Tom Cruise saved Ray-Ban from bankruptcy by boosting its sales from 200,000 pairs per year to 4.5 million in a very less amount of time.
One of Hollywood’s finest actors is Tom Cruise. With action-packed movies like Top Gunand Mission Impossible, the star who started his acting career in Hollywood with Taps in 1981 (he also made a brief appearance in Endless Love in the same year) can still compete with more recent stars. We tell you about the moment he helped salvage a brand.
It was none other than the American-Italian brand of designer sunglasses and eyewear called Ray-Ban, which was founded by Bausch & Lomb in 1936. How could an actor, who was just breaking into Hollywood, assist a decades-old brand? Well here’s how!
One of Tom Cruise’s most recognisable scenes is from his 1983 film Risky Business, even though he is now best recognised for giving action-packed performances in high-octane movies like the Top Gun and Mission Impossible franchises. In Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll,” Cruise can be seen dancing around the house while wearing only his underwear. Although many people believe he also wore shades at this moment, this is untrue. Instead, he sported Ray-Ban sunglasses throughout the movie and on the movie’s posters.
When Cruise wore the Wayfarers in the 1983 hit Risky Business, the eyewear’s sales increased by roughly 50% (to about 360,000 pairs) at a time when the Ray-Ban brand was only selling about 200,000 pairs annually (this increased from 18,000 after GQ used it for one of their features). By 1988, 3 to 4 million Wayfarers were being sold annually by Bausch + Lomb. This was because the fans wanted to wear what Cruise was wearing in the film.
Cruise still adores his Ray-Ban Wayfarers and Aviators, even if they frequently go out of fashion. When questioned by reporters in 2013 at the Star Trek: Into Darkness premiere, if his stylish dark shades were 3-D glasses for the movie, the actor responded, “No, man. These are Ray-Bans.”
