One Year of Curated Optics. Building the New Establishment

In just twelve months, Curated Optics has become the world’s leading platform for eyewear, a premier global community and a new voice of authority in the industry. But Curated Optics was never created simply to report on the industry. It was created to change it.

One year ago, we opened our doors.

Curated Optics has now reached more than 100,000 readers, including business owners, brand founders, designers, creative directors, collectors and strategists. In just one year, we have built a community of more than 7,000 highly engaged Instagram followers, including brand owners, top opticians, retailers and industry professionals, attracted over 7,500 newsletter subscribers, published more than 60 interviews with industry leaders and generated over five million views.

And an entire industry is asking: Who is Curated Optics? Curated Optics is the person beside you, is there at your table, in your store, challenging you in a debate.

Curated Optics is present at your events, even when you do not realise it is in the room. Today, Curated Optics is everywhere across the industry.

When we started Curated Optics, we had no guarantees, no established formula and no interest in asking the industry for permission. We simply believed that if we created something with enough care, honesty and conviction, the people who needed it would find it.

They did.

From Paris and London to Melbourne and Shanghai, the house has grown into the space we always wanted it to become: international, independent and driven by ideas rather than politics.

Curated Optics was not born because the world needed another eyewear publication. It was born because the industry needed a new direction.

We wanted to help create an industry in which authenticity, transparency and creative vision mattered more than backstage games, closed circles and carefully protected relationships. An industry in which people could speak openly, good work could be recognised and difficult questions did not have to disappear behind polite conversations.

In one year, we brought movement back to a category that had become monotonous.

We opened conversations. We challenged people. We created controversy. We said things that others preferred to leave unsaid.

And that is how change begins.

In twelve months, we established Curated Optics as a leading voice in its space.

That was never the final objective. But it is proof that the industry is paying attention.

When you begin to disturb people, it usually means that what you are doing matters.

But the numbers, the attention and the controversy are not what we value most.

What matters most are the people who found one another through Curated Optics.

Brand builders, entrepreneurs and strategists exchange ideas. This matters.

The conversations in the comments, the messages arriving from different continents, and the exchanges between people from different industries.

But they have become the point.

People came to us with stories. They sent recommendations, introductions, ideas and information. They trusted us with experiences that had not been discussed publicly before.

We want to thank every person who chose to be part of this first year.

Perhaps the greatest compliment came from the people who began calling Curated Optics “the Michelin Guide of the optical industry.”

Brands and stores wanted to see their work on our platform. 

That is when we understood that Curated Optics was becoming more than a publication.

It was becoming an authority.

And authority comes with responsibility.

We did not build Curated Optics to protect the comfort of the industry. We built it to question that comfort.

The next stage will go beyond content.

We want to build a more open, intelligent and creatively ambitious optical ecosystem one where emerging voices do not need permission from the old establishment to participate.

That is the part nobody tells you about building something like this.

Twelve months and a global team, made all of this possible.

One year ago, we opened the doors. Everything we have built since then is only the foundation for what comes next.