Mr. Glass - From the Shooting Wire

Brian Conley of Hunters HD Gold might as well be known as “Mr. Glass.”

Not because he’s the villain in an M. Night Shyamalan movie, but because when it comes to competition shooting glasses, he practically owns the market.

The shooting glass market runs the gamut—from inexpensive generic protective eyewear you find in clamshell packaging hanging on a retailer’s pegboard to the major brand names sold in mall kiosks and branded stores.

Then there are the bougie cousins—stylish, value-priced imported look-alikes of those major sunglass brands.

With enough money and the right overseas manufacturing partner, almost anybody can enter the shooting glass market using the import-and-resale model.

That’s not Hunters HD Gold.

What differentiates Hunters HD Gold from the rest is Optical Prescription Lab. Located in Pelham, Alabama, the company was founded in 1977 by Conley’s late mother-in-law, and it’s the kind of lab where your ophthalmologist or optometrist might have your lenses made.

Being the actual lens maker—rather than an importer or reseller—gives Hunters HD Gold a huge advantage, especially when it comes to prescription glasses.

While many companies rely on polycarbonate lenses, Hunters HD Gold uses Trivex (a PPG Industries product), which is lighter and stronger than plastic or polycarbonate. Its real advantage, however, is 43% greater light transmission.

And the difference is noticeable. I wear prescription Hunters HD Gold lenses, and the extra visibility you get in the early morning and late afternoon is significant. At matches, Conley often lets shooters borrow non-prescription glasses, and their reaction to the improved visibility more often than not leads to a purchase.

I know because I sat in the Hunters HD Gold tent at the 2023 End of Trail and watched a competitor immediately order a pair after a test-drive on the range.

Prescription Glasses Made Easy

Anybody who has attended End of Trail knows that many shooters are of a certain age. That’s the polite way of saying 60 and older—and with older eyes often comes prescription glasses.

Overall, for Hunters HD Gold, the split between prescription and non-prescription glasses is 50-50, but varies from match to match. As Conley explains, at End of Trail there are far more prescription glasses than at a more youthful Rimfire Challenge match.

Several shooting-glass brands offer prescription lenses, Hunters HD Gold excels at it. The company allows shooters to order their lenses, receive their glasses, and wear them for 30 days before paying.

As Conley explained to a couple ordering glasses, “If you call to tell us you love them we run your card. If you run into a problem, you call us and we fix it. And if we don’t hear from you in 30 days, we assume you love them and we run your card.”

Being the actual maker of the lenses is a distinct competitive advantage for Hunters HD Gold. It also gives them tremendous flexibility since they can make lenses for nearly any brand of frame. Conley had me send my mono-vision glasses (don’t ask—it sounded better in theory than in practice) and installed new lenses for me.

Having ordered prescription shooting glasses from another brand some 25 years ago, I learned the hard way that doing the long-distance glasses thing doesn’t always work out so well.

Those glasses never really suited me, which made me reluctant to repeat that process.

Conley’s method eliminates that insecurity and any potential for buyer’s remorse. This likely explains why, at End of Trail, only about 10% of his business comes from new customers.
Shooters want second and third pairs of glasses, often with a different lens color or just a new frame style.

Hunters HD Gold offers the original Gold lenses—what I currently wear—along with Hunters HD Ruby, and the newer AktiveBlu.

Dominating Competition

Hunters HD Gold has quietly become a dominant player in the shooting sports when it comes to protective eyewear.

Previously, for those who remember, the formula was simple: give a shooter a jersey logo, call them “pro staff,” and let them hand out 50%-off coupon codes. Those coupon-pushing ‘pros’ were the early iteration of today’s ‘ambassadors’ and ‘influencers.’

Conley’s approach is entirely different. He is essentially a one-man band. Naturally, he does sponsor a few shooters, but mostly focuses on supporting the sport and the matches, often as an on-site vendor.

This year, Conley is involved in 28 shooting sports, and Hunters HD Gold is the official eyewear of 12 of them. He is also planning to set up shop at 30 to 40 matches.

His personal attention to Hunters HD customers at matches is why so many shooters rely on him for their shooting-glasses needs. Conley’s high-touch approach isn’t so much a sale as it is the building of a relationship.

Conley discovered just how successful this approach was when COVID-19 hit.

The government’s restrictions on in-person interactions took its toll on retailers, restaurants, and other businesses—including ophthalmologists and optometrists. Which in turn impacted Optical Prescription Lab.

If people aren’t going to their eye doctor, they aren’t getting new glasses. No new glasses means no new lenses to make.

You know who was buying glasses? Shooters. And it was the Hunters HD Gold business that kept Optical Prescription Lab in the lens-making business and not the layoff business.

This explains Conley’s devotion to shooters, shooting matches and the shooting sports. When most companies in the shooting sports space are cutting back on marketing and sponsorships, Hunters HD Gold is going strong.

Considering I need a new prescription, and thus a new set of glasses, you can imagine who I’ll be going to. And in case you’re wondering, considering how much time I spend in front of a computer screen, AktiveBlu will be my lens color of choice.

Now, to find a good frame or two.…

– Paul Erhardt, Managing Editor, the Outdoor Wire Digital Network