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Filling market niche helps Sabre grow fast

I stopped by Sabre Vision’s new headquarters and showroom on 32nd Street in Newport Beach on Friday to meet partners Brooke McGregor and Tabitha Shafran in person before they left today for a month-long business trip to Australia and Indonesia.

Brooke is very passionate about the industry and we exchange emails frequently. But I had never talked to him in-depth about Sabre.

Sabre has taken off since the sunglass brand’s first shipment in November 2006. The young brand is now sold in 200 doors and 27 countries. How Tabitha and Brooke arrived at this point is pretty interesting.

A far-fetched idea

Brooke, 30, was the Insight salesman here several years ago and found out first hand how hard it was to launch an Australian brand in the U.S.

After he returned home to Australia, he started a blog as a joke called Sabrecrew.com that chronicled the stories of his friends trying to make it as pro surfers and other exploits.

The blog developed a following, and Brooke decided to turn it into a sunglass brand. He partnered with girlfriend Tabitha, 26, who has an apparel design background and is good with technology. A former boss with financial resources and experience with production became the third partner.

The idea sounded pretty far-fetched at the time. Brooke and Tabitha remember telling Tabitha’s parents about the plan.

“They said, ‘That’s good darling,’” Tabitha said. They never imagined the idea would come to fruition.

Alone in the U.S.

After his experience with Insight, Brooke knew to make it in the U.S. he needed to start Sabre in the U.S. So he and Tabitha moved here in July 2006.

They had no contacts, no friends, and no credit in America, which made it difficult to find a place to live. They finally found a landlord to rent them a house in Corona Del Mar, and they set up shop in the garage for 12 months.

They set up the company’s infrastructure, found production facilities in China in part by researching factories on the internet, and starting designing sunglasses for the first time.

“It was difficult,” Tabitha said. “Sometimes I’d say, ‘Let’s just go home.’ But now we realize it would have been hard to start a business anywhere - in Australia, too.”

Exploiting a niche

Sabre’s niche is fashion forward glasses at more affordable prices than many industry sunglass brands. The glasses, often inspired by vintage looks, retail for $75 to $100 and feature crazy colors and different designs. Currently, Sabre has 13 styles. The glasses are mostly unisex, and Sabre estimates 50 to 60 percent of their demographic is young women.

“There was a huge hole in the market for a brand with a real fashion edge at a good price point,” Brooke said.

Sabre also collaborates a lot with brands and retailers, creating custom designs with dual logos.

Sabre started with 20 doors. It now is in 200, including Active, Jack’s, 30 Zumiez locations, HSS, Sun Diego, The Closet and several Los Angeles boutiques.

“It’s been ridiculous growth,” Brooke said.

The Sabre partners budgeted carefully for growth, however, and have a solid plan. “This isn’t a hobby,” he said. “We knew what we were in for.”

Internationally, retailers include General Pants and Surf, Dive & Ski in Australia and Beams in Japan.

Distributors handle most of the international business but in Europe, Sabre just signed a licensing agreement with a former JSI executive. JSI was the licensee for O’Neill in Europe for years.

New showroom

After 12 months in the Corona del Mar house, Sabre secured office and warehouse space in Costa Mesa. But they outgrew that as well and moved a few months ago to Newport. Tabitha and Brooke opted to hire an off-site warehouse company to handle shipping, which allowed them to open a showroom and offices in a great street location in Newport.

Tabitha and Brooke are now settled here and feel at home.

“We have friendships here that are as deep as our friendships in Australia,” Brooke said.

What’s next

The company is looking to hire a national sales manager who can understand the brand and Sabre consumer. Currently, Sabre has three employees in addition to Brooke and Tabitha.

I asked Brooke and Tabitha if they have any plans to expand into clothing.

“We are just concentrating on what we are doing,” Brooke said. “We want to be good at what we are good at. We want to make sure everything is working properly. We are growing so fast, we are trying to keep up.”