Venus

Venus Eye Design was started by Christiansen and his wife Brandi, back in 2001. He was the designer and sales person, she ran the office. It didn’t take long before Christiansen’s unique approach was making inroads with ECPs, first in the west and then across Canada. Christiansen’s approach was to listen carefully to what practitioners wanted, and give it to them, along with the best customer service in the industry.

Who designed the frames behind Venus? Christiansen himself, of course. He still does, gearing most of his adult product to the progressive wearer who spends moderately and still wants to look fantastic. “Our designs both set and push the trends, but not to the point that they are too bizarre for the typical, style-conscious consumer,” he notes.

Christiansen’s first designs were in laminate and he was bucking a trend that said plastics were on the way out. “I knew that one of the problems was that they often didn’t fit well. So I addressed that with good design, added vibrant fun colours and great shapes and they took off like crazy. They’re still selling very well indeed.”