Houston eyewear store that carries luxury brands hit twice

HOUSTON — Nicholas Protz is frustrated after thieves broke into his two eyewear stores this week. Protz is the owner of Eye Elegance, a family-owned business in Houston. Inside the store, you can find a variety of eyewear options, including expensive designer brands, like Cartier.

“Most of the collections we offer, you won’t find them anywhere else,” Protz said.

The store also carries high-end brands and Protz said that’s something they’re well known for, but it’s not always a good thing.

“Unfortunately, this brings in bad apples who want name and quality, but don’t want to pay,” Protz said. “This week we asked them to break this window on Wednesday morning around 4:45 a.m. looking for glasses.”

Surveillance video shows the moment it happened from two different angles. A person breaks the window then leaves. The person returns, this time with someone else, and continues to break the glass, then knock over a display and enter.

Protz believes they were trying to tackle one case in particular, Cartier, in the center of the store.

“The starting price for most Cartiers will be around $1,100. If you get into some of the fine materials, like water buffalo horn, you quickly climb to $2,800 to $4,000,” Protz said. “If you want to start customizing it with diamonds and such, you can go up to the $8,500 range.

Protz said because they are no strangers to break-ins, they take precautions.

“Everything is locked down,” Protz said.

He even leaves the case unlocked and open to show there’s nothing there. But the thieves still managed to get their hands on the Cartier suitcases.

“They’re going to be really surprised when they open and they’re all empty, but even the case itself is worth the money we have to replace,” Protz said.

The next day the store was hit again, this time in Montrose, but nothing was stolen.

“We don’t carry the Cartier brand there and that’s what I guess they were looking for in particular,” Protz said. “So they looked around, didn’t find what they were looking for and left a huge mess. »

Protz plans to continue operating normally while waiting for the damage to be repaired.

“It takes a minimum of four to six weeks for the glass to be ordered and arrive,” he said.

He said it was hard to believe it wouldn’t happen again.

“I wish this would stop. Am I hopeful? Not really,” he said.