Oakley Opens ‘Protopian’ Flagship at Its Southern California Headquarters
For years, it was difficult to find the entrance to the Oakley flagship housed inside the company’s fortress-like, dystopian-looking headquarters in Southern California.
Would-be shoppers had to figure out that the entrance doors were on the side of the building, not in the front.
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And once they made it inside, the retail outpost was a modest 1,132-square-foot space off to the side of the lobby, put there after customers asked why there wasn’t a flagship inside the company headquarters in Foothill Ranch, California, an Orange County city 50 miles south of Los Angeles.
But Oakley has changed all of that, creating a larger and more inviting flagship with a warmer ambience and 2,869 square feet of space that will be introduced to the public on Wednesday. “We opened a store here at our headquarters in 1999,” said Brian Takumi, vice president of soul and creative at Oakley. “It was one of our highest-performing stores.”
After nearly 25 years, Oakley executives thought it was time for a refresh. “We felt we needed to evolve the store,” Takumi explained.
The new footprint flows more freely into the adjacent Oakley museum, where visitors can view company product innovations including Prizm lens technology, to enhance color and contrast, RX designs and historic eyewear silhouettes.
A modern look for the flagship was created with updated lighting and design features inspired by Oakley sport. The new store has an extensive selection of apparel, footwear, accessories and eyewear, which is the best-selling category of the company launched in 1975 by James Jannard. Oakley acquired the luxury California eyewear brand Oliver Peoples in 2006 for $55.7 million. Then a year later, Oakley was acquired by Italian luxury brand Luxottica Group for $2.1 billion, which makes eyewear under various labels including Brunello Cucinelli, Ralph Lauren, Ray-Ban, Versace and Chanel.
The new store in some ways is symbolic of Oakley’s desire to present a more welcoming, positive and hopeful vision of the future. “Oakley’s mysterious dystopian ’90s aesthetic, while iconic, was born out of a survivalist mentality, something we now face daily,” Takumi explained of the brand known for its sleek, futuristic goggles and frames, which has numerous military and law enforcement contracts.
Instead of embracing dystopia, which seems to be more prevalent with the COVID-19 virus still with us and a war between Ukraine and Russia, Takumi said he likes to embrace “protopia.” That is a word coined by Kevin Kelly, the cofounder of Wired magazine, which means that a society doesn’t solve all of its problems, like in a utopia, or become dysfunctional, like a dystopia, but makes incremental progress over time thanks to technological advancements enhancing the evolutionary process.
That is why hardwood floors and greenery were added to the flagship to add a calming, more nature-oriented tone. “We were asking ourselves, ‘How do we make the brand more inviting and welcoming versus the history where it has been a mysterious brand, closing all the doors, keeping things secret and basically being housed in a bunker? We want to welcome people, not just into the facility, but knowing we have a flagship here that is more inviting for people.”
And those entrance side doors were relocated to the front of the headquarters for easy access.
The revamped flagship is just one of the 183 North American doors Oakley has in its global chain of 285 outposts. The company is hoping to open five new stores this year, said Laurie McDonald, senior vice president and general manager of Oakley retail. She noted the locations will take inspiration from the retooled flagship and incorporate elements that make the spaces more inviting with brighter lighting and a warmer color palette.
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