50
Gilboastoodona staircaseatWarby
Parker’slibrary-likeheadquartersin
New York to tell employees about the
eyewear retailer’s future. There had
been some modest milestones to cel-
ebrate, including a new collection of
frames handcrafted in Italy and a store
opening at the King of Prussia shopping
mall outside Philadelphia. But the big
reveal was on Gilboa’s face. Or rather, it
was on his eyeballs.
On Nov. 19 the company unveiled
Scout, a line of daily contact lenses. It’s
the first time Warby Parker, whose $95
tortoiseshell frames are ubiquitous in
coworking spaces and third-wave coffee
shops, has expanded beyond eyeglasses
since Gilboa and co-Chief Executive
Officer Neil Blumenthal started the com-
pany almost a decade ago. At $440 for a
year’s supply, the lenses will be slightly
cheaper than many daily contacts butwill be sold with what Warby says will
be a much improved ordering process.
Gilboa’s speech was one of several
events Warby held this fall to get its
2,000-plus employees appropriately
excited for a product that seems impos-
sible to get excited about. “This feels
orders of magnitude larger than every-
thing we’ve done,” Gilboa told Bloomberg
Businessweek after the meeting.
If anyone could make contact lenses
cool, Warby Parker could. The com-
pany is often credited with creating the
“direct-to-consumer” craze, a fancy
term for product makers that eschew
wholesalers and sell their stuff on the
internet. Investors have pumped enor-
mous sums into millennial-friendly busi-
nesses marketed as “the Warby Parker
of X.” Allbirds, Casper Sleep, Dollar
Shave Club, and Glossier—the Warby
Parkers of sneakers, mattresses, razor
blades, and makeup, respectively—eachachieved valuations of $1 billion. Those
are the most successful clones, anyway.
There are also Warby Parkers of vita-
mins (Care/of ), short shorts (Chubbies),
dog toys (BarkBox), and untucked
button-downs (Untuckit).
Then there are the other direct-to-
consumer eyewear businesses: the
Warbys of Warby, to take the snowclone
to the point of absurdity. These include
Ambr Eyewear, Coastal, GlassesUSA,
and Zenni Optical. Many offer similar
frames at even cheaper prices. Sucharita
Kodali, an analyst at Forrester Research
Inc., says this means Warby will have to
transform itself into something more
than a cool eyewear brand before its
cool wears off. “Whether or not Warby
turns into a hugely transformational
business remains to be seen,” she says.
Can contact lenses, a commodity
product poked onto your corneas, be the
key to this transformation? ContactsONE MORNING IN SEPTEMBER, DAVE