Two and half years ago, Bradford and Bryan Manning had separated while shopping at Bloomingdale’s in New York City, only to meet back up having bought the same exact shirt.

Like so many blind people, they’d let their fingers do the shopping and had picked out the softest, most comfy long-sleeve crewnecks they could put their hands on.

They left with a brilliant idea: They’d create casualwear clothing driven by a sense of touch rather than sight and use the profits to fight blindness.

That’s what they’ve done with Two Blind Brothers.

“We’d always done projects together and are super close,” says Bradford. “We care about helping blindness. We care about raising awareness. And we also want to have fun. We thought this consumer brand might be a way to do that.”

There’s an added do-gooder twist. Two Blind Brothers’ growing line of garments — graphic T-shirts, hoodies and three-button henleys — are being made at the Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind, which employs blind and visually impaired workers who use an automated cutting process and sewing machines with blind-friendly features.

The garment company has grown so big so fast that Bradford, 32, and Bryan, 27, left their full-time jobs in investment banking and big-data sales to focus on their brand.

“Obviously, this is such a charitable project that we have to pay the rent with a few side hustles,” says Bradford, during a recent visit to see the Lighthouse operations.

“Bradford drives Uber,” says Bryan. “He’s dangerous.”

It takes me a moment to realize that this is a joke.

What they’re really talking about is contract work from their previous careers and inspirational speaking gigs like the one they gave to Bausch & Lomb while they were in town.

Two Blind Brothers' garments range from $35 for a graphic T-shirt to $90 for the long-sleeve henley — their original and most popular product.

“We would be thrilled to do several million dollars in sales over the next 12 months,” says Bradford.

“But we try not to focus on sales,” adds Bryan. “The number that is really, really important to us is the $200,000 that we’ve been able to donate to retinal research.”

Every penny of profit goes to Foundation Fighting Blindness for proof-of-concept research needed before the big pharmaceutical companies or private equity investors will risk their money.

Vaseline vision

Just how all this came to be is an inspiring story of supportive parents and personal determination, with a hearty dose of gung-ho naiveté.

Bradford and Bryan were both diagnosed at 7 with Stargardt disease, a form of macular degeneration in which center vision is destroyed over time.

It’s like looking through glasses with Vaseline smeared on the lenses, Bradford explains. “You can still see out of the side of the glasses, so you use your peripheral vision. Our biggest complaint with our impairment is it’s really hard to for us to recognize faces, and it’s really hard for us to read print.”

Their vision is somewhere around 20/400. “But when you stop seeing the E, the eye chart becomes irrelevant,” says Bradford, who was the first to be diagnosed when he failed the kindergarten eye test.

1 / 2Workers at Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind work with sewing machines with blind-friendly features and an automated cutting process to make clothing for Two Blind Brothers.(Bryana Arlington) 2 / 2Sign at Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind heralds its relationship with Two Blind Brothers.(Bryana Arlington)

It took nearly two years to figure out why.

“The doctors thought maybe I was goofing around with the eye exams,” Bradford says. “A year and a half later, I ended up in a doctor’s office and the doctor did this test where they dye your blood and look at your retina through a microscope and can see the scar tissue.”

Bryan, who is five years younger, began to show signs around the age of 7.

“My mom and dad were hypervigilant,” says Bryan. “It is a genetic disease, but we can’t trace it anywhere on either side of the family. Both of our parents had a recessive trait.”

A small pocket magnifier was Bryan’s best study tool.

“I’d enlarge books that I could enlarge,” he says. “That was a big process, but you work through it. You try to listen as best you can in class, take good notes.”

Bryan Manning is shown the sewing blind-friendly sewing machines machine at the Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind. (Bryana Arlington / Special Contributor)

Brotherly bonds

Bradford and Bryan grew up in Charlottesville, Va., and went to the University of Virginia.

After Bradford earned his degree in finance, he headed to New York City for a banking job — just in time for the great financial crisis of 2008.

“Five of us lived in an apartment,” Bradford recalls. “Four of them worked for Lehman Brothers, and they all got laid off. I was being moved to another group, and I was going to get a pay cut as well.”

Thinking financial jobs would be underwater for awhile, Bradford went to Columbia University for a master’s degree in psychology. By the time he finished his degree, the financial sector was on the mend and he went back into investment banking.

Bryan got his degree in statistics in 2013 and went to work for a bank but quickly decided Excel spreadsheets weren’t his thing. He moved into data-based sales and loved it.

Bryan, left, and Bradford Manning with Ellen DeGeneres on her show that aired Jan. 4, 2017. (Courtsey The Ellen DeGeneres Sho)

After doing rock-paper-scissors at Bloomingdale’s to decide who got to keep the shirt — Bradford won with rock — the Mannings decided to act on their whim of making an ultra-soft soft henley.

Never mind that neither had any idea how to do that.

Friends in the fashion industry gave them a mountain of swatch books with thousands of little fabric samples.

“Nylons, cottons, blends, any fabric you could imagine,” says Bryan. “It was a huge advantage that we knew nothing, because we said, ‘OK we have these 50 swatch books. Let’s just go through them one at a time and make yes and no decisions.’”

They did that at a coffee shop two days a week for a month or two. “'Like it, don’t like it, like it,'” Bryan recalls saying. “We narrowed it down and narrowed it down until we found a fabric that was perfect. Then we were, ‘Awesome! We have this fabric. That’s great! How do you make a shirt?’”

Baring their souls

A woman in New York’s garment district agreed to do small production runs. They’d make a shirt, try it on, put it on friends, adjust the sleeves and the body fit, add a stitch or two here and there.

“After a month or two of going back and forth, we decided to make a couple hundred and put up a website,” says Bryan. “We figured, ‘We’ll force our friends to buy one. It’ll be a fun little project. We now know how to make a shirt.’ ”

They made a video for the website in Bradford’s apartment with a video producer friend prompting them out of their comfort zone to talk about what it was like to grow up as blind brothers.

“Most people who can’t see well keep that as a hidden thing,” says Bryan. “You don’t ever bring your weaknesses to light in front of people you don’t know.”

They let their guard down, talked about “super personal things,” started a Facebook page, loaded the video and went to bed.

“When we woke up the next day, I couldn’t scroll fast enough to get to the bottom of my phone. There were so many notifications,” says Bryan, who uses the zoom function and speech-to-text on his iPhone.

“We saw the power of telling an authentic story by being yourself and not hiding your weakness,” Bryan says. “And we came to realize how large of a community that’s actually out there of visually impaired who nobody had spoken to before.”

They launched the company on May 19, 2016.

After work, they’d tape boxes, print packing labels and ship shirts out of their apartment.

“The funny thing was it was easier to get strangers to buy shirts than our friends,” says Bryan.

“We had people in Idaho, ‘Thanks so much. I just bought three.’”

The brothers created a blind shopping experience for Black Friday with the headline, "Will you shop blind?" using Facebook and Instagram to get the word out. They got a 5-time return on their ad dollars and raised $100,000 for research.

They've become so adept at social media commerce that Facebook recently selected Two Blind Brothers for its U.S. Small Business Council, a collection of small businesses from around the country that will provide feedback on new products and solutions for the online giant.

The Ellen effect

Last summer, an online story got traction and the attention of the Ellen Degeneres Show that aired a segment in January 2017. Ellen donated $30,000 to their cause.

“That was a transformative moment for the project,” says Bradford.

Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind saw the show and contacted the Mannings about moving their shirt production to Big D.

“We couldn’t believe it,” says Bradford. “They have a manufacturing facility here. They’re doing all kinds of commercial work, government contracts for pens and uniforms award cases. And they also have a cut-and-sew manufacturing operation.

“They were very competitive. And with our mission, it was a beautiful overlap.”

Lighthouse became the official sewing company of Two Blind Brothers in May 2017.

“Now we have blind and visually impaired workers actually producing these garments, and they’ve done a fantastic job and it’s been a great part of our story,” says Bradford.

Bryan (left) and Bradford Manning got a $30,000 check from Ellen DeGeneres on her show that aired Jan. 4, 2017. (The Ellen DeGeneres Show)

Earlier this month, Dallas Lighthouse merged with Envision, a Wichita, Kan.-based not-for-profit organization that serves the blind and visually impaired.

Michael Monteferrante, CEO of Envision and Dallas Lighthouse, sees the production deal as a perfect fit.

“They are a very cool partner to have,” says Monteferrante. “And they have a host of initiatives — events, education and inspiring people with vision loss — that I think Envision can help them with to have greater impact and engagement.”

So what’s with the Two Blind Brothers name?

“That’s what we were always called: ‘Bryan and Brad, the two blind brothers,’” says Bryan. “We threw several ideas at each other when we were trying to come up with a company name. That was the one that stuck because it was so true to form.”

“You can’t forget it,” adds Bradford. “We’ve labeled ourselves in this way, and now we have the power to change conceptions around that label.”

Bradford recently had lunch with the parents of 3-year-old twin daughters just diagnosed with Stargardt’s.

“You could see the panic, the fear and the sadness that they’re going through” he says. “For us to be able to sit down with them and say, ‘Look, we’re going to tell you exactly how it is. And for us, it hasn’t been that bad.’ To be able to build that connection is something we’ve never experienced in any of our other previous careers.”

Adds Bryan: “Every time I’m having a tough day, arguing over something and getting upset, I can go onto our Facebook page or go onto our customer service email and actually see people reaching out. That’s something we could never have imagined. If you can make a positive impact on somebody’s life, that is just awesome.”

AT A GLANCE: Two Blind Brothers LLC

Founded: May 19, 2016

Headquarters: New York City

Employees: Six full time, one part time

Donated to research: $200,000

Website: twoblindbrothers.com

Bradford Manning

Title: "Co-brother," Two Blind Brothers LLC

Age: 32

Grew up: Charlottesville, Va.

Education: Bachelor of finance, University of Virginia, 2007; master's in clinical psychology, Columbia University, 2009

Personal: Single with a longtime girlfriend

Bryan Manning

Title: "Co-brother," Two Blind Brothers LLC

Age: 27

Grew up: Charlottesville, Va.

Education: Bachelor of science in statistics, University of Virginia, 2013

Personal: Single with a longtime girlfriend

SOURCES: Two Blind Brothers; Bradford and Bryan Manning

Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind

Founded: 1931

Headquarters: Dallas

Ownership: Envision

Employees: 210, with 90 of them blind or visually impaired

Annual revenue: Just under $25 million

Website: www.dallaslighthouse.org

SOURCE: Michael Monteferrante