Back in December we posted a little preview of up-and-coming sunglasses company Proof.

After more than a year in the making, Proof opened their doors for business on February 1st. We thought we’d check-in with Brooks Dame, founder of Proof, and see how the launch went.

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Q: What was the best moment in the last few weeks?

A: Going live was crazy. A few moments that stick out on launch day.

Seeing the hits on our site climb like crazy the first night…

Our first orders coming across minutes after we went live…

Our site crashed because it got overloaded. We were smiling like crazy. It was kind of a eureka moment. You know when you realize that maybe you’ve got something good going on.

Any last minute surprises/panic attacks?

Yeah, we were shooting pictures and uploading them directly to the site. We have so many different color combos and none of us really took into consideration all the pictures that we needed to take.

That pushed back the initial launch a few hours but we met our Jan 31st deadline.

Also, we were suprised which models were selling. We just had no clue what was going to go over well and what wasn’t.

We’ve also been suprised on where we are getting orders from. You’ll be glad to know we are getting a lot of love from Canada. We are also getting orders from the all over like the UK, Brazil, Japan, and today Estonia.

What’s changed since the launch?

We walk into a room now and everyone gives us standing ovations and high-fives…. Ok, not much really. I guess there were a lot of people who were thinking that this was a hoax. We’d been working on this forever. Came out with some prototypes were testing them but we hadn’t released anything. We had people putting Proof stickers all over their stuff because they liked the idea, they liked the concept, but we still hadn’t released anything.

So its nice now to have people appreciate what we’ve been working on and know that it is for real. We are also getting a lot of calls from shops wanting to carry our line. Getting some buzz and interest is the biggest change. Before it seemed we were the ones working on creating the buzz and making it happen.

Top sellers so far?

The Buds have been quite a success so far and we are going to have to start getting more produced soon.

Bamboo has sold really well. Anything with polarized, fool’s gold, or indigo tints have done really well actually. But the Bud model is our top seller as of today.

Shirts have also sold  pretty well, which we didn’t know if people would be into them or not.

What can we expect next from Proof?

Hopefully, big things. We are coming out with a line of hats. As always a large portion of proceeds will go to support the social endeavors that we are involved in.

We are looking to add some additional articles to the clothing line. We may even invite some artist to create the next Proof shirt, hoodie, etc.

We already have some new models of shades in the works that are going to be bonkers. If  you thought wood was crazy this’ll be wood plus some bells and whistles that’ll blow people’s minds I think.

We are also working on building an established team of atheltes to rep Proof. We’ve got some really great athletes representing snowboard, wakeboarding, skiing, surfing, and skateboarding. So that is pretty exciting as well.

We have a pretty huge giveaway in the works. We gave out a pair of shades when we hit 1000 fans on fb but this is going to be nuts. Of course shades and clothes will be given out, but we have a couple other prizes that should get people excited. Hopefully, that will help us grow our followings on fb, twitter, blogs etc.

What has been great is up until today this has all been organic. We don’t pay for google adwords or have a big name celebrity out there pitching our product and we are getting some good buzz. We like that. It tells us that people genuinely are into the brand and into the movement. That’s really exciting for us.

- D