Edmonton frame designer merges style and practicality – for your face
by Stephanie Sparks
Mike Christiansen
No one likes waiting. Least of all the people lined up for hours outside Venus Eye Boutique, shuffling along to receive H1N1 flu shots at the Rutherford Health Centre in south Edmonton. Hours of window shopping convinced a few folks to wander into the boutique to browse, only to re-enter the line having purchased a new pair of frames.
Venus owner and designer Mike Christiansen made the best of the wait times. With his combined knowledge of architecture and the optical industry, he had the opportunity to match the best-fitting frame for any face, even one from off the street.
“People come into our boutique, and they know when they’re buying it that nobody else in the world will have that frame,” he says.
That’s no exaggeration: Christiansen designs every pair his boutique sells. He even developed a colour injection process to create a three-dimensional look (used in his M-Theory line) from paint injected and heated in the frame’s plastic temples.
Already on his seventh frame line, he began Venus Eye Design eight years ago after receiving requests from people in the optical industry to design better-fitting frames. It’s an industry he’s been immersed in from youth; his mother was an optician for 35 years. “I grew up in the optical business, so I learned a lot of the practical side about how a frame is designed and made.”
After hearing positive comments about a few of his sketches, he found a manufacturer to produce them. To get his frames to vendors, he took up a booth at trade fairs across the country. And because Canada’s industry is quite small, due to a limited number of optometry schools, word-of-mouth spread quickly for his “better-fitting, practical yet stylish product.”
While he wholesaled his frames, the public inquired often where they could purchase a pair. (They either knew someone wearing Venus frames or saw a selection from their optician.) “That led me to think I’ll open a showroom… and then I’ll take it one step further and open a boutique to the public.”
For Christiansen, the boutique offered a chance to educate clients on proper fit and the effect of style and colour on their faces. But contact with clients educated him too.
“By listening to the public, I’ve filled niches that no other frame company basically in the world is doing,” he says. Venus carries Canada’s bestselling kids’ line, qt-pie, and one of the world’s largest petite collections, which “we’ve found Canada-wide that it’s one of our biggest markets.”
Since the boutique opened two years ago, he has accumulated more wholesale accounts, as a physical location has driven home the brand’s success to vendors; he’ll soon be opening boutiques in Calgary, Kelowna and Vancouver.
“I’ve already started to see other manufacturers copying my product, because it’s selling so well. That just keeps me inspired to go onto the next new thing. I don’t even look at it as a competition. As long as I design what fits the general public and what they’re asking for, then that’s what keeps me satisfied.”
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