This is my 4th month of tracking Shady Rays vs. Blenders Eyewear.
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Previous 3 months:
Sunglass Wars: Blenders Eyewear vs Shady Rays
Sunglass Wars Part II: Blenders vs Shady Rays (August Update)
Sunglass Wars Part III: Seasonality is Here
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After last month, I thought Blenders Eyewear had shown itself to consistently generate more sales and revenue than Shady Rays. Both brands have seen a significant reduction in their monthly revenue since exiting the summer season here in the United States. However, Blenders Eyewear saw a bigger dip in October than Shady Rays.
I have searched all over to see if there is any clear indication as to why Blenders took a larger dip in October. However, I am not able to find anything in their digital footprint to lead me to conclude why they performed worse in October than Shadys Rays.
Website Traffic and Search Volumes
I get my website traffic numbers from SimilarWeb. SimilarWeb is not 100% accurate but is usually good enough to see trends. Blenders consistently has a higher level of website traffic each month.
Shady Ray and Blenders have similar monthly search trends, except during the summer months. Shady Rays saw a drastic increase in searches for their brand. However, we do not see this increased search volume showing up in increased website traffic on the SimilarWeb data.
Instagram Stats
Both brands’ Instagram growth seems to have flatlined since leaving peak summer seasonality.
Facebook Ads
The trend of reducing the number of Facebook ads continued for the month of October.
Shady Rays has 72 active ads on Facebook (this is down from their 120 active ads in July).
Blenders Eyewear has 430 active ads on Facebook (this is down from their 1600 active ads in July).
See Blenders Eyewear Facebook Ads
Top Paid Keywords
Here are the top paid keywords for both of these brands over the past 4 months:
The Sunglass War Saga Continues
I wish I had more historical data on both of these brands, but unfortunately, I just started tracking them this summer. I am surprised that Blenders has nearly 4x the social media size as Shady Rays, but both brands process very similar quantity of orders.
Both brands started advertising for their snow goggles line in October, which seems like a natural extension from their core sunglass line. I do not yet have a pulse on which brand may have the more popular off-season product line. Hopefully, I will see this data in the coming months.
Lastly, I have stated before that Blenders Eyewear’s brand is very much wrapped into beach and ocean/surfing activities. Shady Rays has always been more about the general outdoors (biking, hiking, etc). A large portion of the United States has moved away from beach activities, but the fall is great for other outdoor activities like biking and hiking. Maybe this is why Shady Rays’ revenue did not dip as much as Blenders’ did starting off the fall season.
