“We are ambassadors of beauty” – Stefano Sarti Cipriani FEB31st, the Italian eyewear brand has expanded the eyewear landscape with its energetic use of colour, Italian design, and ecologically harvested wood species - bolivar and kauri. Designed and made in Italy, the FEB31st collections epitomize true Italian craftsmanship, ensuring the highest quality and comfort in every piece. In a candid interview with EYE ZONE, Stefano Sarti Cipriani, the Commercial manager, of FEB31st discussed the philosophy behind the brand, how it was conceptualised and what is its’ USP. Stefano explains that everyone at FEB31st consider themselves ambassadors of beauty. “The reason why we are all here at FEB31st is to create and share beauty, the only resource not scarce, largely available in the world. Italy especially is a great place to be inspired from beauty and our task is to have the ability to find and recognize beauty in every small and apparently insignificant detail,” he says. Speaking about the rarity of the name of the brand, Stefano states that the idea was to break the system as the name breaks-up the calendar and to highlight its uniqueness. “In the optical industry we do see plenty of brands outsourcing production in low cost area, ordering big production lots and using margins on marketing their products or force their customers in complicated commercial strategies and purchasing bundles. In FEB31st, we produce in our own Italian facility, having skilled craftsmen and technicians on board, working under the Forest Stewardship Council strict regime, and making frames just on demand, under no inventory. “We are ambassadors of beauty” – Stefano Sarti Cipriani All our representatives have an i-pad that dialogues with our IT system. They enable the customers to choose between almost 60 shapes, up to 4 sizes on the most easy to sell one, 35 different colors that can be combined on our 13 wood layers without limits, engraving a signature or a name in the frames and any other kind of customization. This enables our customer to choose exactly what they want and what they think they are going to sell,” he states. The USP of FEB31st is that it is a brand that changed the idea of wooden frames, made them less niche targeted and easier to handle for the opticians. The innovative and patent pending insert lenses system, the ability to adjust the frames and provide to the end customer a products that won’t cause problems in future, make the optician more confident with a product that in the past was just for a niche. “The use of colors, strong and rich in personality, in shapes, a well declared made in Italy style and a scheduled new-releases development, managed by our designer and Creative Director Valerio Cometti has made FEB31st not just a wooden frames producers, but a brand that is communicating so far by using a natural and noble material like wood,” Stefano said. He added that Feb 31st has faced numerous challenges in the two years of its research and development and 3 years in the market. One of them was a challenge they faced before the launch of their collection 48000, which uses a wood coming from New Zealand, from Kauri trees fallen into a swamp 48000 years ago. “Being able to work and deal with this wood and at the same time provide the exact strength of the FSC certified wood collection has been really a challenging task. But at the end, the charm and the beauty of that exceptional material has fascinated all the team,” Stefano Sarti Cipriani, Commercial manager, FEB31st Stefano insists. The 48000 collection was launched at Silmo 2013 and the collection’s ‘Isaac 48000’ model, designed by Cometti, was also nominated for a Silmo D’or Award this year. The design represented a big challenge for the design and manufacturing team, as it combines an innovative ‘single loop’ structure with Kauri wood. The result is a distinctive design, offering complete protection from UV rays. FEB31st 48,000 collection will be available from January 2014and starts from KD270.The entire FEB31st collection can be found inInternational Optics in Kuwait, Vision Express/Solaris in Kuwait and the UAE, Eye Boutique in the UAE and SBR Optics in KSA. FEB31st is distributed by Vision Eye Wear, the region’s freshest distributor of unique, fashion-forward optical and sun eye wear brands.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:51:47 +0000
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