A Camel, a Desert, and Some Quick Thinking

Jensen Brehm just wanted to protect his eyes from the blazing heat of the sun.

Brehm, then a student at the University of Redlands in California, was a top of a camel in a remote desert in India when his party stopped for lunch and a much-needed break from the 100-degree heat. Brehm sat down under a tree, and another member of the expedition squished his new sunglasses as the party was sitting around drinking chai. Brehm was, he recalls, “pink and squinty.”

“I’m usually not one to panic,” Brehm says. “But now I have a problem, and we need a solution for it.”

He remembered that his brother had tied a piece of string to a broken pair of sunglasses on another expedition to Mexico a year before. So, Brehm did the same, and wore the glasses while racing camels across the dunes for the next several days. He was pleasantly surprised how comfortable and convenient they were.

“I think a big part of our success has just been challenging the norm and accepting things at face value for what they are.”

Once he returned home, he replaced the string with a leather cord. Friends showered him with compliments, and asked him to fix their broken sunglasses. Years later, a business was born.

Today, Brehm and his co-founder — his college friend, Nikolai Paloni — have turned that business, called Ombraz, into an armless-sunglass company that generates more than $4 million in annual revenue. Since its start in 2018, Ombraz has grown from hand-sewing sunglasses in a barn to offering six different styles manufactured in Milan, Italy, aimed at the active-lifestyle outdoor crowd.

Ombraz sunglasses are available in about 75 specialty shops around the country, mostly in the Mountain West, but online sales account for about 90% of revenue. The company plants 20 trees for every pair of sunglasses it sells.

Photo courtesy of Ombraz

“We have a great team, but it’s all about the product. It solves so many inherent problems with a product almost everyone has to wear,” says Brehm, who has also worked in the green-building industry, including founding a green roof installation company and designing wind turbines. “Everyone wears sunglasses. It’s not a want. It’s a need.”

Ombraz was recently named to Inc.com’s top 5,000 companies after recording a three-year growth rate of 416%. The Bellevue-based company has five full- time employees and about a dozen contractors. Major media outlets including Forbes, Outdoor Magazine, and CBS have mentioned the company. Here’s Brehm, in his own words.

Frame of reference. Spending much of his childhood playing outdoors shaped Jensen Brehm’s love for the environment and his passion for preservation.

Photo courtesy of Ombraz

No one else is doing armless sunglasses, at least in the U.S. where we’re patented. There is a company out of the U.K. that’s doing something similar. We have litigated two other companies who’ve tried to do it. We shut them down, essentially.

It’s almost like it goes against what you’d think, and how you’d have to wear a pair of sunglasses with a string. You’d think it’d have to be tight around your head.

Golfers love them. People gardening love them. It’s a better sunglasses experience.

My parents wear them for everything, and not just (because) this is their son’s company. They’re not big backpackers. They don’t live out of a van.

I prefer the frequent trips to Italy over Shenzhen (China, which is where the sunglasses were originally manufactured).

I think a big part of our success has just been challenging the norm and accepting things at face value for what they are.

Ombraz sports a big social media presence, and frequently markets itself through a series of creative, lighthearted videos.

Photo courtesy of Ombraz

I think it’s all about slow, steady, sustainable, earned organic growth. I’m not a fan of dumping a ton of money for fast growth, or diminishing the product quality to save margins and help our bottom line. I want to continue to lay the foundation for a solid legacy brand.

We’re also like a media company. I really love creating content. I could send you a few videos that are fun. We’ve done one with David Attenborough.

We did a Series A round. I’m not opposed to anything. But when you take in money a lot of the time, you’re kind of just responsible to shareholders and you’re answering to someone. That’s not my vision. The whole reason why I built this was to kind of march to my own drum.

I don’t want to create a place where I have stress, and my team is stressed if we’re not performing or if forecasts aren’t hit. I’m trying to build something that is fun. We’re a brand that specializes in the human experience.

It’s invaluable to have a network of smart people who are rooting for you, who want to see you succeed. As a founder it can be isolating at times, because it’s hard to relate to a lot of people in their professional careers. But if you build a network of smart people who you can ask questions and seek guidance from, that makes all the difference for entrepreneurs.

Yvon Chouinard is my hero. He’s the founder of Patagonia. He actually wrote me a handwritten letter last year telling me about how much he loves his Ombraz, and how he’s super proud of our tree planting efforts.

Our specific tree planting site is based in Madagascar. We (Ombraz) are currently funding our own forest in this specific area along the coast. It’s a pretty cool thing.

A lot of companies give 1% for the planet as their big environmental give back. Through our efforts we’re around 4%.

We were always outside as kids. We had a ton of woods. It was like a playground in the woods. And then I witnessed the whole natural area get cut down and replaced with suburban cul-de-sacs. That had a profound impact on me. I have a passion inside me to preserve and protect the natural world.

The business of fun

Photo courtesy of Ombraz

I really enjoyed environmental studies. And then my first year at college I took this seminar called “Green Business” about capitalism and business, and being an ecological steward at the same time. I’m 18 years old, and I realized I just wanted to have a company that has a product I could sell mostly online because it would allow my lifestyle to be flexible and be able to travel, and also deliver that beneficial environmental impact at the same time.

I think Ombraz ties back to just being a kid, and seeing the importance of the natural world, the effects it can have on your brain, and the inspiration you can draw from it.

Kids these days, instead of having woods to play in, they have iPads to look at. And I think that’s just not a healthy human experience. If every company operated with the ethos of “we want to deliver a net benefit instead of worrying about our bottom line or our margins or returns for shareholders,” this world would be a much more enjoyable place. It could thrive.

It’s kind of wild to just spend 45 minutes to an hour talking about myself. I feel kind of bad. I usually like to have conversations where I get to ask questions and engage. So, this was a unique one for me.