Bloomberg Businessweek November 25, 2019
53the gift shop,’ ” Blumenthal adds. By
increasing the number of staff optom-
etrists and building eye exam suites at
every new store, he and Gilboa say they
can goose their own sales. According to
a source familiar with the company’s
financials, revenue grew 35% last
year, but just a single-digit percent-
age of Warby Parker’s customers have
historically gotten prescriptions and eye-
wear simultaneously at their stores.
EssilorLuxottica has more than 9,000
stores, a figure Warby Parker can’t hope
to compete with, so instead the company
has focused on using software to check
prescriptions. Through the Warby Parker
mobile app, shoppers can update their
glasses prescription for $40 with a self-
administered vision test, which it hopes
to use for contacts too in the future. The
service uses your phone and laptop to
test your sight and sends the results to an
eye doctor to confirm the
prescription. But these
digital tests encompass
only a portion of what
a doctor would do in an
in-person exam, including
inspections for glaucoma
and other eye diseases.
Some optometrists
view this form of tele-
medicine as unsafe and
are fighting services such
as Warby’s app at a state
and federal level. Georgia,
Michigan, and New
Mexico have effectively
banned online vision
tests, and other states are
considering similar prohi-
bitions. “These exams are
in no way, in any stretch
of the imagination, aneye examina-
tion,” says Barbara Horn, president of the
American Optometric Association. “They
have not proven to be accurate, and they
haven’t passed the premarket approval.”
Gilboa and Blumenthal don’t appear
fazed by the skepticism. In an interview
in which they arrived dressed as pop-
rock duo Hall & Oates (the corporate
Halloween party was that evening), they
described their digital medical service as
a complement to, rather than a replace-
ment for, in-person eye exams. They
Thedesign studioinWarbyParker’sNewYorkheadquarterscontend that punishing the entire indus-
try for the “careless and sloppy” prac-
tices of bad actors is not in the interest of
public health. “It’s anti-innovation, anti-
consumer, and frankly anti-American,”
Blumenthal says, the seriousness of
his message undercut slightly by his
leopard-print shirt and long blond wig.
Blumenthal and Gilboa argue that
their app may give their optometrists
ways in the future to identify eye dis-
eases earlier. In the meantime, they’re
lobbying for pro-telemedicine regulation
and pushing more vision insurance
companies to cover them. If they don’t,
Blumenthal says, “it’s going to suck for
them because we’re just going to keep
taking their market share.”week, 100 employees operate produc-
tion lines almost around the clock,
making this optical lab an hour north
of New York City one of the largest
in the country. Here workers process
eyewear orders, match frames to pre-
scriptions, and send them through
vending-machine-size lens cutters that
churn out nearly 50 pairs per hour. The
factory is bright and modern, designed
like a Warby Parker store, and growing
fast: It’s more than doubled its output
since opening in 2017, and the companyis currently increasing production by a
third. Gilboa and Blumenthal decided
to build the facility after some custom-
ers complained about how long it took
to get their glasses—now they say order
fulfillment times have improved more
than 10%.
Spend time with Warby Parker’s
founders, and you’ll hear them talk
endlessly about such under-the-hood
efficiencies, the implication being that
the company is much more than pretty
frames. This can sometimes come off as
a bit strained: At one point the two men
engage in a lengthy discussion about the
advice they received from New England
Patriots head coach Bill Belichick. “Bill
is an amazing capital allocator, a great
value investor,” Blumenthal says, refer-
ring to the coach whose sideline look
generally consists of a hoodie with the
sleeves cut off and a pair of sweatpants.
This is, of course,
all part of Warby
Parker’s retail theater,
but it may also help
the company evolve
beyond a snowclone of
an internet brand and
into something greater.
Forrester’s Kodali says
this transformation
is especially import-
ant for the prolifer-
ating capital-bloated
VC-backed companies.
“A lot of these retail-
ers are overrated,”
she says. “They’re not
billion-dollar brands.
They’re modest-sized
niche companies.”
Blumenthal and
Gilboa agree, but they argue that this
doesn’t apply to Warby Parker. After
touring the Sloatsburg lab, they note
that their eyeglass business is profitable,
and they believe Scout contacts will open
them up to an even larger group of cus-
tomers. They’re not interested in an ini-
tial public offering just yet; they say they
don’t need the capital. “If we viewed
going public as an exit, we might’ve tried
to grow as quickly as possible and gotten
as much hype as possible,” Gilboa says.
“We want to build an enduring brand.” OFF A HIGHWAY NEAR A SUNOCO
gas station, Warby Parker’s Sloatsburg,
N.Y., factory is humming. During the