Warby Parker’s Strategy: 6 Things it Did Differently

Photo of a Woman Holding Pink and Brown Reading Glasses
 

By Tricia McKinnon

Warby Parker is now a household name but in 2008 when the co-founders were at Wharton completing their MBAs they started discussing an idea that has turned into a multibillion dollar business. Investing their life savings the four co-founders started Warby Parker with $120,000 and have built a company that has disrupted the eyeglass industry. The growth and success of the business can be traced back to a strategy that set Warby Parker apart from other competitors. From effectively solving an existing real-world problem to giving back to society, see what sets Warby Parker apart from the rest. 

1. A real-world problem. From the beginning, Warby Parker filled a gap in the market by solving a real-world problem. New and older businesses considering launching new products and services are often given the same advice – solve an existing problem.  But many businesses fail to do so. Before Warby Parker entered the market, fashionable prescription eyeglasses were expensive. When one of the founders lost his $700 prescription eyeglasses on a trip before MBA school he did not want to pay a hefty price to replace them. Instead he spent his first semester of MBA school squinting his way through his classes and talking with his co-founders for a year and a half about how they could offer prescription eyeglasses at a fraction of the price charged by existing brands. 

Warby Parker’s stylish prescription eyeglasses start at $95 which solved the problem of having access to cheap prescription eyeglasses that also look great. Warby Parker is able to offer lower prices than other brands by designing its eyeglasses itself, avoiding licensing fees, cutting out the middleman and removing any unnecessary mark ups by selling directly to consumers. Given the popularity of the brand it is clear that millions of consumers were also looking for a way to see, and look fashionable on a budget. 

2. World-class public relations. Without a large marketing budget at their disposal Warby Parker leveraged the platform of established brands in order to build its own. It did this by relying on PR to generate an audience when its website first launched. Since Warby Parker considers itself a fashion brand it decided it would be best to be featured in the best women’s and the best men’s fashion publications to generate buzz about its business. To achieve this goal Warby Parker hired a PR company which successfully pitched profiling Warby Parker in GQ and Vogue. Both magazines ran stories on the brand on February 15, 2010 the day Warby Parker’s website launched. Based on the buzz generated from both of those publications, Warby Parker’s website ended up crashing after launch. But Warby Parker was able to meet its first year sales target within three weeks and within four weeks it sold out of its top 15 most popular styles leading to a 20,000 person waiting list for its eyeglasses. 

Getting found online when you only have an online presence as was the case for Warby Parker in the beginning is tough for even the best direct to consumer brands.  Leveraging the credibility of other well-known brands to drive traffic to Warby Parker’s website was one of the main reasons it was able to get off to such a great start. Warby Parker credits its ability to land this type of PR to timing as well as having a unique offering. Speaking about getting Vogue to even notice the startup, Neil Blumenthal, co-founder and co-CEO of Warby Parker, said: “I think founders and CEOs often take credit for being the smartest people in the world, but so much is serendipity and timing. We were one of the first of these vertically-integrated brands, so the story was novel.” Warby Parker’s story was novel for several reasons including it was one of the first vertically integrated direct to consumer brands, it offered a unique home try on program where customers could try on five pairs of eyeglasses at home for free and it had a great social mission. 

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3. Giving back. Having a mission that focuses on giving back is often a key ingredient of success. Blumenthal said that in the early days of building the business the founders said to themselves: “what kind of business do we want to build? "We wanted to build a business that was going to have a positive impact on the world where we were going to be excited to come to work every day.” 

Bringing down the prices of prescription eyeglasses so dramatically is a social good in itself but the founders decided to go farther. For each pair of Warby Parker eyeglasses sold, one pair is given to a person in need and over fifteen million pairs have been given away so far. While Warby Parker eyeglasses are considered to be cheap for certain demographics there are nearly a billion people around the world that need eyeglasses that can’t afford them. Undoubtedly there are customers that are drawn to the company’s socially minded mission and want to help others through by buying a pair of eyeglasses.  

4. Less friction in the online shopping process. Warby Parker’s home try on program for its eyeglasses is like an online retailer’s version of free in-store samples. Customers are given the option of trying on five pairs of eyeglasses at home which Warby Parker sends to customers free of charge. If a customer does not like any of the eyeglasses they can send them back for free. For direct-to-consumer retailers programs such as this can help to increase sales as they allow target customers to try the product before purchasing it. This was especially important for Warby Parker when it did not have stores and only sold eyeglasses online. 

An added and perhaps unexpected benefit of this program is that it created viral user generated content when it first started with people sharing on social media pictures of themselves in Warby Parker eyeglasses, asking their friends and family which pair they should purchase. The viral nature of the program made it easy for customers to essentially create free marketing for the company. Warby Parker has said that since the launch of the company word of mouth has been the number one driver of its sales. 

5. Best-in-class customer service. Warby Parker is also known for having great customer service. It has been known for responding to tweets from customers. Then if a question posed by a customer is too complicated to be answered within a tweet, Warby Parker is known for creating a short video with an answer to the question and then will send a tweet with the link to the video on YouTube. Warby Parker has published thousands of these videos. According to Warby Parker co-founder and co-CEO, Dave Gilboa: “customers were so blown away that we are going to these lengths to meet their needs that they tweet about it and tell dozens of other people.” 

Another example of how effective Warby Parker’s customer service via social media is can be found in a story told by Blumenthal: “our social media team flagged a tweet [saying] that this customer was in love with one of our customer experience associates because she had helped him so much. She then recorded a short video on YouTube and sent him the link through Twitter. We thought it was just going to be this quick, special thing, but it kept getting retweeted. That video has over 30,000 views”.

6. A business model that works. Many of the retail businesses that have grown quickly in the past decade started out with a direct-to-consumer business model. Some of these retailers include: ThirdLove, Harry’s, Away Luggage, Allbirds, Farfetch and Stitch Fix. Warby Parker’s choice to start with a direct to consumer model has been a key to its success. While many people are now aware that this business model can lead to success when Warby Parker launched there weren’t nearly as many direct to consumer businesses as there are today. Warby Parker could have chosen to simply design fashionable and cheap eyeglasses and sell them through a third party. Instead Warby Parker took the risk of vertically integrating and going direct-to-consumer. 

Warby Parker also knew the right time to pivot to opening stores. Dave Gilboa, co-founder and co-CEO of Warby Parker has said, that when they first launched in 2010 having an online business was an effective way to reduce capital costs. The four co-founders were still in college when they started the business. They did not have any external funding therefore opening stores was not an option. But by 2013 and over $100 million in funding at the time, Warby Parker opened its first store in New York.   

Since the vast majority of people buy eyeglasses in-person trying to convert those customers to online only shoppers proved too difficult even for a breakout star like Warby Parker. Fast forward to 2023 and Warby Parker is valued at $1.5 billion and has over 200 stores. 

Tricia McKinnoneCommerce, Strategy & Growth