Warby Parker co-founders Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal met in business school and have been working together for almost 15 years.
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Building a business is, frankly, an emotional rollercoaster.
00:02There are moments where you feel super smart
00:04and moments where you feel super dumb.
00:06I think that necessitates the investment up front
00:09to have clarity around roles and responsibilities.
00:12I'm Neil Blumenthal, one of the co-founders
00:14and co-CEO of Warby Parker.
00:16And I'm Dave Vilboa, also co-founder and co-CEO
00:19of Warby Parker, and this is the secret to our success.
00:21Warby Parker is a lifestyle brand
00:23that sells eyewear, contacts,
00:26and provides eye exams and eye care,
00:29and we sell primarily through warbyparker.com
00:32and our two apps.
00:33We started Warby Parker in 2010,
00:35really to solve our own problems
00:37as frustrated eyewear consumers.
00:39We met the first week of school
00:41right after I'd lost a pair of glasses
00:43and I had to buy two things, a new phone
00:45and a new pair of glasses, and realized
00:47that my glasses were gonna cost way more than an iPhone,
00:50and that didn't make sense to me or Neil
00:53or Jeff and Andy, our two other co-founders,
00:55and realized there were a lot
00:57of other frustrated consumers.
00:58And so we set out to launch a brand
01:01by designing the glasses that we would wanna wear
01:03and selling them direct to consumers,
01:05initially online, enabling us to cut out
01:08all the middlemen and all the unnecessary markups
01:10and pass those savings back on to our customers.
01:13Just as we thought it was outrageous
01:15that glasses were so expensive,
01:17we thought that it was equally outrageous
01:19that there were people around the world
01:21that didn't have access to glasses, right?
01:23A technology that's 800 years old
01:25should be widely available to everybody,
01:27and we know that glasses play such an important role
01:29in enabling people to learn in the classroom
01:31or to succeed at work.
01:33In business school, we had the opportunity
01:35to engage with professors who were experts
01:38in a variety of fields, and we went
01:40to one of our professors who was a pricing expert,
01:43and initially we walked into his office
01:45and said, we have this great idea.
01:46We wanna sell glasses that normally cost
01:49four or $500 and sell them for $45.
01:52And before he looked at a single slide,
01:54he didn't know anything about glasses.
01:56He said, that's impossible, this'll never work.
01:58People are never gonna believe
02:00that you're offering the same quality
02:01for a tenth of the price.
02:02You need to reconsider this.
02:04And so then we engaged in a pretty sophisticated
02:07conjoint survey with a lot of potential consumers,
02:09and we found that the willingness to purchase
02:11actually increased as the price point increased
02:14until we hit $100, and then it dropped off a cliff.
02:17And so I think there's a psychological barrier
02:19around that $100 price point,
02:21and if we really wanted to maximize,
02:23we could have offered our glasses for $99.99,
02:27but that really felt like a discount product,
02:29and we wanted to connote the fact
02:31that we were offering something special and unique,
02:33and so landed on $95, and that's still the price point
02:36that the majority of our prescription glasses
02:38are sold for today.
02:39We would ask all of our friends for feedback,
02:41and of course they loved the idea
02:43that you could buy $400 glasses for $95,
02:48but then we would tell them that the way
02:49that they were gonna save money is that
02:51they were gonna shop from us online,
02:53and to be honest, they didn't love the idea
02:55of shopping for glasses online,
02:57and it actually forced us to go back to the drawing board,
02:59and that's where we came up with this idea
03:01for a home try-on where we ship people
03:02five pairs of glasses to try on at home.
03:04If there's a pair they like,
03:05then we put in the prescription lenses,
03:07and that gave us the confidence
03:08to continue to move forward.
03:10So even though we got some initial feedback
03:12that it wasn't a great business idea,
03:14it helped us improve the business
03:16and ensure that we'd be successful.
03:18And the thing that we've always been committed to
03:20is exceptional value and exceptional customer experiences.
03:24Anything you buy at Warby Parker
03:26is typically a fraction of what it would cost elsewhere.
03:30So when we launched in 2010 with $95 prescription glasses
03:33with anti-scratch, anti-reflective coatings,
03:36lightweight lenses and frames,
03:38and to this day, still we're selling $95 glasses.
03:41Now we've introduced some more complex constructions
03:44that start at $145 or $175.
03:48That is still a fraction of what
03:50that would cost someplace else.
03:51And that's sort of our principle, right?
03:53We want to treat consumers as we want to be treated,
03:56which is with a great experience,
03:58with a smile and great value.
03:59From day one, when we started talking about the concept
04:03that eventually led to Warby Parker,
04:04we were really clear that we wanted to build a brand
04:08that mattered and that had positive impact.
04:10And so being obsessed with exceeding customer expectations,
04:13solving customer problems,
04:15has enabled us to continue to deliver great experiences,
04:19offer great value,
04:20and that has translated into positive business results.
04:23The fact that the two of us and our co-founders
04:25are pretty nice guys actually has gone a really long way,
04:28and that might sound trite,
04:30but we were successful because over years
04:32we earned a lot of goodwill
04:34and people were eager to help us,
04:36to offer us advice, to make introductions for us.
04:39And that really enabled us to launch Warby Parker
04:42and sort of accelerate what would have been,
04:46I think, a much more challenging process
04:49without all of that external help.
04:51Spend more time with Neil than I spend with my wife,
04:54and any relationship requires investment and feedback
04:59and real partnership,
05:00and we feel fortunate that we have that in each other.
05:03It makes the highs higher, the lows less low.
05:06But to be honest, we spend a lot of time
05:08sort of investing in that working relationship.
05:11We know what each other are gonna think.
05:13You know, we also assume positive intent.
05:15If one of us has an idea or one of us makes a mistake,
05:18we don't beat each other up about it, we talk about it.
05:20And it's really helped us sort of build Warby Parker,
05:24and we think that it's an amazing gift
05:27that we've had to be able to go through
05:29this journey together.
05:30We're now 14 years into our journey,
05:32but really feel like we're just getting started.
05:35We now have 250 stores across the US and Canada.
05:39Over the next few years,
05:40you'll see us open hundreds of additional stores,
05:42and we'll continue to introduce
05:44innovative, leading technology,
05:47and in general, are really just excited
05:49to continue to make it easier for our customers to see.
05:53From day one, we've been providing a pair of glasses
05:55for every pair that we sold,
05:57and we've now provided over 15 million pairs of glasses
05:59to people in need around the world and here in the US.