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Bloomberg Businessweek November 25, 2019require serious regulatory oversight;
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
classifies them in the same medical
device tier as hearing aids and preg-
nancy kits. Selling contacts, says Sally
Dillehay, an optometrist who’s worked
in vision research for three decades, is
much more involved than selling “tube
socks”—referring perhaps to Bombas,
the Warby Parker of tube socks. “We’re
talking about a piece of plastic that sits
on your eye, right? Your most important
sense,” she says. Gilboa and Blumenthal
say they bring the same care and safety
precautions to contacts that they have
to prescription eyeglasses.
But there’s also the obvious market-
ing challenge. A really nice pair of con-
tact lenses inspires none of the feels that
a pair of trendy spectacles or wayfarer
shades can. If Gilboa and Blumenthal
can actually create a fashion brand for
contacts, it will be an audacious mar-
keting feat, on the scale of the invention
of “certified pre-owned” used cars and
the duck that quacks about supplemen-
tal insurance. “They’re vastly different,”
Blumenthal acknowledges, comparing
Warby’s core business with its new one.
“Contacts are designed to be invisible.”Gilboa(left) and BlumenthalThe hip doctor’s office feels a bit like a
vinyl-record listening room, with slate-
gray wallpaper and soft lighting. Warby
is tripling its number of in-house optom-
etrists, to 80, and adding suites like this
one to 40 more stores this year.
Gilboa and Blumenthal were MBA
students at Wharton when they started
discussing the idea that would become
Warby Parker in- Their plan
was to disrupt
Luxottica, the
Goliath to their
David. The eyewear
conglomerate,
now known as
EssilorLuxottica SA
after its 2018
merger with the
French lensmaker
Essilor, is worth
$67 billion, con-
trols manufactur-
ing and distribution
for most eyewear
brands on the
planet, and owns
mall staples such
as Sunglass Hut and
LensCrafters. It also operates EyeMed
Vision Care LLC, the second-largest U.S.
vision insurance provider (which doesn’t
include Warby Parker in its network).
Gilboa and Blumenthal designed acetate
frames and sold them on the web, mov-
ing more than 100,000 pairs of glasses
in 2011. Several years later, Warby began
opening physical stores, hitting 64 loca-
tions in 2017. (There are 112 today.)
Warby’s growth even caught the atten-
tion of Mickey Drexler, the retail icon
who made Gap khakis cool in the 1990s
and did the same for J.Crew in the 2000s.
He joined Warby’s board and invested in
the company, which has raised $290 mil-
lion in financing from venture capitalists.
Blumenthal and Gilboa resisted
suggestions to expand into additional
categories, even as more and more
direct-to-consumer replicas took off.
One of their co-founders, Jeff Raider,
created Harry’s Inc., a different Warby
Parker of razors that was acquired in
May for $1.4 billion. Two other former
executives, Jen Rubio and Steph Korey,
left to develop Away, the Warby Parker
of luggage, which also boasts a $1.4 bil-
lion valuation. (Warby Parker was val-
ued at $1.75 billion in its last funding
round, in March 2018.)
They considered competing with
Shinola, the Warby Parker of watches,
and explored selling their sales soft-
ware to other companies. Instead, they
decided there was
more promise in
optical services.
Selling contacts
and doing more eye
exams represented
an $11 billion mar-
ket, “bigger than,
like, selling mat-
tresses,” Gilboa
says, a knock at
Casper, or maybe
Helix, Leesa Sleep,
Tuft & Needle, or
any other Warby
Parker of bedding.
But what would
the Warby Parker
of contact lenses
be? Customers
could rarely iden-
tify a single brand by its name. (“They
all have names like ‘AquaComfort Plus’
and ‘AquaSoft Moist,’ ” Gilboa jokes.) So
a skunk works team rounded up every
contact lens it could find, studying com-
fort, casings, and checkout processes.
They discovered problems in the pricing
schemes for daily contacts, which are
typically obfuscated by mail-in rebates
and service charges. Then there was the
tear-off packaging, which usually entails
finger-fishing for a lens drowning in solu-
tion, then squinting to see if it’s upside
down. Gilboa and Blumenthal found a
manufacturer in Asia that could slip the
lenses into a flatter sleeve that Warby
Parker promises will always keep the
contacts facing the right way.
About 70% of glasses are purchased at
the same time as prescriptions are writ-
ten, which puts Warby Parker at a dis-
advantage. “If a doctor prescribes you
Lipitor, he’s not selling you that drug.
But with eye doctors you get the exam,
and they upsell you on glasses and
lenses,” Gilboa says. “It’s ‘exit throughWARBY PARKER’S EYEWEAR IS
often thought of as a fashion accessory,
yet industry observers say its glasses are
actually just a small part of its popular-
ity. Katie Finnegan, a retail consultant
who previously led Walmart Inc.’s store-
of-tomorrow incubation efforts, says
what has most distinguished the brand is
its service, including a home try-on that
lets customers order five pairs of glasses
online and try them out for free. “They
have this je ne sais quoi that transforms
them from a transactional errand to an
emotional experience,” she says.
The company’s Rockefeller Center
store is a marvel of midcentury design.
Glowing shelves accent frames uni-
formly spaced apart, and floor associ-
ates in blue smocks hover around low
walnut tables. Scout lenses, though,
won’t be on display here like its glasses.
They’ll mostly be sold online and in
Warby’s new “eye exam suites,” one of
which can be found by going through a
back door and up two flights of stairs.