We are expanding!!

By popular demand, we are now offering complete prescription services for regular “street wear” eyewear made of GLASS.

Most ECP’s (EyeCare Professionals) will do their best to talk you out of glass and put you into a more profitable (for them) plastic or polycarbonate lens. As a result, it is getting more and more difficult to find anyone to make GLASS lenses for spectacles. That’s where we come in: on our new website:  http://www.glassesfromglass.com/ you can place an order for GLASS lenses in your prescription in either your own frame or in one of our many available frame and lens packages.

Over the next week or so, we will be adding even more frame options as well as a sunglass line and a safety line.

What was old is new again!

In Stock Sale!!

We currently have some overstock (overruns and customer returns) that are available for immediate sale:

AUR-92 Soft Glass Torch
9501 Large Metal – 2 pair, regular price $ 94.95 sale price $ 74.95 http://www.auralens.net/sg_9501.cfm

9502 Standard Metal – 2 pair, regular price $ 94.95, sale price $ 74.95 http://www.auralens.net/sg_9502.cfm

AGW-203 Color Borosilicate, Entry level, Torch
0102 Standard Plastic – 1 pair, regular price $ 89.95, sale price $ 69.95 http://www.auralens.net/bg_0102.cfm

AGW-250 Color Borosilicate, Torch
Shade 4 0501 Sports Wrap – 1 pair, regular price $ 174.95, sale price $ 154.95 http://www.auralens.net/bg_0501.cfm

Shade 4 9502 Standard Metal – 1 pair, regular price $ 129.95, sale price $ 109.95 http://www.auralens.net/bg_9502.cfm

Shade 5 0501 Sports Wrap – 1 pair, regular price $ 174.95, sale price $ 154.95 http://www.auralens.net/bg_0501.cfm

Shade 5 0103 Large Plastic – 1 pair, regular price $ 109.95, sale price $ 89.95 http://www.auralens.net/bg_0103.cfm

AGW-286 Color Borosilicate, Torch
Shade 4/6 – 0301 Thinline Metal – 1 pair, regular price $ 259.95, sale price $ 239.95 http://www.auralens.net/bg_0301.cfm

AGW-300 Clear Borosilicate, Scientific, Torch
9502 Standard Metal Frame – 1 pair, regular price $ 259.95, sale price $ 239.95 http://www.auralens.net/bg_9502.cfm

You can place your order on-line and price will be adjusted when we receive your order. Prices do not include shipping.

Frame changes and other issues…

We’ve had some questions from customers about our recent change of the wrap-around style frames which I’d like to address.

As some of you are aware, we’ve been dealing with long lead times on getting wrap frames from our supplier. Some of it was due to the severe weather that occurred during late winter on the east coast, but it wasn’t until recently that I discovered that our supplier had started up an in-house sports Rx lab and was siphoning off frames that should have gone first to suppliers.

We’ve also been having some issues with lenses popping out, notably on the Biker and Off-Road frames, as well as glue issues on the nose pads on the MX-30 and Torque frames. The manufacturer has refused to issue credit or replace the frame on any glue issue, claiming the frames were abused, which caused the glue to fail. The lens popping is caused by us having to back bevel the lenses so they fit in the extra thick eyewires.

Early this month, I decided enough was enough and changed to a different frame supplied by a different supplier. The new frame looks similar to the original Biker frame, but the temple design is different. This is because this new frame is a Z87 safety frame, a much higher standard than the original Biker frame. We believe the new frame is better than the Biker for several reasons: the new frame stands up to abuse far better than the Biker even though the temples have a thinner cross-section, the frame material is actually stronger and the thinner cross-section allows for some flex and give when worn. In testing the new frame, we were not able to cause a lens to pop. This was due, again, to the thinner cross-section of the eye wire. The lens fits much easier into the groove, which also eliminates the need to back bevel the lenses in order to fit them properly into the frame.

Change is always difficult, but I hope that you will come to like this new frame as much as we do. The feedback we have gotten so far is very positive, so we believe this is a good move for us.

On another note, we are currently in a back-order situation on the IR filter material we use on the AGW-300 and AGW-325. Currently we are looking at lead times of approximately 3 to 4 weeks before we get any material. We are working with our supplier to find alternate equivalent material and hope to have this solved very soon.

Thank you for your time and thank you for being a past and present customer!

Website update in process…

If you haven’t had a chance yet, check out our website !!

News and Views from Aura Visual Concepts, Inc.

Hello! Contrary to various rumors, we are still around and still in business.

December 2009 is a month we’d all prefer to never happened, but happen it did: during the early part of the month, the various strains of flu went through our shop. Then on December 17th, we lost our file server. During the attempted reconstruction, we discovered that our backups were being written to a bad system disk…needless to say, that weekend and the two weeks that followed were spent in recovering and manually re-entereing data. Then came the “Christmas Blizzard” swiftly followed by the “New Years Ice Box”.

Sigh…

But while all of this was happening, we were still producing product, although shipments have lagged while we reconstructed our data files. We’ve finally finished that last step and as of today, we’ve started shipping orders out the door. We sincerely regret the delays some of you have experienced, and hope that there will be some way we can make it up to you.

News from around the company:

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve not been on-line on any of the forums in the past couple of months. This has been by design and on purpose. I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with all the drama on the various boards. I’ve found that the past six weeks have been refreshingly quiet and calm, simply by not getting involved in posting on-line. However, we still need a way to stay in contact with our past, present and future customers, and that is the purpose of this blog. What you will find here is information about our products, links to discount programs we may offer from time to time, and questions and answers about our products and business.

Frame updates

The 0101 Small Plastic Frame is being discontinued after existing orders are filled. Our reorder on this frame yesterday was kicked back by our supplier with the note that the frame was discontinued and no longer available. We substituted a different frame, but this particular model has been problematic for some time.

As a result, we are removing the small plastic frame from our line and adding a new small metal frame to our line up.

As it currently exists, the following is a list of our available frames:

0102 Standard Plastic (single bridge, rectangular shape)

0103 Large Plastic (double bridge, aviator shape)

0301 Thinline Metal (single bridge, flattened oval shape)

0501 Biker Wrap (single bridge, sport wrap)

0601 MX-30 (single bridge, sport wrap)

0602 Torque (single bridge, sport wrap)

0603 Off-Road (single bridge, sport wrap)

1001 Small Metal (single bridge, rounded oval shape)

9501 Large Metal (double bridge, aviator shape)

9502 Standard Metal (single bridge, rounded rectangular shape)