Daniel Fine of West Windsor has launched Glass-U, a business selling sunglasses based at his home and run from his dorm room in Philadelphia. A senior at the Wharton School, he received a $10,000 investment from the school.
Fine, 22, was raised in West Windsor, where his father, Rick, is a physician and his mother, Debi, is a businesswoman. “It’s a type-A family,” he explains. When his younger brother, Jake, was diagnosed in 2004 with juvenile diabetes at age 7, the brothers formed Team Brotherly Love to raise funds for diabetes research. Both brothers attended public schools through eighth grade and then attended the Peddie School.
Daniel received Time Magazine’s Tomorrow25 Award in 2010 in conjunction with Team Brotherly Love. Running the charity jumpstarted Daniel’s business career. “That gave me not just the confidence, but the experience and frankly, the ideas for Glass-U,” Fine says. “Everything we do can stem back to Team Brotherly Love.” The charity inspired Dan to develop an app called Dosed, a mobile app for diabetics to keep track of their insulin dosage.
It also gave him valuable experience selling branded merchandise. As part of his fundraising efforts, he figured out the best ways to have Team Brotherly Love shirts, mugs, and other items manufactured overseas. The success of that venture is what gave him the idea to start Glass-U.
His new company is focused exclusively on sunglasses. Specifically, plastic sunglasses made in China that fold all the way, with a hinge between the lenses allowing them to collapse to a very small size. The glasses can be customized to sport the colors and logo of any college, group, sports team, or organization, and can be sold at a profit for $10 to $14. They are made overseas and customized in the United States.
From that simple basis, and working from his dorm room, Fine launched his company at the Rose Bowl last year. He took his sunglasses on a barnstorming tour selling them at other youth-heavy venues like the Bonnaroo Music Festival, South by Southwest, and Lollapalooza. In this way, he caught the attention of the licensing companies that control merchandising rights to many universities. Since then he has managed to get sunglass-making rights for several hundred schools, every Greek organization in the United States, and the World Cup. Glass-U glasses were available in stadiums sporting FIFA logos for all the different national teams. (Fine declined to share sales figures.)
Although Fine manages the business from his dorm room, it employs 26 people who work remotely. It also has a “guru” program where college students can become Glass-U reps and sell the sunglasses on their campuses.
Fine is not the only young sunglasses entrepreneur to emerge from West Windsor. Matthew Sheffield, a 2014 graduate of High School South, founded Shady Eyedeas, a company selling sunglasses with interchangeable frames, lenses, and arms, while he was still in high school. Fine says he recently read about Shady Eyedeas in a newspaper, but there is no connection.
Fine, scheduled to graduate in May, plans to devote himself full time to his businesses, including Team Brotherly Love, Glass-U, and Match Tutors, a tutoring company he founded based in Boston, under the umbrella of the Fine Companies LLC. “Entrepreneurial stuff is a passion of mine,” he says. “I love doing it, and I have a lot of fun along the way.”
Visit www.glass-u.com, or call 855-687-7623 for information about the company or to seek a position as a guru to sell its wares.
