Our product ethos is pretty simple - make it well and make it look good.
Our first Tjoobies were made from natural undyed 2.5mm leather thong. Being a leather goods company, this was an available and obvious choice. Over time the leather darkens and softens when worn taking on a beautiful patina. When people started asking if they could buy our personal "worn in" Tjoobies off our glasses, we knew we had to start making them in black leather too. Soon after we started making rope cords too.
The colourful thread at the ends of our Tjoobies is actually a completely functional rather than just decorative. It's called a "whipping knot", an ancient nautical binding brought to Cape Town on boats by its earliest settlers. The fact that it doubles up as some fun decorative colour too is a bonus. Form follows function.
And then we come to the most important part...
When trying to solve how to connect the leather to the eyewear, we had no idea where to find the typical black o-rings used by most other versions of this product we'd ever seen. But sitting on the work bench was a bicycle tube (Cape Town is an amazing cycling city), and the idea just hit - if we sliced a tube up into little "rubber bands" perhaps that might work. We had no idea how fortuitous that idea was. The feedback we immediately got from people was how well they gripped the frames and that they were so much more resilient than the industry standard. The tube is also where our name comes from ;)
And lastly, the noodle. We sourced silicone tube that we chopped to length to create the tightener that helps fasten your Tjoobie to your frame. It looks just like macaroni, hence us calling it the noodle.
And that's it. Super simple. 4 elements tested and refined over years to create what we (and thousands more) believe is the best eyewear cord on planet earth.