Warby Parker: Too Good to Sustain?

The seeds of WP were sown at Wharton Business School where the founders Neil Blumenthal (Blumenthal), Gilboa, Jeffery Raider, and Andy Hunt were classmates. It happened that Gilboa had left his US$ 700 Prada frames in an airplane seat-back pocket in Thailand. He decided that it did not make sense for him to buy such an expensive pair of glasses again. Gilboa shared the problem with Andy Hunt, and the two of them wondered why glasses should cost as much as an iPhone. Glasses had been in existence for more than 800 years but the technology had not changed much. Neither had the distribution. They also learnt that the eyewear industry (Refer to Exhibit I for more about the eyewear industry) was of a near-monopolistic nature and a single Italian company named Luxottica owned most of the brands, which made it the price setter.

It was Blumenthal who proposed the business plan in an email to the other three founders, proposing that they start an online eyewear business. Blumenthal had joined VisionSpring after graduating from Tufts in 2002 and had done a stint with the International Crisis Group. At VisionSpring, he had soon realized how something as simple as eyewear could make a difference to the the lives of those who couldn’t afford it. Blumenthal had worked in El Salvador and 10 other countries and knew the in and outs of the eyewear industry. ..