Made in USA from quality U.S. and global components.

We want you to know where our products come from, the material make-up, how they were made and why.

MINIMIZE WASTE

We strive to eliminate single-use disposable plastics in the manufacture of our products and all our business practices.

We constantly work with our partners to improve working practices to reduce waste and excess. We often pay a small ‘Green Premium’ to eliminate the use of disposable plastics, for example, to have a supplier use tissue paper instead of a disposable poly bag in individual parts packaging, kraft paper stuffing instead of air bladder plastic or styrofoam peanuts.

Hooray for small victories!

We show the details of our sourcing, supplier locations, the certifications we have, and a summary of why we made these decisions. In our ongoing effort, we will continue to add and update our production details, product and material information to this page as well as within some of the product descriptions.

DESIGN

We design and build our eyewear here in San Diego, CA.

FRAME PARTS

Our frames are made in the United States. We work with domestic partners running Multi Jet Fusion, an industrial powder bed process that uses infra-red light and our digital files to form each part.

PLANT-BASED MATERIAL

Polyamide 11 (PA 11) is a bioplastic and a member of the nylon family of polymers produced by the polymerization of 11-aminoundecanoic acid. It is produced from castor beans by Arkema under the trade name Rilsan. This article goes deeper on Arkema’s investments in its bio-based supply chain and the production sites for the PA11 we use in our frames. Arkema

FRAME FINISHING

Our parts go through a series of steps including polishing, coloring, painting, sealing, lens edging and assembly. All of this is done here in Encinitas, CA.

QUALITY CONTROL

Every pair is inspected by hand before it ships — frame finish, hinge action, lens alignment and lens fit. Anything that doesn’t pass gets reworked or set aside.

SAUNT LOGO BADGE

Our logo badges are made in and imported from a factory in Wenzhou, China. The logo badges are die cast zinc, metal plated and enamel filled with tiny dual posts on the back for fastening into the arms. We make the parts in China because it is still not only cost prohibitive to make them here in the United States but we haven’t found a source that can make them with the dual posts on the back. We aim to make them domestically in the future. Our production quantities are still small which makes it difficult to get our production costs down when manufacturing in the US.

HINGE SCREWS

We have 6 different screw sizes. The screws don’t loosen or back out of the frames during repeated use. Our screws are made in Wenzhou, China from the same factory that makes our metal logo badges. We intend to source screws domestically in the future.

INJECTED POLARIZED

We make an 'injected polarized' lens. What this means is that plastic is injected into a highly polished mold with a high quality polarizing film inserted to create a strong bond. What is removed from the mold is called a lens blank, the blank is then put through a series of processes that tint, harden, coat the lenses with Anti-Reflective and sometimes mirror coatings equaling all the benefits that come with Saunt lenses.

This is a basic understanding of why it is so difficult to establish this manufacturing technology here in the United States.

We currently have our lens blanks made in and imported from Xiamen, China. We work with a top notch factory that has fair working conditions for their people.

Why don’t we make lenses ourselves here in the United States?

Out of all the components of eyewear the lenses are the most technical and require the most expensive equipment to produce. Between the highly polished molds, the surface coating equipment and the mirror coating machines the equipment is expensive and expertise required is high. In order to justify setting up lens production, large production quantities are needed and since 95% of the world’s eyewear is made in Asian countries it currently makes sense that the lenses are made there as well. Perhaps we will be able to make lenses ourselves some day in the future.

LENS EDGING

Once our polarized lens blanks arrive, we edge and fit every lens ourselves on our own edger, right here in our Encinitas shop.

HARD CASE

Our hard cases are made in and imported from China. Most of our frames ship with one.

Our larger styles don’t fit in the hard case, so those ship with a wool pouch instead.

WOOL POUCH

We make our wool pouches here in the U.S. from 100% Wool imported from Uruguay, cut and sewn into these cool Saunt pouches.

The 100% Wool material is Oeko-Tex certified, which tests for harmful substances and requires the textile be made under audited environmental and workplace standards.

Our woven labels are made in and imported from Vietnam. The tags are made from 70 to 90% recycled thread. As our order volume increases we will look at making these woven labels here in the U.S.

The wool pouches cost considerably more to produce. Providing a wool pouch with every sunglass would mean raising our prices, and we’d rather import the hard case than do that.

MICRO-FIBER CLEANING CLOTH

Microfiber is not only a petroleum based product but the microfibers cause harm as they break down reaching the depths of the oceans and food chain. We have found no other material to better protect and clean our lenses than this microfiber. We have tried and tested Bamboo, Cotton, Modal and other natural fibers but they do not clean lenses nor are they fine and soft enough to not scratch them. We are looking for a solution to getting away from microfiber but have not yet found it. We are able to manufacture these cloths here in the US but have not yet done so. Future production will be in the US. Our current cleaning cloths are made and imported from Jiangsu, China. Our cloths are made of 80% Polyester and 20% Nylon.

Our supplier is SGS Group verified. SGS ensured trusted, ethical and environmental conscious goods such as food electronics, textiles, toys footwear and housewares etc..

MATERIALS

All of our materials are from recycled stock and recyclable. We work closely with Ecoenclose to ensure our packaging materials meet the highest standards when it comes to recycled, recyclable and in some cases compostable. Our boxes, corrugated bubble, tissue paper, insert cards and reinforced draft paper packing tape are all from www.ecoenclose.com — please feel free to look them up.

MAILING LABELS

Our 4”x6” mailing labels are recyclable and compostable. Made in USA www.purelabels.com