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Comment by newyankee | Hacker News Reader

You know, my family member bought a pair of cheap glasses for 2 $ in India. Granted it was probably not very powerful or may last long. But I am shocked at the definition of what is cheap. I am now skeptical if the glasses he bought actually work well enough for him.

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You can buy "reading glasses" from a supermarket in Britain for $4.

They might be OK, but custom lenses will almost certainly be better.

(Also, glasses ordered online in Britain start at less than $10 a pair. Once something purchased that infrequently costs less than a McDonald's meal, there's not much pressure to further reduce the price. It's one hour work at the legal minimum wage.)

Here in the US I could buy reading glasses in a pharmacy for less than $10 (several variations). They come in a range like -2.0 to +2.0 in increments of 0.25.

I don't wear glasses, but I suppose I did I could get something that roughly works for me for a price of a coffee and a couple of doughnuts. These glasses don't look cool, but don't look ugly either, they are just extremely basic. Likely fine for reading at home.

They are also on Amazon. There are folding reading glasses that go from 1.0x to 4.0x that are $15 for 2 pair. I keep one on me for really tiny print. It even survived ending up in the washing machine.

Zenni Optical has $6 glasses, but if you want scratch resistant lenses the price goes up to almost $11.

$2 is extremely cheap.

Sure, it's enough to pay for the materials (frames cost pennies, and cheap lenses maybe $1?).

But someone still has to cut the the lenses to size, and fit them to the frame. This requires both equipment and skill.

I don't think I've ever paid less than $15-$20 for prescription single-vision glasses. I've paid more even in the 'wholesale' optical market in Beijing.

$2 is easily achievable for reading glasses, which are mass produced with lenses installed at the factory.

So, probably someone is actually selling them at very low margins and/or it is subsidised by some entity.

(not indian but this is my impression from what I've read)

india has a very weird medical economy at times, geared to the costs necessary to deliver ultra-basic care to many people who are dirt-poor, utilizing generics (occasionally of questionable quality), the ultra-cheap cost of labor, etc.

for example centchroman is an interesting case-study... the government basically paid to develop and take it through trials and it was generic from day-1, and then the generics manufacturers go to work and you have birth control that can be delivered to market for under a dollar a month (4 pills) in retail quantities, and the government distributes them free because it's cheaper than pregnancy/social services.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ormeloxifene

Not that at the high level, the care isn't great, but, a lot of india is super poor and underdeveloped and delivering core medicines cheaply is relatively effective to provide a super basic level of care, they have a focus on delivering super cheap generics that cover the basic use-cases. I'm sure the glasses are cheap shitty molded plastic or something, or at most a super basic molded glass lens, perhaps with some subsidies. I'm mentally imagining the "BCG" glasses from basic training, designed to be indestructible and unscratchable (aka the birth control glasses).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GI_glasses

But that is the 80% solution, make em cheap and polish em up with super cheap labor and with basic materials you probably can get that down to 2 bucks or within subsidy distance of that.

I have used an Indian online site [1] to order a really good pair of glasses. It cost me $150, but I found the quality to be much better than what I could get in the US.

[1] https://www.titaneyeplus.com/

you ordered from a brand which is considered premium in India. You can get similar kind of glasses at even lower price at lenskart.com and from local stores.

India has very low labor costs, so you get a lot if all you need is something you can get by paying someone to do something with materials on hand, without substantial energy or rare materials.

What stops us from making , decent quality 20 $ glasses and selling in US for 50 $ max ? (inclusive of shipping, export duties etc)

Nothing, which is why there are lots of independent eyeglasses websites selling cheap glasses.

Skilled labor is dirt cheap in India. Most car mechanics will do an oil and filter change for INR 200 (USD 2.46) if you bring your own materials. Practically a rounding error.

Probably mass-produced?

Glass lenses cost me Rs 1000 (about $12.5) a few months back (myopia, -5) - I'd say these were on the cheaper side, and no special coating (they cost as much as the lenses themselves!!). Frames on the cheaper end also cost around this much.

I also prefer glass lenses. The tradeoffs seem to be weight (glass weighs more) and durability (glass can be cleaned with cloth or a towel without scratching, plastic lenses need to be babied with a microcloth or else you get little swirly scratches that will eventually ruin the lenses).

I'd rather have my glasses weigh a bit more if the lenses are more durable.

Yeah, scratching was the biggest reason I went back to glasses. Got a plastic one last year and within months it got plenty of scratches. Before that I had glass lenses that lasted more than 5 years (though one of lenses did break, which is why I wanted to try plastic).

Don't clean your glasses, wash them.

The scratches are caused by particles of dust pressed by you against the lens, and then rubbed all around. A quick rinse removes almost all the dust, and then you can dry them with any clean towel, tissue or even the shirt. I also use a drop of soap to degrease them.

I have plastic lenses with zero scratches after five years of use.

Oh, I know about this. I did rinse them thoroughly. Then I used a few drops of Dawn dish detergent to wash them. But what I found was that even if you clean plastic lenses thoroughly, what counts is how you dry them. If you use paper or even a towel it can scratch them incrementally over time.

It's so much more convenient (or maybe I'm just lazy!) to be able to dry glass lenses with a towel, paper towel, a t-shirt, or anything absorbent.

The dish detergent seems to get under coatings and ruin them, in my experience. Glass cleaner is fine, though.

Interesting. Are you referring to Windex or one of the optical-grade solutions? I used to use dish soap but I found that I can just run mine under warm water for thirty seconds or so and that gets them pretty clean.

Yes, windex is fine in my experience.

$2 is cheap, but the best glasses I've ever bought start at $6, up to $30 for all the filters, so I'm not surprised you can buy something useful for $2.

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