NEUBAU EYEWEAR MEETS BUSINESS ENTREPRENEUR & ALL ROUND CREATIVE JENNIFER BITSCHE OF HINGUCKER & FACEPRINT

WE DISCUSS HOW SHE BUILT HER BLOGGING AND GREATER EYEWEAR EMPIRE WITH SUSTAINABILITY AND STYLE.

It takes a cer­tain degree of dri­ve, pas­sion and above all self-con­fi­dence to even imag­ine the lev­el of suc­cess which Aus­tri­an cre­ative and busi­ness queen Jen­nifer Bitsche has achieved. She’s the founder of Faceprint, a dis­tinc­tive eye­wear blog ded­i­cat­ed to explor­ing the increas­ing­ly diverse range of eye­wear prod­ucts and optom­i­cal inno­va­tions, and togeth­er with her hus­band she runs one of the most dar­ing­ly cool and aes­thet­i­cal­ly inno­v­a­tive eye­wear con­cept stores in Aus­tria: Hin­guck­er. With the inten­tion to pro­vide an hon­est and insight­ful per­spec­tive, Jen­nifer has been able to craft a busi­ness mod­el that offers its cus­tomers the chance to learn specifics about a prod­uct; where it comes from, how its designed and how it can be improved.

In an age where mar­ket­ing aims to curate a false truth for the sake of income, this hon­est con­cept seems to be some­thing hard to come by. Above all, Jen­nifer has pro­vid­ed a rare thing, a brand and busi­ness built with the desire to inform and inspire. We got the chance to speak with this cre­ative vision­ary behind the artistry, pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with a unique per­spec­tive on the inno­va­tion and extra­or­di­nary designs found in the wide range of eyewear.

You clear­ly have a spe­cial pas­sion for eye­wear and prod­uct design, what is it that you find so fas­ci­nat­ing about eyewear?

If you look some­body in the face, glass­es are the first thing you will rec­og­nize. With every style and col­or, the wear­er stets an indi­vid­ual state­ment. So I look at a face and always ask myself, what’s the sto­ry behind this face?

Your hus­band is an optometrist and has col­lab­o­rat­ed with you on the devel­op­ment of your con­cept store, Hin­guck­er, and it seems that each of you holds a spe­cif­ic skill set and dif­fer­ent kind of inter­est in eye­sight. How does your rela­tion­ship inspire your brand and its growth?

As you already said, my hus­band is the optometrist and has a deep pro­fes­sion­al knowl­edge. I stud­ied mar­ket­ing and was always focused on recog­nis­ing and search­ing for trends. Per­son­al­ly, I do not chase every sin­gle trend, I want to have a deep­er knowl­edge of it and always have a proof of qual­i­ty and design. Always stay­ing true is one of the most impor­tant things. Also, our range in Hin­guck­er is not per­suad­ed by trends that come and go. We stick to qual­i­ty pieces that we know will last the test of time.

How do you, as a cou­ple, bal­ance work­ing togeth­er in a pro­fes­sion­al & prac­ti­cal busi­ness part­ner­ship with your roman­tic relationship?

We have clear­ly set our respon­si­bil­i­ties, but that was also easy because of our edu­ca­tion. Hon­est­ly, we real­ly talk a lot about our busi­ness, our goals and our vision, but we do try to talk less about our com­pa­ny, as we don’t real­ly sep­a­rate busi­ness from free time. Basi­cal­ly, both our rela­tion­ship and our busi­ness rep­re­sent our future and so we have tried to make the best out of everything.

How can design­ers, store own­ers and advo­cates like your­self main­tain the bal­ance between the increas­ing demand for fash­ion­able prod­ucts with the need to cre­ate and sell sus­tain­ably?

Some­times you have to think trans­verse­ly and make a step out of the box. Have a goal, have a focus and stay on your path. Then you will find the per­fect prod­ucts con­cern­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty, design or qual­i­ty for you and your cus­tomers. Nowa­days sus­tain­abil­i­ty is not just nice, these days it’s indis­pens­able. Nat­u­ral­ly, you can’t change every­thing in your busi­ness in one day, but if you focus on goals and make it step by step, you’re on the right way.

Both Faceprint and Hin­guck­er have emerged from their hum­ble begin­nings as suc­cess sto­ries and their reach is only ever-expand­ing! How did you find the tran­si­tion from blog­ger to busi­ness own­er and where do you see your busi­ness mov­ing from here?

It’s not real­ly a tran­si­tion, because both of them are my busi­ness and my pas­sion. Faceprint is my cre­ative path and visu­al space to bring you clos­er to the eye­wear indus­try. Hin­guck­er is my phys­i­cal path to show in a more tan­gi­ble space that eye­wear is not just a nice acces­so­ry but also a strong state­ment and neces­si­ty. But Hin­guck­er is more than just eye­wear, Hin­guck­er is more like a liv­ing room, where you can find prod­ucts for your­self, like inte­ri­or items, books, care prod­ucts, Gin & Whiskey, jew­ellery and so on. All of them are spe­cif­ic pieces, with good qual­i­ty, awe­some design and of course, with a sto­ry behind them.

Do you remem­ber your first pair of glass­es? How has your style and rela­tion­ship to your glass­es changed?

Oh yes, I do. And it was hor­ri­ble. I real­ly hat­ed to wear my speck­led blue glass­es and the teacher at my school always forced me to wear the glass­es oth­er­wise I had to sit in the front row. Time and style have since been chang­ing and I’ve been con­stant­ly look­ing for more accept­able and awe-inspir­ing glass­es. The more I was get­ting to know this branch, dif­fer­ent labels and the pos­si­bil­i­ties, the more I was get­ting pas­sion­ate about it. I real­ly like to see fan­cy and colour­ful glass­es on oth­ers, but I am more the type who suits or prefers the min­i­mal­ist, laid back style. I always want to feel com­fort­able in the clothes and glass­es I wear, with effort­less ease and true style.