Lando’s six-year-old, six-person company, with headquarters in Tiburon, Calif., had a breakout year in 2005, generating more than $5 million in U.S. sales and another $2 million overseas. CliC glasses have been spotted recently on CSI, Nip/Tuck, Will & Grace, Freedomland, and the Rolling Stones, who donned CliC reading glasses and sunglasses when last year’s tour brought them to San Francisco. Which means Lando, 52, who looks like Paul McCartney (he plays guitar in a ’60s Brit-rock cover band, the Whining Bullies), is living a distinctly American dream: The one where you wake up one morning with an idea so simple, so right-, uh, over-your-nose obvious, you can’t believe nobody ever thought of it before. You arm yourself every which way with patents. Yoo’s six-year-old, six-person company, with headquarters in Tiburon, Calif., had a breakout year in 2005, generating more than $5 million in U.S. sales and another $2 million overseas. CliC glasses have been spotted recently on CSI, Nip/Tuck, Will & Grace, Freedomland, and the Rolling Stones, who donned CliC reading glasses and sunglasses when last year’s tour brought them to San Francisco. Which means Lando, 52, who looks like Paul McCartney (he plays guitar in a ’60s Brit-rock cover band, the Whining Bullies), is living a distinctly American dream: The one where you wake up one morning with an idea so simple, so right-, uh, over-your-nose obvious, you can’t believe nobody ever thought of it before. You arm yourself every which way with patents. Yoo’s six-year-old, six-person company, with headquarters in Tiburon, Calif., had a breakout year in 2005, generating more than $5 million in U.S. sales and another $2 million overseas. CliC glasses have been spotted recently on CSI, Nip/Tuck, Will & Grace, Freedomland, and the Rolling Stones, who donned CliC reading glasses and sunglasses when last year’s tour brought them to San Francisco. Which means Lando, 52, who looks like Paul McCartney (he plays guitar in a ’60s Brit-rock cover band, the Whining Bullies), is living a distinctly American dream: The one where you wake up one morning with an idea so simple, so right-, uh, over-your-nose obvious, you can’t believe nobody ever thought of it before. You arm yourself every which way with patents. You take your invention to market. Voila, you’re rich. Of course, a lot can go wrong between ah-hah! and ka-ching! Someday Lando may go head-to-head with a well-heeled copycat. He has, after all, no secret ingredient. Lando - a 20-year industry veteran who previously worked for his father’s eyewear-design company - came up with the idea after just a week of focused fiddling. The only part missing was the fastener. “I was originally thinking about a hook or a snap,” he says. He even considered Velcro. Regular magnets wouldn’t work because they’d have to be as big as silver dollars. Then someone showed him a powerful neodymium magnet, which had just come on the market, and the whole thing snapped into place. To protect himself, Lando went to Steve Schneider, director of the Sawyer Center in Santa Rosa, a SBA-sponsored resource center for California inventors. Schneider did a patent search (the coast was clear), introduced Lando to a patent agent and patent lawyers, and showed him how to file for trademark protection, all at no cost. (Ultimately, Lando says, he spent about $250,000 on fees, lawyers, and other startup costs.) In March 2000, Lando took a suitcase full of prototype goggles to the Ski Industry Association trade show in Las Vegas and came back with a sheaf of orders, including one for $100,000 from a national sporting goods chain. Suddenly Lando was in business, even though he had yet to secure a manufacturer. “I immediately flew overseas,” says Lando, “brought them my prototype, and said, ‘Make this for me.’ ” Originally Lando focused on ski goggles. Then Harley-Davidson proposed a licensing deal, and he moved into motorcycle goggles. In 2003 Lando had the bright idea of expanding into reading glasses; now they account for two-thirds of his business. The latest: sunglasses - a nearly $2 billion market. “Everybody tells me that will be bigger than readers,” Lando gushes.


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