheap Chinese watches. And you had swatch, which has an amazing brand, an amazing colors, design, timeless, et cetera. And we said, “Okay, we want to become the swatch of the vision.” We tried to apply some of the swatch codes with the great colors, the great design, the great quality, affordable price, the timeless look, et cetera, et cetera, and with a specific touch, if I may say, to apply to us. So this was 15 years ago, but I still think Swatch remains a classic timeless brand, timeless products. But for us, it was a reference.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It’s so funny because you say you’re not the brand person, right? It’s not necessarily your title in the company, but you said it really, really well better than most people could. And what’s so interesting is that I’ve been using this watch metaphor a lot with my own design company, hardware, product design company, where I explain to people, “Well, we like this watch watch, but in the vinyl record storage space, because that’s where I play with the … ” And the idea of, yes, it’s a one trick pony, but we can do it in all different configurations and colors and collaborations and this. And it’s a whole world, even though it’s just one template basically. And so even though I myself outgrew that and we pivoted into all kinds of new products and other products, but there was a time where I was highly fixated on that swatch model too.
And I guess you and I grew up almost next to each other in France and Austria, right? Vienna, Paris, there are a lot of similarities, but it is amazing to see how Swatch is still regarded so highly now and how they’re still doing collaborations and how people still line up at the store. And it’s pretty remarkable. Exactly. So yeah.

Charles Brun:
Totally agree with that. I’m always impressed and I look at every new watches they launch. They did sunglasses. To be honest, I was less impressed by the sunglasses they launched than the watches, just all the new collaborations they do, or the new shapes they launched, the patterns, the colors, the material, they have always been so innovative. For me, it’s really remarkable.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, it’s great. It’s fantastic. Listen, as we’re slowly coming to an end here, I have two big questions for you. The first one is, if you could put EZIPIZI into a word or two words, what would describe the entire brand inside and out? If you think about Coca-Cola, they want you to think about happiness, right? If you think about Liquid Deaf, it’s like mischief. If it’s EZIPIZI, what is it? What is that threat, that DNA that runs through the entire company?

Charles Brun:
Yes, good question also. But for us, our brand name defines who we are. So I would say EZIPIZI is EZIPIZI. We try to make everything as EZIPIZI as possible with our products, with our customer service on our website, in our stores. So I think this brand name really defines who we are since 2017, and I hope for the next 20 years.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You got an easy way out of that question with EZIPIZI. No, it’s really great when the name does not constrain you into anything, but it can be your vision and your guiding light always, right? Because you want to make it easy for people. And that includes that the pricing is affordable, right? That it’s easy to use. It’s easy to tell other people about it. It’s easy to go to bed and still have the right glasses and then go mountain biking the next morning. And so yeah, it’s great. It’s great.

Charles Brun:
We are a joyful brand also, colorful brand, you mentioned it before, but yes, all this is together.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And when someone listening right now, when they just hear the word EZIPIZI, again, spelled in this particular way, you have to be a colorful brand. When you see EZIPIZI, when you say EZIPIZI, it’s like color, it’s like a firework of colors, just the word EZIPIZI, right? It’s fun. It’s a fun word. And that’s why I also remember in Austria, it was a word that was used in the English word EZIPIZI was used because it’s a fun word to say for any language. It’s just very choice. It’s very choice.

Charles Brun:
And in the way we wrote it, it’s funny because depending on the countries, people pronounce it differently. In the US, usually people start saying IIZIPIZI, and then they notice it’s easy, busy, so they change. And in Germany, it’s different. In Italy, it’s different, in Chattanoogaferent, et cetera. So that’s funny also. And

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It doesn’t matter, right? That’s the fun thing. It’s like a lot of companies that I work with when we present new company names for them or new product names, they’re like, “Ah, but if you say this in Asia, if you say it in China versus Korea, they say it differently and in here.” And I’m like, “It doesn’t matter.” As long as it’s not offensive and as long as it’s not hard to say, it’s okay. You can say it differently. You can run regional advertising. It’s not a problem.

Charles Brun:
True. Exactly. Exactly.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It’s okay. Yeah. Listen, I know that you have a big push in the US right now. I believe you hired your current CEO in the US for the US business comes from Oliver’s Peoples, right? Yes. Yes. Which is a brand that we all in the US very much admire, very much know. I now have two pairs of regular sunglasses. One is EZIPIZI and one is all of us people. So I’m good. I’m set. What is next for the EZPsy brand? What are you doing in the US? What is going on in the next six months? Give us a little bit of an insight of what you’re working on.

Charles Brun:
Yes. Right. So EZIPIZI is pretty big in Europe now. We have 25 stores. We have total in the world, we have around 8,000 stores selling EZIPIZI, but our main market remains Europe. However, we’ve been in the US since 10 years now. At first, we were with a distributor here who did a great job, but we felt it was a good moment for us to take back the distribution, open a subsidiary, have a warehouse here with stock, stocks to better serve our online and our B2B customers. So now we have an office in New York with a team. It’s a small team. We are only 10 here, but it’s an amazing team. So we are developing the business in wholesale, first of all, making sure we have the best stores in the US selling IZIPIZI, the best fashion stores, concept stores, design stores. For example, we have the MOMA in New York selling EZIPIZI.
We just entered in Nordstrom. We had Bloomingdale’s also when some Barnes and Nobel, we have amazing fashion stores in California, in Texas, in the Hamptons, et cetera, et cetera. Then we are selling more and more online on IZIPIZI.com also. We launched on Amazon only for US because by coming here so often, I understood that in the US, if you are not on Amazon, your brand doesn’t exist. So we have an EZIPIZI page dedicated on Amazon. And now we are looking to open our own IZIPIZI stores. We don’t have IZIPIZI stores yet in the US. We have 25 in Europe, but not in the US. So I’m looking at places in New York, in LA, Miami. Probably it will be projects for next year.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh, that’s fantastic. I can’t wait. I can’t wait for those stores to be boots on the ground and actually people being able to experience the entire brand. It’s very different if you have a small section in a Nordstrom, which by the way, I mean, amazing stores that you listed. So it’s great. But that’s really exciting. How can people follow you personally or how can they get to know EZIPIZI?

Charles Brun:
So to be honest, personally, I don’t communicate at all. For us with our partners, we have always been under the radar. Nice. I think this translates well in English, but it’s really our brand first, so we don’t care. So I’m on LinkedIn, but I never post nothing. I have a page on Instagram, but it’s only to follow. I never post nothing. So you can follow EZIPIZI on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on TikTok everywhere, but me know, but you can send me an email and be happy to read it and to answer on LinkedIn, for example.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
See, you can only get to know Charles on Hitting the Mark. This is the only place. So you got to know him now. The rest is all EZIPIZI and with a great brand name like EZIPIZI, you can find it anywhere. So that’s the good news. Hey, Charles, thank you so much for spending 45 minutes with us here right after your touchdown in New York and with your chat lag and everything. It was really, really appreciated. Thank you for all the insights and for such a good conversation.

Charles Brun:
Thank you to you, Fabian. It was a real pleasure. Thank you for your time.