Warby Parker

Designer eyewear at revolutionary price

"Every idea starts with a problem. Ours was simple: glasses are too expensive. We were students when one of us lost his glasses on a backpacking trip. The cost of replacing them was so high that he spent the first semester of grad school without them, squinting and complaining. (We don’t recommend this.) The rest of us had similar experiences, and we were amazed at how hard it was to find a pair of great frames that didn’t leave our wallets bare. Where were the options?"

Warby Parker is a lifestyle brand with the goal to offer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price while leading the way for socially conscious businesses. By engaging directly with consumers, they’re able to offer ultra-high-quality, vintage-inspired frames for $95 including prescription lenses and shipping. Social innovation is woven into the DNA of our company, and for every pair of glasses purchased, a pair is distributed to someone in need.  In 2015, Fast Company named them the #1 Most Innovative Company. We’re also a certified B Corporation, which means that we are held to the highest standards of social and environmental performance.

The brand story continues … “It turns out there was a simple explanation. The eyewear industry is dominated by a single company that has been able to keep prices artificially high while reaping huge profits from consumers who have no other options. We started Warby Parker to create an alternative. By circumventing traditional channels, designing glasses in-house, and engaging with customers directly, we’re able to provide higher-quality, better-looking prescription eyewear at a fraction of the going price.

We believe that buying glasses should be easy and fun. It should leave you happy and good-looking, with money in your pocket. We also believe that everyone has the right to see. Almost one billion people worldwide lack access to glasses, which means that 15% of the world’s population cannot effectively learn or work. To help address this problem, Warby Parker partners with non-profits like VisionSpring to ensure that for every pair of glasses sold, a pair is distributed to someone in need. There’s nothing complicated about it. Good eyewear, good outcome.”

Extract from a recent Forbes article:

Warby Parker was founded in 2010, by four friends, Neil Blumenthal, Dave Gilboa, Andy Hunt and Jeff Raider, who happened to be in business school.

The inception of the idea had taken place in a computer lab, as the four friends lamented the state of the eyeglass industry. Why are glasses so expensive?

The first Eureka moment came when investigating that very question. Dave describes: “Understanding that the same company owned LensCrafters and Pearle Vision, Ray-Ban and Oakley, and the licenses for Chanel or Prada prescription frames and sunglasses — all of a sudden, it made sense to me why glasses were so expensive.”

And with that epiphany, the idea began to take shape and the business model was born. They would create a vertically integrated company. Neil explains, “It was really about bypassing retailers, bypassing the middlemen that would mark up lenses 3-5x what they cost, so we could just transfer all of that cost directly to consumers and save them money.”

If you think that’s a mouthful, that’s just the beginning: “When you buy a Ralp Lauren -0.42% or Chanel pair of glasses, it’s actually a company called Luxottica that’s designing them and paying a licensing fee between 10 and 15% to that brand to slap that logo on there. If we did our own brand, we could give that 10-15% back to customers.”

Even with all this thought out, it still wasn’t clear what would come of the idea. As Dave Gilboa, Warby Parker’s future co-CEO, put it: “Warby Parker wasn’t the basket that I wanted to put all my eggs into.” And Neil Blumenthal, the other future co-CEO, felt no differently: “In some respects, my time in business school, I was sort of hedging my bets between 1) Would be Warby Parker take off in the startup world, or 2) Would I have an offer after [graduation.]”

After incubating the idea for a year and a half, the idea finally hatched. The launch was so successful that the team hit their first year sales targets in the first three weeks. That’s like expecting one child and instead landing with triplets.

The biggest benefit of good branding is, of course, brand loyalty. Ries writes in Positioning: “History shows that the first brand into the brain, on the average, gets twice the long-term market share of the No. 2 brand and twice again as much as the No. 3 brand.”

But being first in the brain is still only the first step. “You build brand loyalty […] the same way you build mate loyalty in a marriage. You get there first and then be careful not to give them a reason to switch.”

Soon after Warby Parker’s success, copy-cats began cropping up. But what none of these copy-cats understood was Warby Parker already occupied the No. 1 spot in the customer’s mind, and to date, had done everything in their power to keep those customers. Al Ries explains this phenomenon: “Moving up the ladder in the mind can be extremely difficult if the brands above have a strong foothold and no leverage or positioning strategy is applied.”

“What dethrones a leader, of course, is change.” As Al Ries points out, “To play the game successfully, you must make decisions on what your company will be doing not next month or next year but in 5 years, 10 years.”

The question: Can Warby Parker keep its lead?

“We’re often asked why Warby has been successful. If we sum it up in one word, it’s deliberate,” Dave says.  Their passion for the idea has helped drive that meticulous mindset.

But contrary to popular belief, working harder is not what leads to success. As Al Ries writes, “The only sure way to success is to find yourself a horse to ride. It may be difficult for the ego to accept, but success in life is based more on what others can do for you than on what you can do for yourself.”

Warby Parker has built its brand to build relationships. It allows them to build meaningful relationships because it’s a brand that cares. It cares about the world, it cares about its people and it cares about its customers.

So much of success is serendipitous. And the key to serendipity is increasing the chances for a serendipitous encounter. The more relationships you build, the odds swing in your favor that that one of those relationships will help you succeed down the line that one time you need it.

Tim Riley explains Warby Parker’s marketing tactics

Here is an interesting talk by Tim Riley who heads up the online experience at Warby Parker. His job is to make the process of buying glasses online as fun and easy as possible:

Here are 7 things to take away from Tim’s talk, which is also transcribed below:

  • Make Me Care … Start by putting together a fundamentally great story. Warby Parker got tremendous word-of-mouth from the get-go because their story resonated with the press, who were eager to tell their readers about it. This should work for all brands, but it should be especially powerful for lifestyle brands. (Read: It was a dark and stormy night… – 11 Examples of Storytelling in Marketing)
  • Understand your brand hierarchy … What’s most critical? Warby Parker lays out its brand in a linear fashion: Lifestyle brand -> Value and Service -> Social Mission. Rather than trying to do everything at once, they focused on the most important fundamentals that would enable them to do what they really wanted to do. (Read: 30 Tips To Build Your Personal Brand From 37 Experts [Infographic])
  • Steal the show! … Get your early buzz + influencer buy-in by being tastefully rebellious. Warby Parker wanted to be a part of NY Fashion Week in Fall 2011, but couldn’t afford to get involved the traditional way- so they invited 40+ editors to a ‘secret event’ at the NY Public Library. They earned buzz (without paying for it!) by creating a remarkable experience. (Read: Guerrilla Marketing Tactics Every Startup Should Know: 8 Case Studies and Examples)
  • If It Ain’t Fun, Why Do It …  Create content that’s legitimately fun. Warby Parker’s annual reports include things like what bagels they ate, or what were the most popular misspellings of the brand. In 2012, this led to their 3 highest consecutive sales days of the year. (Warby Barker became a standalone April Fool’s site, which got 2.5x the traffic of the actual site.) If you’re not enjoying your own content, why would anybody else?
  • Figure out ways to turn mundane interactions with your brand into remarkable, social ones. Warby Parker’s team responded to questions on Twitter with quickly-shot YouTube videos, which average 120 views per video. They also provided a make-a-snowman kit with their gift cards, and added a #WarbySnowman hashtag– turning it into a fun, remarkable experience. (Read: 17 Ways That 15 Companies Got Massive Word-of-Mouth By Delighting Their Customers)
  • Better Together … Partnerships make tonnes of sense for lifestyle brands. Warby Parker does partnerships with all sorts of other brands and entities. Ghostly International (music label), Man Of Steel movie (Clarke Kent as the original do-gooder and most famous glasses-wearer), DonorsChoose.org, (in line with social mission, $30 gift card allows customers to get more directly involved with projects). (Read: Examples Of Collaboration In Ecommerce – Win-Wins For Everybody)
  • Create unique, memorable physical experiences. Warby Parker makes very interesting decisions: The flagship store looks like a library, and the eye exams are done with old-school railroad flipping things. When they wanted to do mobile showcases, they used bicycles, and then a repurposed schoolbus. Their first showcase had a Yurt in it. Every time they had a chance, they chose to do something unorthodox.

 

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