Need Reading Glasses but Don’t Want to Look Old? You’re in Luck, Thanks to These Surfers.

As a touring bluegrass musician, Tim Parr was passing through Malibu, California in 2017 when he decided to shop for reading glasses. At age 49, the outdoor industry veteran who’d worked at Patagonia and founded a bike company (Swobo) had never worn glasses before. But, Parr says, his younger band members had been giving him a hard time for having to print out a separate set list for him, one with a bigger font.

“It was always at least two pages, when the other guys had one,” Parr, who’s now 57,  told me on a GoogleMeet from his home in Baja California, Mexico, last month, after a morning surf session. “That’s what started Caddis.”

Parr channeled his years working in the outdoor industry and recreating on bikes, rocks, and waves (he’s been surfing for 42 years, hence the house in Baja), combined them with rockstar (okay, bluegrass) sensibilities, and came out with super-cool readers.

“Ninety percent of people over 40 have what’s called presbyopia,” Parr said. I looked it up. The Mayo Clinic website defined presbyopia as “the gradual loss of your eyes’ ability to focus on nearby objects.” The Mayo Clinic adds: “It’s a natural, often annoying part of aging.”

I concur. As an active non-20-year-old, it’s annoying. But what’s more irritating is that, as someone who cares about quality products and lives a youthful, adventurous life, putting on cheap, drug-store reading glasses makes me feel older than I want to feel. I mean, we spend decades doing cool shit outdoors and valuing the gear that enables us to do so. I personally don’t want to rely on anything that makes me feel dorky, or worse, trapped in a slow decay of aging and everything that comes with it.

So I’m thankful that Parr started Caddis for people like me.

To Read the Menu, Play the Guitar, Work, or Just Not Feel Old

I was in a dimly lit restaurant a couple years ago when I realized I couldn’t read the small print on the menu. I did the old lady thing; I stretched out my arm, pulled back my head, and furrowed my brow in an attempt to refocus my eyes. It didn’t work. In the end, I had a friend confirm what I thought I saw and ordered.

Last winter, after obtaining a pair of Caddis Miklos readers at a media event, I was out with the same group of friends in another dimly lit restaurant. I pulled out my new readers to the tune of, “Ooh, what are those?!” My reading glasses were confirmed to be cool, at least by my girlfriends.

I’ve since used them—along with another pair, the Mabuhay aviators which I kind of think are cooler than I am—to work on my computer when my eyes are tired first thing in the morning or in the evening. I use them to read music I print out on my crappy printer to fool around on my guitar, or to work on complicated (to me) picking patterns that benefit from, well, being able to see the strings and what my fingers are doing. Knowing that the glasses were born out of musical need makes this feel especially aligned.

Caddis eyewear’s scope and vibe, however, goes beyond aging musical surfers. While the company’s first ambassadors were surfer/musician Donovan Frankenreiter, legendary surfer Lisa Andersen, and surfer/filmmaker Taylor Steele, the brand has since added iconic Rolling Stone cover stylist Lysa Cooper, tattoo and airbrush artist, Mister Cartoon, custom motorcycle builder and ex-Nike executive Wil Thomas III and more. The thread holding these people together is that they’re all “living their best lives right now,” says one of six Caddis cofounders (and surfer) Enich Harris, who came from roles at Fox Racing, Billabong, and Arnette. And, they’re all over 40 years old.

We’re All in the Cool Club

Harris and Parr explain how potential early investors in the company advised shying away from the topic of aging. But the two realized age was exactly what they wanted to talk about. “We decided we wanted to lean in and make people feel good about getting older in this,” says Harris, 52. “So that became our ‘why.’ We’re really here to empower people in the next chapter of their lives.”

Caddis’ mantra, written out in large, all-cap type on the bottom of the box of every pair of glasses, reads:

THIS IS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT IN THE LONG PROCESS OF GIVING UP. IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH AGE, BUT NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR JOB, YOUR GENDER, OR WHETHER YOU LIVE IN ORANGE COUNTY OR HAZARD COUNTY. IT HAS TO DO WITH BEING WHO YOU ARE AND OWNING IT.

Harris acknowledges that other brands, like Look Optics, Warby Parker, and eyebobs are offering “cool” readers, but that none of them are “leaning in around age” like Caddis. He says that the brand further sets itself apart by offering a narrow selection of classic styles. “We feel like we have a point of view,” he says. [Note: The company launched a line of sunglasses in the summer of 2014 and now considers themselves “full-service optical.”]

The day I spoke to Harris via GoogleMeet from his backyard in Laguna Beach, California, he was gearing up to bring a sampling of readers to what he called a “midlife conference with 200 women” put on by Liberty Road, a membership-based resource hub dedicated to women embracing midlife. “It’s 200 women just there celebrating getting older, supporting each other, and getting new tools in the chest to feel good about this next stage of their lives,” Harris said, adding: “We end up at a lot of menopause conferences.”

The thing is, it isn’t uncool to age. It happens to all of us, if we’re lucky, and so what if we need a little help to read a menu. I’m personally thankful for Caddis’ refreshing point of view, and the fact that my reading glasses make me feel better, not worse, about myself.

Learning about the company—and the fact that founder Parr picked up the dobro guitar at age 50 (and the guitar at 45) and will be working on his third album over the next six months while running Caddis—is inspiring. So is the fact that Parr and five other founders, including Harris, all came together after years in various roles in the outdoor industry—and playing in the outdoors—to create gear for aging.

I’m ready for whatever comes next, wearing my cool readers.