If you are a member of the LGBT community, I’m pretty sure that this year’s pride month festivities have come across your feed in some way, form or fashion. And you’re probably even more aware of the many different businesses that have relentlessly advertised their products plastered with a rainbow on or alongside them. Here at Gaye, we often ask ourselves about the authenticity behind these major corporations that advertise to our community. Are they genuine? Do they really care? Will they fight for us?
One thing is for certain, the LGBT community has proven time and time again that we are worth marketing to. Hell, we can go as far as to saying that we “make or break” brands, depending on our input. We unapologetically hold that power, and rightfully so!
Even before my interview with Sahir Zaveri, CEO and co-founder of King Children, any doubt about the company’s authenticity and integrity towards people quickly diminished from my thoughts once landing on their website. When you visit, you’d learn early on that the custom eye-wear company takes pride in creating frames for people of all shapes and sizes. The genuineness behind the brand originates from why the company decided to create custom frames in the first place.
“My co-founder Dave Lee and I, we felt that there are not enough brands that cater to diverse populations,” Sahir began sharing. “And when we started doing research around that what we found was that most brands make products that are made to these imaginary molds because those are the products that have historically sold the most. And when they’re going into production with a product, they need to satisfy minimum quantity requirements, and very often, for example in the eye-wear space, [people] with diverse face shapes and face sizes end up not being included in the products that are created. So, we wanted to create a brand that made products for everyone, and we quickly realized that the heart and soul of the ability to fulfill that would actually lay in technology, so we created a suite of technologies that include 3D scanning and 3D printing that allows us to make eye-wear for every face.”
Founded in early 2017 and based in Brooklyn New York, King Children creates custom eye-wear for their customers on demand. Each pair is 3D printed to fit their face’s exact measurements perfectly. Remarkably, their app allows customers to obtain their measurements with ease, and then it’s made to order. This allows King Children to carry no inventory, never wasting a single product.
When I asked about King Children celebrating pride month, Sahir’s face lit with excitement.
“What we really stand for as a company is something that resonates so strongly with the idea of pride and the idea of people just being proud of who they are. And not apologetic. So, I think this is really an awesome month for the company because we are a super diverse company in every sense. From the employees feeling excited about what this month stands for to the DNA of the brand that we are and what we are building.”
Sahir further explained about King Children’s pride campaign in which they collaborated with talented and creative individuals who happen to be a part of the LGBTQIA community. Every person they selected had a uniqueness to them that spoke power to people who could identify as the same.
Blair Imani, an LGBTQ Muslim included in the campaign said, “We exist in all realms of society including faith.” Another influencer named Eddie Jonesx, said, “I want you to feel confident, represented and seriously bad ass!”
Many more provided powerful statements that not only showcased King Children’s core values behind diversity, but it also spoke to the true intentions behind why they decided to partner with the eye-wear company as a whole.
“We decided to do these collaborations and along the way we decided to double down and focus on one product as this flagship pair of eye wear for pride, which is a design [we created] called the “Motha”.
This pride design that King Children created, Sahir describes as “breaking all the boundaries as to what eye-wear was supposed to look like and what people are used to.”
The arms of the mother is lightning bolt shaped and is hand painted in the colors of the rainbow flag.
“We felt that this specific design spoke to so much of the ideology and the ideas of what pride is about, and we hoped at the time when we were creating it would help embody the entire movement around our brand and its connection with pride and hopefully even become like a symbol of pride,” Sahir said.
With many businesses realizing that the LGBT impact is definitely worth the investment, I was curious to learn what specifically the LGBT influence has done to impact King Children after all of its efforts.
“When you think about pride as a movement, it has been for like the last 50 years one of the strongest movements in terms of social progress,” Sahir began, “and what is very interesting about social movements is that they kind of find themselves often in symbols. With pride, symbols like the rainbow flag and other things kind of embody that.”
Sahir begins explaining on how social movements was “largely propelled by a consumer product” and that company’s linked to social movements would double in sales as a result of that because “it was not only the physical item that people kind of saw, but it was also that emotional connection around it”.
Sahir continued, “What we saw as we were interacting with people in the LGBT community was that given that so many people within community was so self-expressive and liked to showcase what they are and who they are very proudly, an item like eyewear was actually a perfect item to become like the focal point of the movement.”
King Children designs frames for every face no matter their race, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs. We at Gaye are proud to support such an inclusive brand. Check out some of the amazing influencers they included in their pride campaign.
Shop their Pride Collection here: https://pride.kingchildren.com/
Be sure to download the King Children app which is available for Iphone and purchase from their Pride collection today.