Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul didn’t ask sunglasses company Ray-Ban before stamping his brand on their product. Now Ray-Ban has asked Paul to pull their Wayfarer glasses with his “Rand” logo from the campaign website.
The so-called “Rand-Ban” sunglasses were sold on Paul’s site in a store filled with items designed to woo young supporters. That is, they were on sale until Tuesday, The Hill newspaper reported.
The Wayfarers ‒ that Ray-Ban sells for a starting price of $135 ‒ were listed at $150 and were described as “the intersection of politics and cool.”
But Ray-Ban didn’t think the Rand-Bans were so cool, especially because they never gave Paul or his campaign permission to use their product.
“We learned that the Rand Paul campaign had been selling Ray-Ban sunglasses imprinted with the ‘Rand’ logo without our consent,” Jane Lehman, head of corporate communications for Luxottica, the parent company of Ray-Ban, wrote in an email to The Hill.
“After a formal request from us, they promptly removed the product from their site and agreed to cease any further use of our trademarks,” she wrote.
Ray-Ban may not have been the only entity upset about the sunglasses marketing. Paul used the Wayfarers to compare himself to President John F. Kennedy ‒ a Democrat whose family is still heavily involved in politics and liberal causes.