by The Editors on October 22, 2025
Jim Jannard, action sporting’s first billionaire founder of Oakley and Red, recently sold his last piece of Hanalei Bay for $32.25 million, according to a story in Pacific Business News.
An entity owned by James Jannard, the founder of Oakley Inc. eyewear, sold the last of his four beachfront homes on Kauai’s North Shore last week for $32.25 million, which was just under the combined sale price of the other three properties which was $36.75 million, according to public records.
According to the story, the buyer of the property is “Extra Time LLC, according to public records, but the listed San Francisco address is linked to Iconiq Capital, a global investment firm whose clients reportedly include Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Reid Hoffman, Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Reynolds” et al.
Jannard appears to be one billionaire who needs less ocean front property. It was only 10 years ago that he began buying houses on Kauai’s north shore. Wonder what he sees coming?
[Link via Beachgrit]
by The Editors on June 19, 2024
Jim Jannard, the action sporting genius entrepreneur behind Oakley BMX/motorcycle grips, glasses, and, more recently, Red Digital Cinema has reportedly sold his Malibu, California beach home for $210 million according to a story in the New York Post. This apparently breaks the record for most expensive home sale in California state history: a record formerly held by the Jay-Z/Beyoncé Corporation at $200 million.
This 15,000-square-foot stunner sprawls across 9.5 acres of prime clifftop land, boasting a private 300-foot stretch of ocean near El Pescador State Beach. . . The palatial pad includes eight bedrooms, a staggering 14 bathrooms, a massive courtyard, a gym and two guesthouses. . . Interiors designed by Michael S. Smith — the same guy who revamped the Oval Office at the White House — feature ornate columns, beamed ceilings, and floor-to-ceiling steel and glass windows. . . The backyard includes a lush lawn and a pool with ocean views.
Work hard kids, and all this can be yours.
[Link: New York Post]
by The Editors on October 4, 2017
Billionaire Oakley and Red Camera founder Jim Jannard has always had a fetishist’s attention to architectural detail (and design in general) and that’s why it is so entertaining to check out his concrete and metal Beverly Hills, California home featured in Wallpaper Magazine.
Though it took five years to complete the house, the outline of the project was sketched out in just a few bold strokes: it would have a high-tech feel, bringing in some of Jannard’s product designers for the all-metal fixtures; it would take advantage of its singular locale, with multiple vantage points looking out to the sprawling urban vista; and, of course, it would be monumental, recalling a certain prehistoric rock formation in southern England.
Looks like the perfect place to wait out the days of tribulation.
[Link: Wallpaper Magazine]
by The Editors on March 12, 2015
Oakley and Red camera founder (and #462 on Forbes Billionaire List) Jim Jannard is apparently buying up a couple beach front lots on Kauai’s North Shore according to a story in Pacific Business News.
Jannard is under contract to purchase several adjacent Hanalei Bay beachfront homes about a quarter-mile up the beach, a source tells PBN. . . . Jannard’s Kauains LLC in 2012 purchased a 23,162-square-foot parcel of land on Weke Road in Hanalei for $13.35 million from Jan Hailey Revocable Trust, near his current purchases. He sold it to Waioli Surf Shack Holdings LLC for $15 million a year later, according to public records.
If you’re going to own a strip of beach front somewhere in the world, it might as well be Hanalei Bay, right?
[Link: Pacific Business News]
by The Editors on August 25, 2008
It could be argued that Red Digital Cinema is 59-year-old Oakley founder Jim Jannard’s third lightening strike. He completely rearranged the way motorcycle/BMX grips were made, then moved on and revolutionized action sports eyewear. It would seem that selling Oakley to Luxottica for $2.1 billion would have been a nice place to pause and maybe buy an island in the South Pacific, spend a few years painting nude island girls, and call it a life. Not Jannard.
Instead, he decided to completely re-wire the image capture business with a revolutionary camera designed from the ground up to digitally do what no one had ever done before. Jannard seems driven by an ability to look at stagnate industries and ask, “Why are they still doing things the old way?”
His team of engineers and scientists have created the first digital movie camera that matches the detail and richness of analog film. The Red One records motion in a whopping 4,096 lines of horizontal resolution—”4K” in filmmaker lingo—and 2,304 of vertical. For comparison, hi-def digital movies like Sin City and the Star Wars prequels top out at 1,920 by 1,080, just like your HDTV. (There’s also a slightly higher-resolution option called 2K that reaches 2,048 lines by 1,080.) Film doesn’t have pixels, but the industry-standard 35-millimeter stock has a visual resolution roughly equivalent to 4K. And that’s what makes the Red so exciting: It delivers all the dazzle of analog, but it’s easier to use and cheaper—by orders of magnitude—than a film camera. In other words, Jannard’s creation threatens to make 35-mm movie film obsolete.
Early on camera experts were treating the Red One like some kind of hoax. But most of them had no idea who was behind the camera and that he literally was capable of creating the impossible. Wired magazine’s Michael Behar breaks down the story, which makes us realize that Jim Jannard is probably the most incredible mind to ever work in the action sports business. He never competes. He simply moves the entire industry his way.
“I’m passionate about this because I’m building the camera I’ve always wanted to shoot with,” he says. “When my grandkids and great-grandkids look back, they’re going to say I was a camera builder. I did handgrips and then goggles and then sunglasses to prepare myself. But cameras are magic.”
[Link: Wired Magazine]
by The Editors on November 14, 2019
Call it a beacon of laziness, or a blinding neon sign of boredom, but we’re still at it. Putting up a list of headlines for stories we might have read over the past who knows how many days.
It takes us back to when we were just starting out. Each week we built an HTML page of links with a bit of commentary. Then the commentary took over, and now, it looks like we’re back to just blasting out an occasional list of links for you to chew through all by your lonesome. Just the ebbs and flows of action sporting news dissemination. Enjoy.
[click to continue…]
by The Editors on November 19, 2014
While we’re all waiting for something (anything, really) new from the disruptive by designers at Oakley, they’d like to distract us all from the present for a few minutes with a little ramble through their storied past. You know, when they designed amazingly cutting edge objects of sport that changed the world.
The new book, cleverly called The Oakley Book, will only cost you $195 (which is probably cheaper than anything else they sell these days).
The 220 page premium coffee table hard cover book is housed in a black rubber slipcase with metal ellipse Oakley logo and features 200 inspiring images throughout the brand’s history including early advertisements, world-renown athlete ambassadors and product design sketches – some of which have never before been revealed to the public. It’s a story of disruption by design, futurism mixed with heritage and vision without limit. This is the world according to Oakley.
So, if you’re a collector of all things Oakley, then please, by all means, ante up. For the official word from Oakley, follow the jump. [click to continue…]
by The Editors on May 20, 2014
When company founders leave, those who remain are forced to come to terms with exactly who the company is and what it is supposed to be. This can be made even more difficult when the company is purchased by a huge, international company and managers there begin wondering what their new brand has planned for the future. Oakley seems to be in that position right now.
Since founder Jim Jannard sold the company in 2007 it seems Oakley has been struggling for some kind of path forward. Their sports eyewear continues to sell well, but recently they’ve launched nothing in the way of innovative products.
This edit titled A Story of Disruption narrated by James T. Kirk Kevin Spacey is a reminder of all the “disruptive” innovative things Oakley has done. The idea is probably to suggest to all of us that a company with such an innovative past will continue to creative innovative products in the future. Sadly, there is nothing in the film to suggest there are any such products on the horizon. Only the promise that people with a space age home office must be able to come up with something that will make a “new and better future.” Guess we’ll just wait and see. . .
by The Editors on July 19, 2011
by The Editors on August 31, 2009
David Scott Olivet, the CEO of Oakley moved out of that position and into a newly created position called “chairman” last month according to a story in the Orange County Business Journal.
Olivet plans to start his own investment company and continue working for Oakley founder Jim Jannard’s latest venture, Lake Forest-based Red Digital Cinema Camera Co., a digital movie camera maker. . . The Laguna Beach resident has started Renegade Brands LLC, which looks to invest in apparel and other consumer companies. . . . “I will play a variety of roles, from investor to active board member to executive depending on the situation,” Olivet said.
Sounds like Olivet has decided to spend a little more time figuring out what to do with all his money. Meanwhile, Colin Baden, who has been president of Oakley since 1999 will step in as new CEO.
[Link: Orange County Business Journal]
