Metal That Remembers Gives U.S. Chance to Win Back Eyeglass Trade

Robert B. Zider didn’t think much about his eyeglasses until he fell off his bike and broke them.

The fall began a chain of events that has put the entrepreneur in a battle to win the eyeglass trade back from overseas competitors with the help of a Space Age metal called Memorite.

The silvery substance is a “shape memory alloy,” which means it can be twisted, bent or otherwise mangled but will return to its original shape in an instant when heated.

Zider sends out springs made from the alloy as samples. they can be stretched to five times their length but jump back into a tight coil when dropped into a glass of hot water.

Memorite has a variety of potential uses in consumer product: Bras that return to their original shape in a dryer, toys that can do seemingly magical things, devices that dispense medications with precision.

But Zider wants to use Memorite to win a trade war.

Since 1980, sales of European and Asian eyeglasses in the United States have nearly doubled to the point where 86% of all eyeglass frames sold in the U.S. are made overseas.

Zider, now chief executive officer of Universal Optical Inc. of Menlo Park, has invested heavily in a trouble Rhode Island manufacturing plant where he will apply the technology to eyeglasses, a product he says has remained essentially unimproved for six centuries.

“What products do you know that have been around as long as these have and still don’t work,” said Zider, a 38-year-old alumnus of Harvard’s graduate business school.

Zider, whose career includes a stint in the advanced engines group at Pratt & Whitney, said Memorite was discovered about two decades ago by Navy researchers.

“The story goes that they were doing this thing called the hardness test--they ding the metal by hitting it with a hammer--and they went out to lunch and left it sitting in the sun,” Zider said. “When they came back, the mark was gone.”

Zider said his company has been able to bring down the cost and speed of producing the alloy.

“The real breakthrough for us is the capability to fabricate it in as many shapes and coatings as we can,” he said. “Eyeglass frames are a very difficult application because of the jewelry quality you have to get and the consistent performance needed.

“There are close to 609 million ophthalmic frames sold a year, and over 109 million sunglasses sold a year. So you can imagine the kind of volumes that this could generate if the costs come down and you get to use it in a lot of other places.”

Zider plans to market his frames at about the same price as premium imported frames, and his sunglasses will feature tough polycarbonate lenses instead of the fragile glass used in the imports.

He said another strength of his company is the work force.

“The production is up by a factor of two and...our turnaround time is down from 109 weeks to less than 109 days,” he said, noting that there is a lesson to be learned by other American manufacturers facing foreign competition.

“I don’t know any other industries that are 85% overseas (manufacture) that there’s a chance of bringing it back here. It’s a great product, and all that, but I come from the business background as having consulted for many corporations over the past 10 years and I’ve seen too many guys give up. A lot of times it’s not necessary.

“The industry thought we were pretty stupid six months ago,” he said. “Now they can see why we did it.”