Did Oakley consider this a successful venture? College fans are notorious as the most passionate, so in general this looks like a win-win...but, was it?

My question to help this along, where were they sold? On college campuses and at sporting events for said school? Or via OPDs who could order any frame they wished or regional based on closest schools?

i think maybe some colors only.. some college,
i don't know, you can find some on ebay.

I almost want to say it was a loosing venture. It's like a sig line, but how many schools were included at 3 styles per school and how many odd colors had to be produced frame wise that didn't match any current colors at that time on top of all the etchings. It's more of an undertaking than the Ducati or NASCAR line sig lines. It was also at a time when those frames had a multitude of colors being produced already.

indeed there where a lot of wierd colors, and yes a lot of colors where avail. also that time.
some models not in the spotlight anymore.

minute, twentys, m frame.

i think that's it.

Well there might also be other "limited" pairs out there. For example:

It's a University of Hawaii edition Bottlecap. Not listed in the database prior to our submission to Dann. What we were told, however, is that this pair was created in a VERY small quantity for the UH coaches only.
This came from the Oakley rep for Hawaii.


~Yukio

Jim must really like pineapple...sheesh you guys get alot of exclusives.

I dunno, man...the UK seems to get a lot of nice things, too. And Japan. The Ai Miyazato HJ, DF Gascan, Ruby Clear Unknown...
Damn...if pineapple was all it took to get some exclusives from Jim, I'd buy myself a few acres of pineapple field!


~Yukio

It depends on the school...
The University of Florida has what Scott might consider "passionate", and their "patronage" for the stockpile of Gators Minutes we were able to secure proved it. Being in a college town home to the nations best athletic department, we sold a bunch of them.

We "acquired" the glasses at the end of last summer in preparation for football season. We only wanted the UF stuff, but were "urged" to pick up other models Oakley had on hand (FSU, Miami, Tennessee, Texas, Notre Dame, Bama, Wisconsin). We got a random assortment of the three frames available. All our UF frames were Minutes, FSU were M-Frames and XX, Miami XX, Tenn and Texas Minutes, ND XX, Bama Minute and Wisconsin M-Frames. Oh, and we got a "sand" colored Washington XX.

Anyway, we sold about 25-30 of the Minutes (not the most popular frame anymore) in the last 6-8 months. If we'd have had M-Frames and Twenty's we would've sold about 50 of each. The thing that hurt these models the most was the lack of availability (i.e. only in certain locations near campuses). AFAIK, they were never on o.com...

If Oakley re-acquired the NCAA logo licenses (and the Notre Dame license) and offered etching via OCE (for pre-approved school-color combos), they'd probably sell a bunch of them.

I would like to see the collegiate line released again. I know I would buy every model release for my school (Texas A&M) if they would actually get the color remotely close this time. I haven't seen the previous version in person, but I know its called "cardinal" red and it looks very bright in pictures which isn't even close to our maroon. Most of the other school colorways look pretty good though. I definitely feel that any shades sent to stores should be region specific, and all models should be available online for those random fans that are too far away from home. Oakley's not making any money letting a pair of Texas sunglasses collect dust in a store in Florida.

Hawaii again being kind of the odd man out in the middle of the Pacific. A lot of locals take great pride in University of Hawaii sports since we don't a professional sports team of any sort. Yes, I do realize that there are a lot of states that don't, but we're a little impaired in readily being able to go to a pro sports game.

With that said, a larger majority of the OPD's on at least Maui and Oahu carried the collegiate line and seemed to go rather quickly. We've only seen one other pair of the Bottlecap that Yukio posted above and it was at an OPD, but was gone within a couple of days. The pair that we have was direct from our Hawaii Sales Rep - not sure how many in all were made.

And in response to what mason said above - I know that the 3 main collegiate pairs were available online through quite a few Hawaii retailers, but not on O.com to my knowledge.

And Bill, I'm going to be sending a rather nice pineapple gift basket on over to Jim and see how that goes. =D Mmmmmmm...pineapple...

~Dawn

He could probably also use a lei

actually, Oakley already made their money off it, since we bought it...

I'm pretty sure the A&M frame was the same color as the Alabama frames we got, which would make it a good deal lighter than the actual Aggies color scheme. shrug. it's not like the Florida ones are the right shade of blue either... they definitely took shortcuts where they could, but some teams needed special mixes (Tennessee and Texas)

as I said before, they could make a subsection of OCE for these frames and it would probably do pretty well.

From what I rem, most were a simple gloss coat of paint and some even fade slightly to white near the seams or hinges as if they left off a coating or two to save. One of those "shortcuts".

I think Oakley does pretty well with most of their models. The collegiate models all being o-matter almost guarantees that they did well. Those glasses probably cost the least to make which is probably no more than a couple bucks each in materials. Plus we don't know what the contract between them and the NCAA was but it probably was very beneficial to both. Lets face it, Oakley made money on them. Good money. That being said, I thought some of the college's color ways were excellent and matched the school colors: Hawaii (Jet Black / Emerald) being one, Ohio St. (Silver / Ruby) being another. Then there were others that probably could have used a bit more thought: Michigan (Navy / Black) Probably could have use 24k or something since they are Maize and Blue. I have all the standard Hawaii line and they are great, especially the m-frames with the only emerald lenses available for that model. Just my 4 cents.

Well could you get the same font etching now in the program as some of the ones on the lenses? Was thinking of getting some Fire lenses with the Tennessee block T for my XX?

OSU didn't get Ruby lenses, they got Fire, which doesn't make any sense really. Unless the peeps at Oakley forgot that they were making glasses for Ohio State and not Oklahoma state...

In all fairness, the fire lenses that I've seen on the OSU editions are a pretty deep red, but definately not ruby.

The Michigan M-Frame did get 24K lenses, or at least some of them did. I've seen them with Black Iridium as well. They do look much better and more representative of the Maize and Blue with the 24K.

Here's a pic comparing the M-Frame to the XX and Minute. The latter two look kinda dull. If they didn't have the block M etching, I wouldn't have bothered.

They definitely sold on O.com back in the day.

I stand corrected OSU models did have the fire lenses. That does however come fairly close to the right scheme. Compare it to UCLA's or Oregon's, just to name a couple. I heard of that 24k Michigan m-frame. That makes more sense to me.

while Navy/Black probably isn't the best color scheme for UCLA, Navy is at least one of their colors.

Oregon uses green and black prominently in its uniforms.

The best matches are the Miami, Texas, and Tennessee colorways.

I suppose if they are going strictly by the football uniform, then Oregon's set makes more sense although the colors are green and yellow.

I have actually never seen an Oregon frame of any kind ( m-frame, minutes, or XX) Are there any pics?