Charles Brun: Co-Founder of IZIPIZI

Episode 776

On today’s episode, Kara welcomes Charles Brun, Co-Founder of IZIPIZI — the globally loved eyewear brand bringing playful, design-forward glasses to people of all ages around the world.
Charles’ journey began with two high school friends and a simple observation: their mothers couldn’t find reading glasses that were both stylish and affordable. What started as a small idea among three 23‑year‑olds from Lyon has become a worldwide brand known for its joyful aesthetic, accessible price point, and commitment to quality. From Parisian concept stores to international expansion, IZIPIZI has grown into a category-defining company with glasses for every moment of life.
In this episode, Charles shares how he and his co-founders turned a childhood friendship into a thriving business, how they cracked the eyewear market without traditional optical backgrounds, and what it takes to scale thoughtfully while staying true to design and mission. He also opens up about achieving B Corp certification, building a global team, and what’s next for IZIPIZI as it continues to expand its product universe.
A must-listen for anyone interested in consumer products, design, entrepreneurship, and the power of seeing opportunity where others don’t

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up, that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control, control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. I’m so excited to have my next guest with us here today. We have Charles Bruin, who is the co founder of an incredible brand. Maybe you’ve seen it and on the ski slopes and in a ski shop or in the airport gift shop, or maybe other high end uh gifts, gift shops around the world, not just in the US. And it’s called IZIPIZI. So IZIPIZI so I told, uh Charles, when we first got on this morning, that I’ve admired the cleverness of the brand name for for years, and I’m so excited to finally meet him as a co founder. But it’s a Paris based eyewear brand bringing joy to the everyday with stylish and accessible glasses for everyone, and what started as a high school friendship between three co founders and a simple idea, solving the problem of stylish reading glasses has turned into an incredible global brand worn by millions. So IZIPIZI, now offers glasses for the whole family and every moment of life, combining thoughtful design with affordability. I’m so excited to dive into the story and hear all about his journey after starting in 2010 and really, really excited to meet you, Charles. So welcome.

Charles Brun 2:14
Thank you very much, Kara, and thank you for welcoming me here. I’m so happy to be with you absolutely.

Kara Goldin 2:20
So how would you define the brand? IZIPIZI. And then I’d love to hear how it all began.

Charles Brun 2:28
Yes, as you said, we are three friends from high school. So at first it was a friendship story. We were friends and we became partners. We are friends for more than 20 years. Now, we are partners for 50 years, and the idea came from our mum. We have pretty chic Parisian mum who started to wear reading glasses when they turned 5055, years old, and they were always complaining on the fact that readers were awful and that they were bad looking and that they were ashamed to wear them. So at that time, we said, okay, couldn’t we design cool readers that we wouldn’t sell in grocery stores or pharmacies, but only in cool places? Some fashion stores, design stores, department stores, high end optic stores. So this was how the idea came. And since the beginning, we wanted to develop a brand, a worldwide brand. We’ll talk about it afterwards. So it started in Paris, France, but now we sell them in more than 80 countries around the world. Incredible.

Kara Goldin 3:33
So where did the name come from? I’d love to hear the backstory.

Charles Brun 3:37
Yes, at first we weren’t called IZIPIZI. We were called C concept. And we realized that in the optic industry, many brands were called see something or I something, and C concept, nobody remembered it. So when we switched from B to B to B to C, and we can talk about that afterwards, we said, Okay, we have to find a real brand, name brand that people will remember, and a brand that describes our philosophy, our spirits. So we try to find this name by ourselves, but now we were helped by an agency. They became friends. Now they found IZIPIZI. So it’s written a bit differently. As you said, I Z, i, p, i, Z, I. And when they proposed this name, we love, loved it at at first sight and and so we registered it. So this was in 2017 seven years after the launch.

Kara Goldin 4:32
I’m so curious. How does that translate around the world? I founded a brand called hint, and we are generally not sold outside of the US a little bit of distribution in a few different countries, but the but one of the things that many people had told me was that there’s different things with names that are challenging for different brands. So I’m just so curious. Guess, like, what if? How that did translate? Because it’s sort of a it’s not a word, a general English word. It’s sort of you. You pulled a bunch of letters together, which I love,

Charles Brun 5:13
yes, yes. It’s a very good question. First of all, changing brand name is really tough. We faced it after six years. So I can talk about that, but it took a long time for us to take this decision. It cost a lot of money also, but after 10 years, we are very happy to have taken this decision now and then, IZIPIZI, but it’s it’s easy for for you, English speaking, speaking people at first in the US, people say IZIPIZI, or they’re not so sure. Once they understand it’s IZIPIZI, they will remember it really quickly. It was harder in Europe, especially in in France, because people don’t really know what IZIPIZI means. So we have to explain in Italy, in Spain, etc, etc. The good thing is that it’s easy to read it. It’s easy. It’s easy to pronounce it also, and afterwards people remind it, but depending on each country, each language, everybody has a different pronunciation.

Kara Goldin 6:12
So interesting. So how many products or SKUs did you actually launch with when you first launched the brand? And I’m assuming that was B to B at that point, versus B to C,

Charles Brun 6:25
yes, yes, yes. So at first, but when we when we started our company, we didn’t raise money. We had only 5000 euros each that we invested in the company, so we didn’t have money to open our own stores. At that time, e commerce was way less developed than today. This was in 2010 2011 so we started wholesale. And our main targets, our main aim, was to sell our products in the best stores all around the world. So we started in in Paris, at that time, there was a very famous store called Colette, which was the Temple of fashion. It was the place where everybody was going to Paris. At first, they didn’t want IZIPIZI, because they didn’t sell readers. And they said, okay, but readers is not for a fashion store. Go to the optic store near our place. And after going there five times, 10 times 15 times, we finally insisted so much that they accepted to take our products. It was consignments, and it sold so well that we stayed there for ages until the store closed. So at first, our focus was really wholesale. So that’s why we say B to B. It was a B to B to C, if I may say. And after five years of developing the company in wholesale, we said, Okay, if we want to build a real brand, wholesale is not enough. We need to open our own stores. We were developing more and more sales online at that time also. So we developed B to C sales next to the wholesale

Kara Goldin 8:01
and how long before you decided to do the direct to consumer, or I should say B to C, but then also direct to consumer,

Charles Brun 8:11
yes, but so the six first years were only B to B to C, and we really turned when we changed our brand name, IZIPIZI. It was also because we have in mind that we wanted to open our own stores and develop more and more online. So it was after a bit more than six years,

Kara Goldin 8:29
a bit more than six years. So interesting. So what is your biggest country that you sell in in terms of sales

Charles Brun 8:38
as a continent? It’s Europe. Now inside Europe, we have several big countries, France, of course, it’s easier because we are based in Paris. We have now 25 stores between France, UK, Belgium, we are opening stores in Spain. Now is Barcelona and Madrid also. So if you count wholesale plus retail plus e commerce. France is our biggest, biggest territory. However, we launched a subsidiary in the US three years ago now, it was end of 2022 with an office in New York. We have a warehouse near Chicago with stock in the US, because us is already our biggest market for online and is growing a lot for wholesale. Also, we have around 500 stores selling IZIPIZI, the US now, with beautiful customers like Goldin, Panza, noble, the MoMA and others to come. So we are focusing a lot on us now, which should become our biggest market in the in the next years.

Kara Goldin 9:45
So interesting. So you started really in the readers market. I’m I’m guessing that is what the average age at 40. I don’t 3540

Charles Brun 9:57
it starts at 45 It depends. For some people, it’s 4045, 50, but usually it’s more 5055, years.

Kara Goldin 10:05
So interesting. So you start there, and then you expand into other categories, including sport, including more family glasses as well. It’s very unusual in building a brand that you’re going down in age, right versus, but you guys have been able to do that successfully from like you’ve been able to do quite a bit successfully that is counter to what’s normal, I guess is, is the best way to say it? How do you like. Why do you think that that worked for you?

Charles Brun 10:46
Yes, so we started with readers, reading glasses. Since the beginning. Our aim was to find to develop great design, great quality, affordable price, but very selective distribution. And we started at readers, but after three years, we said, okay, readers is an amazing market, but we didn’t want to focus only on people being 4550, years and more. We really wanted to have a brand for all the family. So after the readers, we launched sunglasses, and we sunglasses, we targeted everybody. At that time, there were very few cool sunglasses under 50 bucks, under 50 euros, probably it was the same in the US, and so our aim was to apply the same values to the sunglasses. Great design, great quality, affordable price and selective distribution. So we launched sunglasses. This was in 2015 and then we launched glasses for kids, because we had more and more friends getting kids complaining on the fact that glasses for kids were terrible. And so we decided to do a sort of mini me sunglasses for adults and kids, the same packaging, the same shape that adapted for kids faces. So we launched kids glasses from 2016 and then 2017 18, we started to launch sports glasses also. Now we do glasses for many kinds of sports. It’s running, bicycle, ski, sailing, golf. That’s why we say IZIPIZI is for all the family. And every moment in life all the family, because it’s for kids to toddlers, teenagers, for to more elderly people. And every moment in life, because you wear IZIPIZI, when you read, when you work, when you’re on holidays, when you watch a movie or series or when you do sports,

Kara Goldin 12:46
so interesting, so IZIPIZI, has a real unique brand personality. And I think it started with, I guess it started with the three of you friends starting the brand, but then the brand name lots of fun and fresh and design driven, very unique. But I think fun is definitely something that I think about when I think about the brand. How did you think about that? I mean, what did you three have experience in high school with brands other than the fact that you’re that you’re, you know, consumers of fun brands, like, how did you think about the brand overall and what you wanted to take out into the market?

Charles Brun 13:33
Yes, it’s a good question. But we started the company when we were 23 so it was just after our business school. So basically, we had nearly no experience. I worked in mergers and acquisitions for one year. I had a partner in finance. The other one was working in restaurants in Paris. So basically, no, we didn’t really have experience. However, we had the guts, we had feelings, so we always listened a lot to our customers. Also, you said, fun. I think this is very important for us since the beginning. As we are friends, we love having fun together. My partners are my best friends and my business partners, we are really close to each other. We still have a great relationship. We are even more friends now than before. Now we have a big team. We have We are more than 250 people, and we really took care of building an amazing team and being really close to each other and and one of our values is having fun. One of our baseline is put a smile on your face with our products and with everything we do on a daily basis, when you come in down stores, and we want to make sure our customers are happy when you go on a website, also when you interact with us, usually in fashion industry, people are a bit puffed, a bit snobby. This is really not our philosophy when you look at. Our Website, our shooting, you’ll always see smile. You have a lot of humor on the server. This has always been important for us since the beginning, and we have to continue it. And I think our brand name, IZIPIZI is also the way how we work. We want it to be simple. We want it to be easy. We want Yes to be fun.

Kara Goldin 15:24
I love it. So what has been your biggest challenge as a co founder, growing a global brand,

Charles Brun 15:33
growing is a challenge. Growing all of all over the world. When we started, we had a lot of people saying, first focus on France, and when France will be big, you can start in other countries and but since the beginning, we said no. We believed we had a good brand. We had good products. So we wanted to sell our products all over the world. And I must admit, this is tough, especially when you decide not to raise money. We raised the bit of money, but since the beginning, we wanted this company to belong to us and to do it the way we wanted to do it. So step by step, we only spend the money we make every year. We were lucky, because we were profitable since the beginning. So every year we reinvest the money we make so but developing it worldwide took us time. It’s tough to be in Europe and at the same time in the US and in Middle East and in Asia, etc, etc. So it means that we have to have the best team, the best partners, also in each country, the best agents, the best distributors, make sure we have the best stores selling the brand. So this was it was tough. And then I would say switching from B to B to B to C has been tough also, because it’s really not the same job, doing wholesale and doing retail and doing e commerce. So for us, we it’s a bit like if we had started a new company in 2016 17, when we started our first stores, and when we really launched our E commerce business.

Kara Goldin 17:14
So great. So when you were getting going with in 2010 you were selling B to B, and you had to have had a moment when you thought you saw firsthand that IZIPIZI was really taking off to the point where you weren’t going to go back to Being in mergers and acquisitions. I mean, you were you, you made this commitment, but there was probably a period of time that you were just kind of seeing whether or not this was going to work out or not. Can you describe that for people and what made you know that this was the right decision?

Charles Brun 17:59
Yes, it’s a good question. Also, the two first years of IZIPIZI were really hard, because I mentioned the readers, but we didn’t really started with the readers. Our readers arrived in 2012 the two first years. It was another product. It was really in B to B this time, but it was self service reading glasses that we were selling to public places for people who had forgotten their glasses and had problems to read the menu, document, etc, etc. And a bit like the pen with the Goldin that you see everywhere, we had a sort of new glasses that you were holding by a stick and that we wanted to sell to all the banks, posts, administrations, restaurants, etc, etc. And this was our main business for two years, and this has been really tough, because even if the customers understood the products, it was really hard to sell the quantities we had planned to convince our biggest B to B customers to take it. And suddenly we had a switch. When we had the final customers seeing this product in their bank or in a magazine, they were calling us at the office saying, I saw this product in my bank. I would like it at my home. Where can I buy it? And so at that time, we switched from B to B to B to B to C and and this is how we have decided, after that, to really launch a real brand, a real B to C brand. And after that, we launched the readers and the sun glasses, etc, etc. So the two first years have been tough because we had only the few money we invested the few bank loans we had obtained from banks, but that we spent in 18 months. And after these 18 first months, we had no more money. We had this project of launching readers, but our treasury was was empty and Le. At that time, we had won some prizes. We met entrepreneurs, and two of them accepted to became, to become business angels. For us, they invested a bit of money into IZIPIZI. They become real mentors for us also, because at the time, we were 2526 and we learned a lot thanks to these two guys. And we still own them a lot. And they were sort of uncles for us, if I may say, and they are still very close to us.

Kara Goldin 20:34
Now. I love that. So you’re a certified B Corporation. Why was that so important to you?

Charles Brun 20:43
But since the beginning of IZIPIZI, we wanted to do things in a good way, the way we produced our products, the materials we use, how they were shipped, how we were with our team at the office, in our stores, etc, etc. And becoming more and more A, B to C. Brand, we started to get our customers saying, hey, what do you do for the planet? Please explain us how you produce. What do you do? Etc, etc. And we had never really talked about it, because we were afraid about all these greenwashing that we saw in our industry, in the fashion industry, and we didn’t want our products to buy IZIPIZI because it was a green gram or green products. We wanted our customers to buy IZIPIZI because they like the product, they like the price, they like the packaging, how it was sold, etc, etc. But after several years, we said, okay, it’s important to explain what we do. So we started measuring our carbon footprint. This was in 2018 So seven years ago now, it took us months and months. It was a huge work. And when we had the numbers, we said, Okay, let’s take a tough commitment, hard commitment. We wanted to reduce by two our carbon emissions within three years. And so we totally changed how the materials we used, how our products were shipped. Before all our shipment was by airplane, because we were always out of stock, we had to deliver very fast, etc, etc. This has been completely changed from air to boat shipments from Asia to Europe, from Asia to us, from Asia to Middle East, etc, etc. So we completely changed our logistics, our forecasts, our stock management, etc, etc. So the first step was our carbon footprint, this goal we had. And after that, we discovered the B Corp certification, and we felt it was a good way to prove to our customers that we were doing things in a good way. What I like with B Corp is that it’s not only the sustainable parts. There’s all the social part, how you deal with your team, how you manage your company, how you manage your customers, etc, etc. It’s tough to be a B Corp certified. It will be even more and more tough in the next months, next years. So we want to keep being B Corp certified. So the good thing now is we are B Corp certified since 2023 and we have reduced by two our carbon footprints, our carbon emission, and we are continue, continuing to do it. We we always want to to become better and better with our products. And I mean, how we manage this company

Kara Goldin 23:35
so interesting. So one of the things that you and I talked about before we hit record, was the the unique arrangement that you have with your co founders. I asked you if you were the CEO, and you said, not currently, but you have been, and your co founders, I guess, have been as well. So can you talk a little bit about that and how you made the decision, it sounds like you’re all very equipped to do everything in the company, and you just decide, right which is, which is good in many ways.

Charles Brun 24:14
Yes, as I was saying, we are lucky because we are friends and partners. This hasn’t been always easy, because we had to find the good way to make sure our relationship works well. We often say we are a triple. It’s a couple out of three, and as a couple a triple, I don’t know how you say English, but you have to take care of it. And we have our habits with my partners. We talk a lot. We spend a lot of time together. We enjoy being together since the beginning. We have rules to make sure it works between us. We are equal for everything, equal for the salary, for the holidays, we are equal in. For example, every Friday morning, we have our meeting, the three of us to take big decisions, and we turn a pad in our room which decides who will talk first about a topic, to make sure it’s not always the same one who will talk first. We measure the timing when we talk also to make sure everybody doesn’t talk too much. So this we have rules. We have always split our functions. We always say we are co CEOs, we are co founders, we are co shareholders, but we are also execs in our team, I have a partner who was really great at products, logistics, so he took that at first. I had another partner who was great at communication, marketing, so he handled that, where I was more in charge of business, English, accounting. It changed during our partnership. It changed again two years ago, two years and a half ago, when we launched our subsidiary in the US, saying us become the biggest market. We were thinking maybe to move here. I was planning to move here, but my wife said no, because she loved her life. She lost her job in Paris, so and we had our baby girls. She didn’t want to move with our girls, so she said, Okay, I stayed with so I came a lot in the US. I was here one week out of two, in 2024 now I’m here one week per month, sometimes more, it depends. So now, now I’m a lot in charge of the US, and I’m taking care of Middle East, also Asia, or the big markets of today and tomorrow. So I’m not CEO anymore. Maybe I’ll come and become CEO again in one or two years. I don’t know. We have an amazing CEO in the US called Jonathan Chris Paul, who’s a US citizen coming from an amazing brand called all the peoples. He joined us two years ago now, and I understood that if you want to succeed in the US, you have to do it in the US. Way. It’s good to be to remain French, but we have to adapt for the market. And I know American people like to work with American people, which I totally understand. So in our team here, we have French people, we have us people, we have US and other countries citizenship also. And this is exciting,

Kara Goldin 27:36
very, very exciting. So last question, what does success look like for for IZIPIZI today. I mean, you, you’ve been incredibly successful, but I guess you as a co founder and a leader and somebody who is really knocking down walls, so to speak, making it seem so easy to do it, even though I know that it probably hasn’t always been. But what does success look like for you going forward? I mean, do you consider yourself successful today? What would success be for you tomorrow?

Charles Brun 28:19
It’s a good question also, so yes, it hasn’t been easy every day for sure. Since 15 years. We have faced a lot of difficulties, ups and downs, but this is exciting. I believe it’s a real challenge. I wouldn’t say we are successful, because we are always looking at what’s in front of us, and we have high ambitions for the next five years. What I’m proud of today is our brand. I think people like our brand. Our customers love IZIPIZI. When they start buying one pair, two pairs. We have really loyal customers. They buy in stores. They buy in our own stores. They buy online. We have some customers who are our customers since 10 years, 12 years, even sometimes 15 years. So this is something I’m really proud of. We have an amazing team. Also, I was talking about it before, 250 people. We have very loyal team people with us since many, many years. They have grown with us. We have amazing comics with us now, helping us to develop this brand, and also something I’m really proud of is my partners and myself being friends. Still, after 50 years, so much friends. We all have our wives, we have our kids, and we managed to develop our business and our families at the same time. This was always something really important for us. It’s not always easy to combine business, family, friendship, doing sport at the same time and having time for yourself. So I would say this is something I’m proud of you. I’m spending a lot of time with IZIPIZI, but I still have time for my wife, time for my girls, my baby girls, and as much as possible, time for my friends also. So it’s not success for me, but it’s at least something I’m proud of that I want to continue doing in the future, making sure we have time for ourselves also, because I think time is precious. This is the most important thing. When we work a lot, we realize that the most precious thing is time

Kara Goldin 30:32
absolutely Well, Charles, thank you so much for joining me today. And I love everything that you’ve built at IZIPIZI. You and your co founders, and your journey is so inspiring. So thank you so much for sharing everything with us and for everyone listening. Check out IZIPIZI. At IZIPIZI.com. And follow them all over social at IZIPIZI as well, and please share this episode with others who are interested in incredible founder stories, but also incredible brands. So thank you again for for sharing today and and for your time. Appreciate it. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey. I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and goodbye for now.

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