(gentle upbeat music) - [Bret] At a quick glance, there's not a ton going on in downtown Finlayson.

But tucked away in an old building in this small Minnesota town is a company using some high-tech equipment to change the way outdoors enthusiasts deal with the sun.

(gentle upbeat music) - RLVNT is a company for outdoor enthusiasts.

We say that we exist to give enthusiasts the edge, so we're trying to take some of our, maybe our technology or know-how that we've gained through the years in my other company, Quantum Innovations, and bring some of that technological know-how to the outdoor space.

We've got a lot of different products from our bait box, which is this small, little ice fishing box to hold your stuff made out locally harvested wood, all the way to, on the high-tech end, our glasses, our StealthScreen, our lures, and everything that we do on that end is somehow related to light.

- [Bret] Could you just not afford vowels?

(Norm laughing) - Well, I wanted to say that the product, no matter what product we came up with, just kind of as a mantra that it needed to be relevant all the time.

When I went to get that name relevant was already taken.

So if I took the vowels out, I could do it.

So I decided to make it an acronym, Solving Real Life Vexes with New Technology.

- And so I think the first time I heard of RLVNT it was your sunglasses.

That was the first product that I saw.

So, like, what makes your sunglasses special?

And why don't you show me how you make 'em too?

- There's a lot of different things that make our glasses special.

So one of the things is, is we want the lens to be as clear as possible.

So there's a few different lense that have the same optical clarity as the lens in your eye.

And so the lens that we're choosing is one of those lenses that's really, really clear.

It's called Trivex.

So the nice thing about Trivex is it's really clear, but it also gives you impact resistance.

And then, the other thing that we wanna do is we want you to be able to see your screen all the time.

So we have what's called Screen View.

So in order to do that we've got a special polarizer, and then we also have what's called a photochromic.

So a photochromic means that it's gonna absorb light, and then it's going to darken up.

And ours we call it a chameleon, because it also changes colors.

This is our hunting lens and this is a UV light, so it's kind of a greenish color And when we hit it with the UV light, it is gonna darken up and it's gonna change colors.

- Oh, wow.

- So when it darkens up, you can see it changed color.

So the chameleon lens will darken up based on the lighting conditions that we're in.

The other really great thing about this particular one is that we have two photochromics on this lens.

One that's in the visible range, one that's in the UV range.

And so that means when you're driving down the road, it'll darken up behind the windshield, which is unique to this particular product.

- Oh, wow.

I don't if it's a blue eyes type of situation or what, but I'll wear sunglasses on cloudy days a lot of times.

But also as a pheasant hunter, somebody that likes to wear glasses when I'm walking through, you know, thick, heavy cover, but as the sun gets lower and I'm hunting later in the day, I wanna keep that eye protection without having to change glasses and things like that.

So they'll lighten up as well?

- Yeah, that's a really great thing is, you know, you can get in the duck blind when, you know, it's not quite light, you can be in late at night.

And, because of that, it's going to lighten up and you're gonna get it in its relaxed state like it is now.

Or, you know, the sun comes up, and then it's gonna darken and give you that sunglass experience.

In fishing situations, we're gonna go, like around here, there's a lot of iron-rich water, so there's a lot of reds in the water.

So what we wanna do is we wanna turn down the color red, but we wanna pass all the other colors.

So what that contrast experience will be is that you can see deeper in the water, and you can see structure, you can see fish holding behind a log, you can see a lot of things.

So what we're doing is instead of having broad mirrors that they just look pretty, ours are functional.

- Let's go see how you make these.

(gentle upbeat music) Watch your step.

(gentle upbeat music) So what's going on here?

- So what we're gonna do when we're making a lens is we start with a raw blank.

And this is a lens blank with nothing on it, nothing's been done to it.

And the very first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna clean this lens.

So this is an aqueous cleaning systems and the lenses are all gonna be cleaned in this side, and on the other side, it is gonna be lacquer, 'cause it is really impact resistant, but we wanna make it really scratch resistant as well.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna put a titanium nanoparticle-infused lacquer in here that gives it a lot of abrasion resistant.

And then, we have to go into this other room, and then we're gonna cure this lens.

And then, we're gonna put a thin-film coating on it.

So this is actually a vacuum-coating machine.

We're gonna vapor apply thin films.

So the inside of this stainless steel chamber is gonna get to negative pressures like space.

There's an electron beam gun here.

So this is actually a pill of zirconium dioxide that has been melted.

We're gonna get this to its boiling point.

The vapor goes everywhere inside the chamber and the lenses are spinning inside that vapor plume.

And we put a layer of metal, and then we put a layer of glass, and then we put a layer of metal so that we can bend light in the way that we wanna bend it.

(gentle music) So this is a thin-film vapor deposition system.

It's a vacuum system just like the other one.

This one's just much smaller.

We actually make this at Quantum, our other company in Oregon.

What I wanted to demonstrate is actually putting a coating on so you can actually see what's going on inside the vacuum.

This is a nice machine for that.

So I'm gonna load a lens and choose a process.

So the lens goes on, what we call, the in-feed.

And then, it's gonna come up and say, "Hey, what do you wanna do with that lens?"

And I'm gonna choose maybe a rose gold coating, and choose the lens size.

And then, it's gonna measure that lens, and then it's gonna roll that lens into the vacuum chamber.

And what you're gonna see is you're gonna see different colors of plasma inside there.

So we're using a different technique than that in the other room, but similar in the fact that we're thin-film depositing in here as well.

So this is gonna create plasma based on the gases that are inside that chamber.

There's your plasma.

(machine whirring) - So after they come out of that machine over there, what happens next?

- So it's gonna come out, it's got the coatings on both sides of the lens.

And then, what we're gonna do is we've gotta take this lens now and we've gotta put it into the frame.

So what we do is we come in this room, and then we're gonna use this machine, and this is going to have a multi-axis cutter in here.

So we're gonna take this lens that's this shape, and then we're gonna turn it into lenses that look like this.

(gentle upbeat music) This is the old muni here in Finlayson, Minnesota.

And the other side of our building is the old fire hall.

So we repurposed this space and turned it into a pretty high-tech thing for this area.

And, hopefully, not only do we create those jobs, but we give an avenue for young people that are passionate about something, maybe technology, engineering, that sort of stuff.

They don't have to leave, they can stay here, and have something high tech in the area.

You know, I graduated with 81 people.

I didn't know what to do after high school, so I went into the military.

When I went into the Navy, I chose the electronics program.

And when I got out, I went to work for a company that makes thin-film coating machines.

And I left that company in 2002 and started my own company.

- [Bret] So you never went to college?

- No, I never went to college, no.

I don't actually have a formal degree in anything.

It's just a confluence of things, that's the way life is.

(gentle music) Once I understood that a lot of duck hunters don't know how ducks see or what causes them to flare, we contacted the people that work in university, some doctors, engineers, that sort of stuff, that understand ducks, and then turkey, and deer.

And then, started to try and create some experiments to really understand how we could influence the vision of ducks.

And then, I invented a coating that makes sure that the duck hunters' glasses won't be seen by the duck.

So the StealthScreen is something that kind of went along with that, which is if the number one problem that a duck hunter's gonna face trying to conceal themselves is the fact that a duck can see perfectly in the UV, then we ought to do some things to conceal the duck hunter.

So we messed around with a bunch of different products to try and get something that was going to block 100% of the UV, and by block, I mean it's absorbing 100% of the UV, so that you could put it on your face, you look totally normal to any other human, but when you look at it on the screen, with a UV camera and a UV light, you're gonna see that all the light is gone.

(chuckles) Always makes me laugh.

So you can see me in the screen where my nose is completely black.

It's really funny when you do your teeth or something like that.

(Bret laughing) And then, you know, if you look at me, it doesn't look like I, well, maybe it does look.

(Bret laughing) I can't see it, so.

- Pretty heavy coating.

But, yeah, you work it in and it'll disappear.

- Yep.

- So for the guys that don't wanna put on the black face paint, you can put this on and have the same effect, yet it's completely clear to see on the skin.

- Yep.

Wow, now I look real nice.

(Bret chuckles) (gentle music) When you see our lenses, they're completely gone to the animal.

So when you see the combination, the concealment technology with the StealthScreen, and that's the benefit that you get when you don't have any reflection, any UV reflection, going back to the animal.

- So does that work as a sunscreen as well too?

- Yes.

(gentle music) Telling people that it works is the harder part.

We can't talk to a duck, and so the duck's not gonna tell us, "Yeah, I see you."

(gentle upbeat music) - [Bret] So after the sunglasses you decided to get into the lure coating business.

- Yep.

- What do you hope to accomplish with that, and how does that work?

- Well, hopefully, we create a new category of lures.

The thing that I don't think anybody's really concentrating on is the way that fish see, and stimulating them to bite based on the way that they see.

And then, there's so much science that's been emerging around the way that predator fish see.

A lot of predator fish are gonna go and hunt using either UV or infrared depending on the lighting conditions.

And so what we wanna do is we want to use those, and use those to our advantage to reflect back in a natural way to the fish.

And then, what we're doing in the visible range, 'cause all the ones we made originally had no color in the visible range, and we were catching a lot of fish, but the fishermen were going, "I don't even know why."

- Right.

- So we started adding color, but we did that in a way that is consistent with a scale or with a prey fish.

So that way the fish is gonna see something that looks natural to them.

- We're talking about jigs, crankbaits, a number of different styles of lures, and currently you're working with other lure manufacturers?

- I had no intention of actually selling a lure.

I just had the technology and I wanted to do it for other people, because every time I went and I talked to somebody, they had the same kind of questions that you have, "Well, I can't see it.

How do I know it's gonna work?"

- Right.

- And so I just started with making some of the basic products.

What I'd rather do is put it on somebody else's lure, because we're not in the business of making lures, we're in the business of making the coating that needs to go on the lure.

We're using thin-film coatings, we're just gonna bend light.

In this case, we wanna somehow create an environment where the fish is gonna wanna bite.

So what we're doing is we're bending light in a different way, but we're still bending light, we're gonna use the same devices.

(gentle upbeat music) We are seeing what the fish is gonna see when this thing is going through the water is that we are reflecting UV lig So when we talk about the fact that we are reflecting in the UV, this is what we're talking about And this is just a normal crankbait, and I don't know who made this one, but you can see it's a traditional paint on there.

But this is what causes so much fish bites is because we're reflecting so well.

(gentle upbeat music) We're trying to solve a problem first.

That's just the way I see business, that's the way I see the world, is if there's a problem, we need to solve it.

So we're doing the same thing at RLVNT.