Zenni Optical
Canvas Category OEM : Apparel
Vision care can be surprisingly expensive. Concerned that the ability to see costs people hundreds of dollars, two visionaries founded Zenni in 2003 as one of the first online-only shops for affordable prescription glasses. They were able to provide affordable and accessible eyewear to everyone by cutting the middleman out and going directly to consumers. What started as a small, homegrown business in Northern California has morphed into an e-commerce success story with over 50 million frames sold to customers all over the world. In this journey, we continue to innovate but our commitment remains the same: we help people “See better and live better.”
Assembly Line
How OSARO used Cognex to solve a tricky barcode reading challenge for Zenni Optical
🏭🏗️ America Is Back in the Factory Business
New factories are rising in urban cores and rural fields, desert flats and surf towns. Much of the growth is coming in the high-tech fields of electric-vehicle batteries and semiconductors, national priorities backed by billions of dollars in government incentives. Other companies that once relied exclusively on lower-cost countries to manufacture eyeglasses and bicycles and bodybuilding supplements have found reasons to come home. Richard Branch, chief economist of the Dodge Construction Network, which tracks building projects, said that industry, along with EV battery companies, accounted for nearly half of all U.S. manufacturing construction starts in 2022, as measured in square footage.
Stanley Black and Decker Inc.’s chief executive, Donald Allan Jr., has also lauded the benefits of automation in U.S. plants. “You’ve gone from a situation where if you did a power tool assembly in China or Mexico, you might have 50 to 75 people on a line,” he said during a September investors event. “The automated solution that we’ve created in North Carolina, current version, has about 10 to 12 people on that line because of the high level of automation, and the 2.0 version looks like it’s going to get down to two to three people on the line.”
OSARO and Zenni Optical Deploy Precise Robotic Bagging System
Your next eyeglass order could be fulfilled faster and more accurately with robots. OSARO Inc. and Zenni Optical Inc. today announced that they have automated the “last meter” of Zenni’s fulfillment center in Novato, Calif. Three OSARO Robotic Bagging Systems will prepare eyewear orders for shipment to U.S. customers.
The companies claimed that the deployment is the first time in the industry that a robot will work with an automated bagging machine to ensure that a customer’s unique eyeglass order is placed into the correct bag for shipment. OSARO said its vision and grasping technology enables robots to accurately and quickly pick items.