Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

I have so many problems with this article, and of course Warby Parker in general. First off, it seems they're going to commit the cardinal sin of every Silicon Valley company - completely ignoring anyone who isn't in the head office. Balloons on every desk - let's just ignore the vast majority of employees are sales staff who don't have desks.

The more major problem I have with WP is that their product is entirely generic and their entire business model is just to sell the same thing everyone else does but invest in a different style of woke signalling marketing. Which is exactly what this article is. The whole thing just reads as a "Isn't it great that we're in the growth phase so we can completely ignore our costs!". Tell me about when your sales dropped and you kept your staff motivated and happy - that's what I want to know. I don't want to know staff like free stuff - I already know that. It's kind of easy to keep retention rates high when all your staff are so knew that there's no legacy systems to deal with and they haven't been at your company long enough to grow out of their jobs.

This article brings literally nothing knew to the table. But to be fair, it's literally an article on an e-mail marketting website.

The product is generic, but the incumbent competition charged exorbitant price for glasses frames and offered poor customer service.

Charging more reasonable prices is of course very replicable, and the mail order model has been replicated by other companies.

The characterization of ignoring the sales staff is very at odds with my experience - the staff at their brick and mortar stores I've been to have been very helpful and capable.

Wasn't Zenni Optical years ahead of Warby Parker in the reasonably priced mail-order prescription eyewear game?

Zenni is pretty amazing but seemingly not well known. Many of my friends with kids buy many cheaper frames from them (kids tend to accidentally destroy glasses it seems)

In my experience, Zenni doesn't have as consistent an aesthetic across their product. Warby Parker is about paying for a "taste" proxy, rather than giving you a wide selection (much like Apple).

Not to mention Warby Parker glasses are 2-14x more expensive than Zenni.

Which pays for a lot of marketing. That's not insignificant.

Zenni never could manufacture accurate lenses for me. They are have a horribl trapezoid effect.

I've purchased three pairs of Warby Parker glasses, and a lifetime of "incumbent" glasses before and after that.

All of WP's glasses I've owned were somewhere on the scale between "garbage" and "fine as a backup pair". Cheap plastic. Very poor fit. Lenses that easily scratched. Messed up prescription multiple times (thankfully their CS is pretty good).

I'm thankful that my insurance allows me to own a "real" pair of glasses, which would normally cost ~$400, from my optometrist. Because the ~year that I experimented with WP was without a doubt coupled with the worst glasses I've ever worn in my life, and I've been wearing glasses since the first grade. I'll only ever be returning to them maybe for prescription sunglasses, and even then my optometrist often runs bundles with glasses (on insurance) + sunglasses for 50% off sticker.

I respect that they're opening the market up for people who aren't lucky enough to be able to consistently afford better glasses. But I don't believe this is what we should want as a society; everyone should have access to great vision, and shouldn't have to resort to rebranded chineese knock-offs just to live their life to their best potential.

As long as we're in anecdote world, I'll offer that I've had nothing but positive experiences with Warby Parker. To take your examples:

1. "Cheap plastic". Is there expensive plastic, really? I've owned much more expensive (but still plastic-framed) glasses and have never noticed a difference in quality.

2. "Very poor fit". Fair enough, I will offer though that I had a fitting at one of their brick-and-mortar locations and the glasses I got fit very well.

3. "Lenses that easily scratched". The details on their lens offerings are here, https://www.warbyparker.com/lenses . Again, not a problem I have encountered.

I don't doubt that there are better glasses than Warby Parker, but I'd bet that they're as good as if not better than basically everything up to the 90ish percentile range.

I’ll throw another anecdote on the pile that I really hoped WP would be great, but after multiple trips back to the store to get my glasses adjusted and even have new lenses put in, I won’t be going with them for my next pair. The cheap glasses from Zenni Optical I got years ago had better lenses with no problems, unlike Warby Parker.

It’s the biggest disappointment in buying glasses in my 18 years of wearing glasses.

I have been buying glasses from my optometrist for decades. A pair runs about $500, after insurance. Dropped by Warby Parker on a lark (they have a store a few miles away). The glass tech looked over my glasses and told me the optical center was wrong by a bit; OK for 99% of prescriptions but that error was significant due to my prescription. (my corrected vision is 20/50 in both eyes) Ordered 1 pair. Noticeably better eyesight. For about $200.

Why would a quality pair of glasses have to cost $400? You can get a quality SLR camera for that, which would seem to have way more sophistication that a pair of glasses. What am I missing?

Insurance companies and Luxottica

Chances are that if you're buying glasses you're probably getting a brand that's directly owned by Luxottica (LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Apex by Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Target Optical, Eyemed vision care plan, Glasses.com, Ray-Ban, Persol, Oakley, etc). They also manufacture for an impressive string of luxury brands (Chanel, Prada, Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Versace, Dolce and Gabbana, Miu Miu, DKNY, and Tory Burch). [0]. It's an impressive roll-up of a number of retailers and brands by a not widely known Italian company.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica

Its a monopoly that abuses its power to extract money from hapless consumers, most of whom just want a pair of decent eyeglasses to function. I've made a conscious decision to avoid purchasing from them as much as I can, but do continue to buy from Ray-Ban. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM

33% of the US market is a monopoly?

> The company says that the market is highly competitive, and their frames account for ~10% of sales worldwide and ~20% in the United States.[42][41] Euromonitor International estimates that Luxottica's market share is 14% worldwide, and the second-largest company in the industry, Essilor, has a 13% market share. The third-largest player is Johnson & Johnson, with a 3.9% market share. As of October 2018, Luxottica and Essilor have merged into a single company, EssilorLuxottica, representing almost a billion pairs of lenses and frames sold annually.

If you check price segments, the monopoly hypothesis gains support again. They own all the the higher end, including all the fashion / lifestyle brands.

By that logic Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

Incorrect. Samsung etc. have phones that compete in the luxury smartphone segment with Apple. Luxottica has no such alternative (as of now, WP seems nice but it remains to be seen if they will focus on this market segment in the future).

There certainly are high-end, well-made, good-looking, and bloody expensive frames out there (i.e. everything WP isn't) that aren't from one of Luxottica's brands. Off-hand I could think of at least Gold & Wood, ic! berlin, and Mykita.

WP's story seems to be sprinkling some SV magic dust over decidedly pedestrian frames, not going after the high-end.

Are vision insurance benefits really widespread enough to make a big impact? I have what I believe to be one of the big ones through my employer and a small number of local places even took it.

I suspect it's much more about being a fashion business which it's hard to opt out of. Non-prescription sunglasses can also be very expensive at (I assume) eye-watering margins. (Owned in many cases by the same brand TBF.)

The price depends on your prescription. If your site is really poor, you may need high index lenses that are thinner. These lenses are about $35 more than the “free” lenses included in the starting $95-$125 price at Warby Parker. $300-400 is not out of the ordinary for those with poor vision, and that’s sometimes the price _with_ insurance.

Honestly they should be sub $5 with Chinese manufacturing. And I'm not talking qty 100000 rather $5 at retail.

It's monopolies that force the price so high.

> Cheap plastic.

Interesting. On the WP website it says they use acetate from Italy which is usually differentiated from "plastic" in eyewear categories. Expensive plastic if you will.

https://ca.warbyparker.com/how-our-glasses-are-made

Thank God someone else feels this way. I heard so much hype about WP, and their prices were so cheap. I bought two pairs of glasses from them. I wanted to love their product.

But their glasses are terrible, for all the reasons you mentioned, plus many others.

I switched back to extortionately priced designer frames/lenses the minute I could. I'll never consider another pair of glasses from WP. Absolute garbage.

I recently went into their Palo Alto store to check out their sunglasses. When I asked if they have anti-reflective coating, I was told that they were polarized, which is better. I pointed out that there is no tradeoff between anti-reflective coating (which is applied to the back of lenses) and polarization, and the salesperson parroted the same line without seeming to understand that she was missing the point. Anti-reflective coating is especially important for glasses shaped like theirs, which have minimal 'wrap' and therefore can reflect a lot of light from behind you directly into your eyes.

If someone is in the neighborhood you can do a good comparison between customer service, quality of glasses, and store vibe in a short amount of time. Go to WP store in Union square, make your way to Spectacles, then hit up Rims & Goggles on Sutter. It's a short walk to Oliver Peeps from Spectacles too. For kicks go into Sunglass hut.

WP is good for in a pinch but the quality of the glasses and treatment you get from your optometrist or a 'boutique' can make a huge difference for something you wear for work...everyday. It's akin to NPR's guilt trip during fundraising time. If you do the math it's a relatively low cost per wear. + it's something that can help you feel less strain at the end of the work day.

WP has good CS, but the quality of their offerings is lacking in my experience. The frames are nothing special, either in terms of design or construction. A lot of the frames are constructed from cheap plastic. And I don't think many WP frames offer features essential to durability like 5 barrel hinges instead of flimsy spring hinges.

I'd recommend Shuron over WP any day of the week. Made in the USA by a company that's been in business since 1865. Frames in acetate, and they offer real sizing to fit your head instead of a choice of "small" and "big" options. Barrel hinges, too:

http://www.shuron.com/

Shuron has great customer service, but they sure could use some help with their site which seems to be stuck in a 1998 web design paradigm. Quality frames at a good price, though!

Where WP has innovated is in online sales of "good enough" glasses for young people, as a taste proxy, and in fluffy content marketing like this article. But you can break out of the Luxottica eyeglass cartel of high prices and low quality by avoiding WP completely and going to Shuron and getting yourself a pair of Ronsir, Freeway, or Sidewinder frames. You'll save money, too.

Hmm. I'm in the market for new glasses as I think my prescription has changed. I purchased my previous pair from WP and I found the experience to be quite nice. I was able to get on their site and sort/filter by men's/women's styles, color, shape, and size. I was able to easily select 5 that were the right shape for my face and the right size and then try them on at home and get the one I wanted.

Does Shuron offer that sort of experience? Looking at their site, I just see a list of glasses. I don't see a way to easily filter that down to ones that apply to me (narrow, rectangular). Part of the appeal of WP to me was the ease of getting something that I thought looked good and fit good at a reasonable price. Without some sort of way to search/curate, I don't think Shuron competes with that.

Of xourse, that's only the buying experience and doesn't pertain to the quality of the product and the customer service after buying.

> they offer real sizing to fit your head instead of a choice of "small" and "big" options

I'm confused by this. Is that not what something like WP[1] has (see the measurements details)?

[1]: https://www.warbyparker.com/eyeglasses/men/oliver-lbf/whiske...

Yeah, I'm only talking about the quality of the frames. WP has a pretty slick buying experience, I'll give them that. Shuron needs to get with 21st century UX. But...their frames are objectively higher quality than WP.

Ah yeah. That makes sense. I primarily wear contacts, so I haven't really had a problem with durability. The buying experience and cost were more important to me.

That slick buying experience is pretty helpful.

After years of paying $200+ for glasses, I decided to go with WP. It was a little nerve wracking- but having the home try on (and the option of a store try on) helped.

Sure, maybe the glasses aren't as nice as the ones I had. But they are $100 cheaper. And that's a decent chuck of change.

I am suddenly so glad to live in China. I can get three pairs of glasses for ¥600, thin, polarised, with anti-scratch coating and my friend whose vision is bad enough that he’s probably legally blind without glasses can do the same. At those kind of prices I’m not surprised people bring sunglasses home as gifts.

China removes the fantasy layering of technology of the west, and bares it for what it is. Cheap plastics.

It always amazes me to see tech in scale sold for a fraction of what I thought was possible.

Spending an afternoon in Huaqiangbei is something any geek should do once in their life.

I mean are they more reasonably priced? A quick comparison against similar Ray Ban glasses in my market (Canada) shows the Ray Bans are the better deal by $5.

https://www.clearly.ca/sunglasses/ray-ban/ray-ban-rb3025-58?...

https://ca.warbyparker.com/sunglasses/men/raider/gold

Am I missing something? It’s a $75 difference from what I’m seeing.

The Warby Parker ones are 145 in the US, 220 in Canada (you can click for canada prices bottom left)

Ah sorry. Wasn’t considering the exchange rate. Thought that was a CA priced warby.

The US optical market seems bizarrely uncompetitive. Here in the UK, you can buy good quality prescription glasses online or in-store for less than $60. You can get a serviceable pair for as little as $25. Warby Parker's pricing simply wouldn't make an impact over here.

https://www.specsavers.co.uk/glasses/all-glasses?esp_categor...

https://www.glassesdirect.co.uk/gender/male/price/19:59/?pag...

There used to be a popular video going around about how one company owns 80% of the market, but that number is somewhat inflated.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does-luxottica-own-80-of-t...

I've gotten prescription pairs for $12 before in the US. See other online services listed here such as Zenni Optical. Warby Parker is one of the most expensive among the non-traditional glasses producers.

I wish everyone could visit a store like Jins in Japan and experience the near-perfect end state in the retail eyeglass race. Lots of choices. Amazing service. On-site eye exam. Low prices ($50-100 per pair). Lots of locations. Most importantly, always a pleasant place to visit. I get two or three new pair every time I’m in Japan.

I know there’s a Jins in SF (never been) but the Japanese retail experience never seems to translate well to the US.

Couldn't agree more. I used to buy all my glasses in Japan or Korea - the market there is mature and competitive. Over $100 would be considered "luxury".

These days I go to Owndays, which has successfully expanded out from Japan - I usually go in Singapore. Most of their shops have common lenses in stock so they can make up the finished pair for you in under 30 minutes. Cost is SGD130-ish for 1 pair or under $200 for two. Quality is fine; if anything better than the expensive pairs I used to buy in Australia.

I also can't understand how western markets persist in this profoundly distorted and uncompetitive state. Possibly consumer expectation? Even in this thread there's people claiming "cheap" glasses are worse, their expensive $500+ versions are better somehow. In my experience this is not the case at all and they are in most respects identical. Even if that were not the case, I would rather have numerous pairs of cheapish glasses than one super-expensive "perfect" pair - glasses are fragile and easily breakable by their very nature and until I'm a multi-millionaire I'll choose the RAIG[1] strategy every time.

[1] Redundant Array of Inexpensive Glasses

Given prices for decent frames in America, I can almost justify a trip to Tokyo just to stock up on new glasses.

WP is not cheap. Costco is cheap.

For the pair that I bought, they were around the same price, but WP had frames that I actually liked.

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