Warby Parker

These companies use the creative forces of capitalism to solve big problems—and do well by doing good.

<p>Warby Parker, the eyeglasses maker, pioneered the “Buy a Pair, Give a Pair” program when the company launched in 2010. Since then over 20 million pairs of glasses have been distributed through the program to people in need in more than 80 countries. In 2015, it launched the Pupils Project, which works with other organizations to bring free vision screenings and glasses to schoolchildren in the U.S.; through that program, the company has distributed more than 300,000 pairs to American schoolchildren.</p>

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Warby Parker (WRBY): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Warby Parker | Fortune

Warby Parker (WRBY): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

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Warby Parker founders on the key to their $1.8 billion success: Being nice guys

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Warby Parker co-founders Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal met in business school and have been working together for almost 15 years.

Warby Parker’s co-founders credit a lost pair of glasses to building their $1.8 billion success

Warby Parker's cofounders and co-CEOs Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa

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Building a business is frankly an emotional roller coaster. There are moments where you feel super smart and moments where you feel super dumb. I think that necessitates the investment upfront to have clarity around roles and responsibilities. I'm Neil Blumenthal, one of the co-founders and co CEO of Warby Parker and I'm Dave Gilboa, also co-founder and Co CEO of Warby Parker. And this is the secret to our success. Warby Parker is a lifestyle brand that sells eyewear contacts and provides eye exams and icare. And we sell primarily through Warby parker.com and there are two apps. We started Warby Parker in 2010 really to solve our own problems. As frustrated Iwa consumers we met in the first week of school right after I'd lost a pair of glasses and I had to buy two things, a new phone and a new pair of glasses and realized that my glasses were going to cost way more than an iphone. And that didn't make sense to me or Neil or Jeff and Andy are two other co founders and realized there were a lot of other frustrated consumers. And so we set out to launch a brand by designing the glasses that we would want to wear and selling them direct to consumers initially online, enabling us to cut out all the middlemen and all the unnecessary markups and pass those savings back on to our customers. Just as we thought it was outrageous that glasses were so expensive. We thought that it was equally outrageous that there were people around the world that didn't have access to glasses, right? Technology that's 800 years old should be widely available to everybody. And we know that glasses play such an important role in enabling people to learn in the classroom or to succeed at work in business school. We have the opportunity to engage with professors who are experts in a variety of fields. And we went to one of our professors who was a pricing expert. And initially we walked into his office and said, we have this great idea. We want to sell glasses that normally cost four or $500 and sell them for $5. And before he looked at a single slide, he didn't know anything about glasses. He said that's impossible. This will never work. People are never going to believe that you're offering the same quality for 1/10 of the price you need to reconsider this. And so then we engaged in a pretty sophisticated conjoint survey, a lot of potential consumers. And we found that the willingness to purchase actually increased as the price point increased until we hit $100 and then it dropped off a cliff. And so there's a psychological barrier around that $100 price point. And if we really want to maximize, we could have offered our glasses for $99.99. But that really felt like a discount product. And we wanted to connote the fact that we were offering something special and unique and it landed on $95 And that's still the price point that the majority of our prescription glasses are sold for today. We would ask all of our friends for feedback. And of course, they love the idea that you could buy $400 glasses for $5. But then we would tell them that the way that they were going to save money is that they were gonna shop from us online. And to be honest, they didn't love the idea of shopping for glasses online. And it actually forced us to go back to the drawing board. And that's where we came up with this idea for a home, try on where we ship people five pairs of glasses to try on at home. If there's a pair that they like, then we put in a prescription lenses and that gave us the confidence to continue to move forward. So even though we got some initial feedback, that it wasn't a great business idea helped us improve the business and ensure that we'd be successful. And the thing that we've always been committed to is exceptional value and exceptional customer experiences. Anything you buy at Warby Parker is typically a fraction of what it would cost elsewhere. So when we launched in 2010, with $95 prescription glasses with anti scratch, anti reflective coating, lightweight lenses and frames. And to this day still, we're selling $95 glasses. Now, we've introduced more complex constructions that start at $145 or $175. That is still a fraction of what that would cost someplace else. And that's sort of our principle. We want to treat consumers as we want to be treated, which is with a great experience with a smile and great value. From day one. When we started talking about the concept that eventually led to Warby Parker, we were really clear that we wanted to build a brand that mattered and that had positive impact. And so being obsessed with exceeding customer expectations, solving customer problems has enabled us to continue to deliver great experiences, offer great value and that is translated into positive business results. The fact that the two of us are co founders are pretty nice guys. Actually, it's gone a really long way and that might sound trite, but we were successful because over years, we earned a lot of goodwill and people were eager to help us to offer us advice to make intro for us. And that really enabled us to launch Warby Parker and sort of accelerate what would have been, I think a much more challenging process without all of that external help, spend more time with Neil than I spent with my wife. And any relationship requires investment and feedback and real partnership and feel fortunate that we have that in each other, it makes the highs higher, the lows less low. But to be honest, we spent a lot of time sort of investing in that working relationship. We know what each other are gonna think. You know, we also assume positive intent. If one of us has an idea or one of us makes a mistake, we don't beat each other up about it. We talk about it and it's really helped us sort of build Warby Parker and we think that it's an amazing gift that we've had to be able to go through this journey together. We're now 14 years into our journey. But I really feel like we're, we're just getting started. We now have 250 stores across the US and Canada. Over the next few years, you'll see us open hundreds of additional stores and we'll continue to introduce innovative leading technology and in general, are really excited to continue to make it easier for our customers to see from day one. We've been providing a pair of glasses for every pair that we sold and we've now provided over 15 million pairs of glasses to people in need around the world and here in the US.

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Steph, you and your co- founder, John Rubio knew each other when you were working together at Rubery Park for a couple of years and you were also friends but how did you know that you could work together successfully as partners? John and I are really lucky actually in that we're the perfect partners because the have total and complementary skill sets. Jenn's a complete brand and creative visionary. She did brand and marketing at [ UNKNOWN ]. I have an MBA from Columbia. I'm really strong in operations and finance. And it's super important when you have a cofounder that your skill sets are complimentary because you don't want too many cooks in the kitchen on the same decisions. You wanna have different perspectives going into every side of your business. All right, so you say that you went to business school at Colombia, but how prepared were you to start a business from scratch and to keep it going? I think no one is completely prepared to start a business, because there are so many new things that until you've done it, you have no experience doing those things. But I think Jen and I are more prepared than your average person. Mostly because of our startup experience. We got to learn firsthand this is how you scale a company, this is how you make decisions. So one of my biggest pieces of advice for people who are interested in entrepreneurship is work in a startup first. See if you like that enviroment and. Sort of learn some do's and don'ts on the ground before you jump in yourself. Was there something specific that you learned in your years at Warby Parker that gave you the confidence? I think one of the thing we learned at Warby was there's no roadmap. So every month, every week, every year, you're just Making up the playbook as you go along. It's a blank chalkboard and you're filling it in. And I think sometimes when I talk to people who haven't worked at start- ups, they're like, what's the playbook? What comes after this? And I'm constantly reminding people, there is no playbook. You're writing the playbook. Every company is unique. You said it's very difficult to start your own business. What is the hardest part? Everything, everything about starting a business is hard. You decide, I wanna start a business. You have nothing. You have a blank sheet of paper and an idea in your head. And to get from that to I'm offering customers something that they want to spend their hard- earned money on, like there's just a million things that go into that. Stuff we're hearing a lot about the barriers for female founders and entrepreneurs, whether it's starting the business or raising the venture capital money, how difficult was it for you and Jim? I think Jen and I are fortunate to be an example of maybe the new wave of how things can be for women, because on the full spectrum of things, we had a bit of an easier time with fundraising. And that was for all three rounds. I hear the stories of women who have a harder time or who are discriminated against and. My hope is that we're an example of the future and that things can be better and things can be fair. What do you think did you had going for you that other women have a difficulty and struggle with? I think one thing that I've noticed in women is when they're fundraising, they And this is gonna be a bit of a generalization but I see, more often than not, they view the investor almost as as doing them a favor by investing. And Jen and I never had that mentality. We went into the fundraising process of hey, investor, we're doing you a favor by giving you the opportunity to invest in a company that's about to become really successful and create great returns for you. Any special advice you have for female entrepeneurs? I've spoken and given advice to both male and female entrepeneurs. And I tend to see, at least in my experience, men are more like, yeah, I'm creating a game- changing company. And then with women, they're like, I'm gonna try really hard, and I think this might be successful, but at this stage no one can make any guarantees. And I try to encourage the women to have the confidence that I see in the men, where Yeah, no one knows what's gonna happen but like talk about your vision and dont talk about the things that can go wrong particularly in a fund raising environment. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Steph Korey and co-founder Jen Rubio are making big waves in the luggage industry.

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Target is trying to rekindle shoppers’ passions with Warby Parker and Champion collaborations

Warby Parker founders on the key to their $1.8 billion success: Being nice guys

Warby Parker in Fortune Rankings

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