Bollé Safety Brand Guidelines: The Oyonnax Eyewear Name’s Industrial Line, Now Based Near Lyon

Combs, celluloid and then eyewear.

Bollé Safety carries a name that goes back to 1888, when Séraphin Bollé set up a business in Oyonnax, a town in the Ain, in eastern France. French Wikipedia says the firm made combs until it sold its first pair of glasses; English Wikipedia spells the founder’s name Seraphim. A timeline the brand published for its 130th anniversary in 2018, reproduced by Snow Sports News, says Bollé was among the first companies to use a newly developed celluloid at the turn of the century, and that this material became the basis of its products in the early decades.

The same timeline dates the first Bollé factory to 1915 and says Georges Bollé, Séraphin’s son, introduced the products to England in 1918. In the late 1930s — 1936 according to English Wikipedia, 1937 according to the brand’s timeline — Georges Bollé and an English partner, H. Thurgar, formed Thurgar-Bollé to make and sell the brand in the United Kingdom.

The sources read for this guide do not describe the Bollé company during the German occupation of France from 1940 to 1944. The safety line came after the Second World War. English Wikipedia says that after the war Bollé began using moulded nylon, and both English Wikipedia and the brand’s timeline date the first safety glasses and goggles in the Bollé range to 1950. The consumer side followed its own path: a nylon “cat-eye” sunglass in 1956, the Nylon Grand Sport cycling glasses, and the first ski goggles in 1960. Through the 1970s, English Wikipedia says, Bollé kept developing protective eyewear and moved into eye protection for industrial workplaces.

Today Bollé Safety describes its own history in those terms. In a December 2021 press release it said it had “originated as part of the Bollé Family, a small workshop in France founded over 130 years ago,” and that it went on to pioneer tactical eyewear in the late 1950s; that is the company’s account.

Glasses, goggles and a tactical division.

Bollé Safety now works from Villeurbanne, in the Lyon area. Le Journal des Entreprises has described it since 2022 as a Villeurbanne business with about 120 employees, specialising in eye protection, and in September 2022 called it the leader in its market in France. In the same report a vice-president of the company said Bollé Safety produces 20 million pairs of glasses a year.

The range is built around safety spectacles, over-glasses and goggles for industry, with prescription versions and a tactical line. In September 2022 the company launched an online service for ordering prescription safety glasses, offering more than 25 models made in partnership with a network of opticians, Le Journal des Entreprises reported. In July 2024 the same paper reported the launch of SWIFT, a pair of models — a safety spectacle and an over-glass — for industrial use, both with a lens treatment the company calls PLATINUM Lite.

The tactical range has its own name. In December 2021 the company said it had renamed its Bollé Tactical division Bollé Safety Standard Issue, for police, emergency services, the military and shooting sports; its brand vice-president said the new name and logo were meant to be “catchy, bold, and a bit mysterious.” In March 2025 Le Journal des Entreprises reported the launch of the MY6, a ballistic spectacle for that range.

On where its products are made, the documented picture is partial. In 2022 the company told Le Journal des Entreprises that it works with subcontractors on its injection-moulding processes, and that its Cura face screen for healthcare staff is made in the United Kingdom with recycled polyamide. The same report described eco-designed models: the Solis Go Green, made from a material recycled from fishing nets, and the Klassee, whose frame includes castor oil. In October 2024 the paper reported that Bollé Safety had been certified as a B Corp.

Design and documentation.

Personal protective equipment is sold on sight as much as on specification, and the makers in this guide present themselves in a shared visual language. The strongest signal is colour: fluorescent yellow and orange, the tones of high-visibility vests, jackets and rainwear, appear across catalogues, packaging and trade-show stands, usually set against a dark navy, charcoal or black.

Photography does much of the work. Catalogues and websites show safety glasses, earmuffs and hard hats on workers rather than on a white background alone: a welder behind a visor, a road crew in reflective stripes, a warehouse picker in cut-resistant gloves. Construction sites, factory floors and utility work are the usual settings, and many makers add a second, outdoor register for shooters, hunters and anglers, with camouflage, sunglasses styling and range photography.

Product pages lean on order. Gloves are shown in grids by coating, cuff and size; glasses in rows by lens tint; earplugs and earmuffs by type. Standards and ratings are printed as part of the design, in badges and code numbers, and ranges are often organised by the hazard or the trade they are sold for rather than by style alone.

The trade meets at fairs. A+A in Düsseldorf, the international trade fair for safety and health at work, gathers makers and distributors from around the world, and in the United States the National Safety Council’s Safety Congress & Expo serves a similar role. Many makers also sell through distributor networks and buying groups, so brochures, counter displays and sell sheets carry as much of the identity as the logo itself. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it and where it is based — and attributes claims to the company where they rest on its own word.

One name, several owners, one holding company.

The Bollé business has changed hands several times. English Wikipedia says the American optics company Bushnell acquired the Bollé and Serengeti eyewear brands in 2001, and that Bollé, Cébé and Serengeti became part of Vista Outdoor when Vista acquired Bushnell in 2013.

In August 2018 the London private-equity firm A&M Capital Europe bought the business from Vista Outdoor in what it called a corporate carve-out. Its announcement described the business, “founded in France in 1888,” as having two divisions: Industrial Safety, supplying protective eyewear to industrial markets, and Consumer Brands, selling sunglasses, ski goggles and helmets under the Bollé, Cébé, Serengeti and H2Optix names. In October 2018 the optometry journal Optometry Today reported that A&M Capital, as owner of Bollé, Bollé Safety, Serengeti and Cébé, had set up a holding company, Bollé Brands, to group them, led by Peter Smith as chief executive and based in France.

So Bollé Safety is not a separate company split from the sunglasses brand, but the safety business within the same group. In October 2024 Le Journal des Entreprises listed Bollé Brands as grouping Bollé, Bollé Safety, Serengeti, H2 Optix and Spy. That line-up is changing: in May 2026 FashionUnited reported that the Italian eyewear group Safilo had signed an agreement with Bollé Brands to buy Spy+ and Serengeti. The deal as reported does not include Bollé Safety, which remains with Bollé Brands under A&M Capital Europe.

For a design guide, Bollé Safety shows how a consumer eyewear name can carry over into industrial and tactical equipment, with a sub-brand for each audience. Compare Uvex, a German name in protective eyewear, and Pyramex, another safety-eyewear name. For this guide we use ink blue, a smoked teal and mist grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Bollé Safety’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.