Zoff Brand Guidelines: A Shimokitazawa Glasses Shop, Intermestic and Megane Super

A 1993 company and a 2001 shop.

Zoff is the glasses chain of Intermestic Inc., a Tokyo company. The Tokyo Stock Exchange’s new-listing outline, dated 12 September 2024, gives Intermestic’s date of establishment as 20 May 1993; the company’s own history adds that a sister company, Zoff Inc., was set up two months earlier, in March 1993. Japanese Wikipedia says that sister company began life as Galileo Club before it took the Zoff name. Intermestic’s founder is Teruhiro Ueno, FASHIONSNAP reported in April 2021.

The shop name reached the street eight years later. The first Zoff store opened in Shimokitazawa, in Tokyo, in February 2001, according to both the company and Japanese Wikipedia. Japanese Wikipedia describes how the business is set up: Intermestic acts as the franchisor that plans and sells the glasses, while its subsidiary Zoff Co. and franchise partners run the shops, with planning, making and selling handled inside one chain, the approach usually called SPA. The company itself says it handles planning, production and sales in-house. In March 2004 it opened the first shop of a second format, Consomme, at Coredo Nihonbashi, Japanese Wikipedia says.

The road to the stock market was not direct. In 2007 the Osaka Securities Exchange approved a listing on its Hercules market, but Intermestic called it off shortly before the date after weak results, FASHIONSNAP reported in September 2024; Japanese Wikipedia dates the withdrawal of the approval to October 2007. The second attempt went through. Intermestic listed on the Prime market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange on 18 October 2024, under the code 262A, according to the exchange’s outline, which describes its business as making and selling lenses, frames, sunglasses and accessories.

Series, formats and Asian shops.

Zoff’s own-label frames are grouped into series the company names, such as Zoff SMART, which it describes as made from a light special plastic, and ranges called New Standard and Women’s Standard. The company dates Zoff SMART to October 2010 and says it had sold one million pairs by July 2014 and five million by August 2019; Japanese Wikipedia gives October 2011 for the launch, so the two dates differ. In June 2013 the company released its first series of Disney character–themed glasses, it says, and a Disney Collection was still a named line on its Japanese store site in November 2026.

The chain has tried several shop formats. Japanese Wikipedia lists a Zoff Marche format that opened at Aeon Mall Makuhari Shintoshin in December 2013, a ZoffMART that opened in Jiyugaoka in December 2015, and a Zoff glasses-shop pavilion at KidZania Tokyo, the children’s job theme park, from October 2012, followed by one at KidZania Koshien in March 2013. In April 2020 the company set up a research and development body it calls ZEPS, short for Zoff Eye Performance Studio.

Growth abroad came through Asia. The company says it founded a Shanghai subsidiary in November 2009 and opened its first store outside Japan, at Far East International Plaza in China, in January 2010. Its first Singapore store opened at Orchard Central in April 2017 and its first Hong Kong store at City Plaza in November 2017, the company says; Japanese Wikipedia adds that the Singapore and Hong Kong subsidiaries were set up in October 2016. At home, the company says, the chain reached 200 stores in April 2017 and 300 in December 2020, and it marked the 20th anniversary of the Shimokitazawa opening in February 2021.

Design and documentation.

Optical retail chains present themselves above all through the shop sign. The name over the door has to work at street level, on a shopping-centre fascia and on a phone screen, and many chains in this group run more than one name at once. In the Nordic countries, Synsam trades as Synsam in Sweden, Norway and Finland but as Profil Optik in Denmark and Iceland, while Finland’s Instru Optiikka runs Instrumentarium, Nissen and Keops side by side.

Ownership is part of the story these companies tell, and it varies widely. Some chains began as alliances of independent opticians or as co-operatives and buying groups; others grew from a single founder or a family business; still others now sit inside listed groups or private-equity portfolios. Corporate pages on founders, owners and dates are often the most useful material for a designer, because they explain why one network carries several names or why a sign has outlived the company that created it.

Own-label frames are the second constant. Chains in Japan, Brazil, Spain, France, the Nordic countries and the Gulf sell frames under their own range names next to outside brands, and those names are given here as the companies publish them, collection by collection. Store formats follow the same pattern: flagship shops, outlet or second-hand formats, franchise stores and online sales are each described in the companies’ own terms.

The guides in this group set out each chain’s published history, ownership and store network with dates, and then offer an unofficial palette and a type stand-in for reference. They make no claims about eye care, lenses or examinations, and no logo or shop sign is reproduced.

A family company, a listing and a second chain.

Branding has been run from inside the family business. When Hiroshi Ueno, the founder’s son, became president in April 2021, FASHIONSNAP reported that he had joined Intermestic in 2001, with the launch of the Zoff brand, and had worked across PR, marketing, product development and store design, overseeing branding as the company’s creative design officer. The same report said Zoff had carried out a rebranding in 2020, ahead of the 20th anniversary of its first store, and that the company was framing its strategy around the phrase “Eye Performance,” with customers in their twenties to forties at the core and ranges for older customers and children as well. The exchange’s 2024 listing outline names him as president.

The biggest change came in 2025. On 2 September 2025 FASHIONSNAP reported that Intermestic would buy all the shares of Horus HD and shares of its subsidiary Horus, with the transfer dated 1 October, making Visionary Holdings, the operator of the Megane Super chain, a wholly owned subsidiary. Japanese Wikipedia records the deal as completed on 1 October 2025, and the board list on Visionary Holdings’ own site now includes Intermestic executives. FASHIONSNAP said the two chains together would run more than 600 shops in Japan, and that Megane Super’s focus on contact lenses, with many younger customers, was one reason for the purchase.

That leaves Intermestic with two quite different shop signs: Zoff, built from a single Shimokitazawa store, and Megane Super, a chain with roots in Odawara in the 1970s. Each keeps its own name on the street.

For a design guide, Zoff shows how a short four-letter name can carry own-label series, several shop formats and stores in more than one Asian market. Compare JINS, another Japanese glasses chain, and Owndays. For this guide we use a deep blue, a soft grey and a warm white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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