Everything started in 2013. Ermanno Zanella (1988 from Malè, Trentino) decided to craft a pair of wooden glasses with a DIY CNC milling machine. Luckily at the time in his basement, there were no wood but only abandoned snowboards. The idea of a broken snowboard transformed into a pair of sunglasses was cool enough to become his Bachelor thesis in Design at the University of Bolzano. After his degree the prototyping goes on and is moved to Austria, Zillertal in the Aesmo’s workshop (Snowboard producer) which turns out to be the perfect place to prototype something obtained from a snowboard and acquire the know-how about materials and cut technique. In the meantime, Filippo Irdi, after his legal studies, decides that snowboarding is way more appealing than the forensic career and move to the Zillertal Valley where he starts working as a shaper. Here is where they meet and give birth to Uptitude, a company that turns broken snowboards and skies into high-quality glasses. Once the first good prototype was done they brought it to Italy, in Lombardia first and then to Cadore. Uptitude mission is to provide to his customers, unique high-quality sunglasses at an affordable price.

When we first saw these sunglasses in the internet, we wanted to see it for ourselves, so we ordered one immediately. What is very cool about these sunglasses is that they are all one of a kind as different parts of the snowboard is used; some are solid color, some have unique patterns. In addition, there are different frame types however we focused on the one is best as Asian fit. All process is done in Italy; a great idea and product born from the local environment.