Vision Expo East 2024: Zyloware Eyewear Co-CEOs win Optical Lifetime Achievement Award

Chris and Jamie Shyer, Zyloware Eyewear's co-CEOs, were chosen as recipients of this year's Optical Lifetime Achievement award at Vision Expo East 2024's NOW Award Ceremony this past weekend. The duo talk initial reactions to winning the award and their family's hard work over the last 100 years of business in an Optometry Times interview.

Video transcript

Editor's note - This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Chris Shyer:

I'm Chris Shyer.

Jamie Shyer:

And I'm Jamie Shyer.
Chris Shyer:

We're the co-CEOs of Zyloware Eyewear, our family's business for over 100 years, made 100 years last year. This is timed in an interesting way that we're really thrilled. This is the Now award from Vision Expo, The Vision Council, for lifetime achievement. Now, we haven't personally been around 100 years, but we really feel like this is acknowledgement of not just ours, and not just our teams, but actually our families and our contributions throughout the decades. Zyloware actually provided eyewear to armed forces in World War 2 and we actually are enormous supporters of American manufacturing for the majority of the time we've been in business. I'm thrilled with our amazing team and I think that the reason currently this is exciting is because we have an amazing team that works with us. They are of all shapes and sizes and brilliant experts in our field and I think somebody realized that we support all of our people in a very special way and that's probably part of the reason we were lucky enough to be recognized tonight.

Jamie Shyer:

Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, this is a shock. I think we're both a little like taken aback because there are so many incredible companies here. But to be 100 year old legacy business to be recognized by such a fantastic industry, knowing that our legacy really means something for the industry, that it's recognized what our grandfather did, to what our father did, and now lets third generation. It's wonderful to keep that alive and keep it going forward. For 2024 and beyond, you know, we're gonna keep moving forward, keep reinventing ourselves as a business, maintain the wonderful experts that we have within our ranks, within our company, who are the most incredible people. We could not be any luckier to have the people that we get to work with every day because without them, there's no this, there's no us, and we just really appreciate the recognition. Thank you.