I Buy My Sunglasses At Night

There’s noth­ing like a good sto­ry of tri­umph over adver­si­ty, and It’s Not About the Bike: My Jour­ney Back to Life does­n’t dis­ap­point. Arm­strong’s sto­ry is inspi­ra­tional not only because he over­came great odds, but because his set­backs were the foun­da­tion for his vic­to­ries. This is the most basic of human truths, and one which is too sel­dom told: that our pain real­ly can tem­per the raw mate­r­i­al we’re made of, and that peo­ple often reach their high­est capac­i­ty only because they have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to fight against dif­fi­cul­ty. It’s hard to argue the fact that those who haven’t expe­ri­enced dif­fi­cul­ty are often the weak­est of us.

My only com­plaint with the book is in the chap­ter devot­ed to Arm­strong’s and his wife’s strug­gle to have a child and their expe­ri­ence with in vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion. While it is no doubt an impor­tant part of Arm­strong’s life sto­ry, it seemed to be a dis­trac­tion from the cen­tral themes of his book. The med­ical detail seemed unnec­es­sary and I did­n’t see how the chap­ter sup­ports the sto­ry of Arm­strong’s growth as a result of his bat­tle with can­cer. Even the pac­ing and tone of the chap­ter felt out of place, as though it was added as an afterthought.

Since health care is on my mind these days, I took spe­cial note of the fol­low­ing anec­dote: when Arm­strong was diag­nosed with can­cer, he had just left one rac­ing team and joined anoth­er, and there­fore his med­ical insur­ance was in lim­bo. One insur­ance com­pa­ny refused to cov­er him because he no longer was on their plan, while the oth­er called his can­cer a pre­ex­ist­ing con­di­tion and refused to pay. This should be a shock­ing sto­ry, but in today’s cli­mate in Amer­i­ca, it is not at all surprising.

What I found sur­pris­ing was that while all his spon­sors stuck with Arm­strong (there was one excep­tion which would be a digres­sion here) despite his ill­ness, one of Arm­strong’s back­ers went fur­ther than could be expect­ed. When Jim Jan­nard, the founder and CEO of the sun­glass­es com­pa­ny Oak­ley, learned about Arm­strong’s insur­ance predica­ment, he put Arm­strong on Oak­ley’s group pol­i­cy and called a spe­cial meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the insur­ance com­pa­ny. He told the com­pa­ny about Arm­strong’s ill­ness and that he expect­ed them to cov­er the can­cer treat­ments. The insur­ance com­pa­ny came back and said that under no con­di­tions were they going to pay for the treat­ment of a con­di­tion which exist­ed before the begin­ning of the pol­i­cy. Jan­nard respond­ed, «You don’t under­stand. I said that you will cov­er his treat­ment,» threat­en­ing to pull all of Oak­ley’s busi­ness from the insur­ance carrier.

I some­how had the impres­sion that Oak­ley was the big cor­po­rate eye­wear mak­er, and I’d looked at Oak­leys as being over­priced and over­mar­ket­ed. When I read this sto­ry, I decid­ed that my next sun­glass­es would be Oak­leys. Jim Jan­nard became an overnight hero in my book.

Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, short­ly after I made this deci­sion, the frames of my Ray-Bans sim­ply fell apart. So despite the expense, I went to look at Oak­ley sun­glass­es. I found superlight polar­ized lens­es and bought them, and despite stor­age in a bul­let­proof car­ry­ing case they fell apart with­in a week. Dis­ap­point­ed, I went back and searched for replace­ments. There was no suit­able replace­ment in stock and the clerk gave me a list of oth­er loca­tions with­in the mall, which were all owned by the same umbrel­la cor­po­ra­tion. I could select my replace­ment from the stock of the oth­er stores.

I end­ed up with a nice set of polar­ized amber lens­es with light­weight, com­fort­able frames, which have served me well in the months since I picked them out. But that isn’t why I’m writ­ing it out. While I was exchang­ing the bro­ken eye­wear, I relat­ed the above sto­ry about Jim Jan­nard and Lance Arm­strong’s insur­ance. Curi­ous about the var­i­ous sun­glass­es stores so near to one anoth­er and with dif­fer­ent brand­ing, I asked about the fran­chise. Appar­ent­ly, there was a big series of takeovers a few years ago, and now all the sun­glass shops in the coun­try are owned by the same com­pa­ny. So much for competition.

When I returned home I did a lit­tle more research. It’s not just the retail stores that are owned by this umbrel­la cor­po­ra­tion. All the major man­u­fac­tur­ers have been bought up as well. Ray-Ban, Per­sol, Revo… and Oak­ley. All part of Lux­ot­ti­ca now. When Oak­ley merged with Lux­ot­ti­ca, Jim Lan­nard sold his inter­est. Now it real­ly is true that Oak­ley is a face­less cor­po­rate brand, and not one cent of the mon­ey I spent goes to reward the peo­ple whose behav­ior I want­ed to rein­force. My attempt to use my pow­er as a con­sumer back­fired completely.

I’m stop­ping writ­ing now before I start a dia­tribe about how brand trans­fer­ence is a form of fraud.