Why This Entrepreneur Wants You to Stop Asking: 'Where Are My Glasses?'

Teddy Shalon is at his core, an inventor. It just so happens he also makes beautifully-designed products.

Case in point: ThinOptics's on-the-go reading glasses and attachable case for smartphones, which won Inc's 2015 Best in Class Award for the organizers and containers category.

Besides being bendable, durable and small enough to fit in an envelope, the reading glasses/case is just downright useful, says Valerie Casey, the chief product officer of Samsung's innovation center, who also served as a 2015 Best in Class design judge. "The product is radically essential," she says. "It delivers on its simple promise to give sight when needed."

We sat down with Shalon to find out what it was like to bring this award-winning product to life. Here are his edited remarks:

You're an entrepreneur, inventor and designer all in one. What's that like?

It's hard for me to say to be honest. It's like asking a fish what water tastes like. I don't know. But I can tell you that, from my perspective, that's really where design happens. It's when you blend all of these things together.

How did you come up with the design for ThinOptics? 

I was on a long bike ride with a friend who handed me his cell phone and said 'could you read this text?' I thought something bad had happened. But it was just a text from his daughter asking when he was coming back. I didn't understand why he couldn't read it and he says "I don't have my reading glasses" and I go 'You're kidding!' I guess for the 25 miles riding back I couldn't stop thinking about it: 'Wow, that's amazing,' I thought. 'Why couldn't his glasses be on the back of his phone and solve this problem?' and 'there's got to be a way to do that.'

What obstacles did you encounter with designing and creating ThinOptics?

There were a lot of issues to be solved. There was the need for a flexible bridge so it can fit all the noses, so we can succeed in retail because we can't have 12 different versions of this. People can't try it out in the store. They have to be comfortable, stable, manufacturable, and then everything begins to come from that. So once we solved the fit and comfort, we literally built hundreds of prototypes and we tried them on countless noses. This was probably the hardest part of this design. And then there's the question of how do you deliver a product like that at retail where a consumer has never seen this before and how do you convince them it is something worth trying? That's probably as challenging as the first part.

What's your favorite part about designing?

My favorite part is really the beginning, that first 25 miles of riding back on the bike and thinking about this problem. It's the falling in love. You're looking for a solution that would make an enchanted product, but how far, how close to the edge can you push it without pushing it off the edge that would make the product commercially not viable? That part of the design is fascinating. It's something I'm passionate about, and you never stop thinking about it. I'm still thinking about it two and a half years later. 

What is the end game for ThinOptics?