Fireside Chat with Jessie Hempel & Neil Blumenthal Live Podcast

Great walk-on music and beautiful venue.

Thank you.

Oh, we're like full adolescence, if not older.

Sure. Um, well, it's great to be here. Um, you know, we started Warby Parker to solve our own problem as consumers, walking into an optical shop, getting excited about a pair of glasses, walking out and feeling like we've been ripped off. And, you know, I think, uh, a lot of businesses, right, are formed to solve a particular problem. Um, and you know, advice I always give to aspiring entrepreneurs is every day write down a few frustrations that you have. By the end of the week, you probably have a dozen. At the end of the month, several dozens. You know, one of those may have a solution that can be a viable business. Um, as we started to sort of look into solving this problem, um, we got more and more excited about the business idea. Um, and then the question was, um, what could we build that would also keep us sort of engaged over the long run and that's where our really like purpose and impact came in. Um, but you know, the basic premise was...

Yeah. Um, we were at business school. We were getting, uh, our MBAs at Wharton. Um, one of my co-founders, Dave, had just, uh, lost an iPhone in the seat pocket of an airplane where he was traveling right before school started. Um, and it was going to cost, uh, $800 to replace a pair of glasses. Yet, this iPhone, uh, which was, you know, this was 2008, so the iPhone had just come out and could do all these magical things. Glasses were invented, you know, about a thousand years ago, and yet, you know, costs more than this magical device. Um, my other co-founder and classmate, Andy Hunt, sort of was wondering, um, why is nobody selling glasses online? This was a period where, um, companies like Zappos and Blue Nile were making news for selling footwear and sneakers and engagement rings and jewelry online, categories people didn't think could be sold online. Um, and similarly, uh, our other friend Jeff had a pair of like raggedy old glasses that needed to be, uh, replaced. Um, and I previously had run a nonprofit that would, uh, train, um, low-income women in parts of the world where people are living on less than $4 a day to start their own businesses, giving vision screenings and selling glasses in their communities. Um, so I knew a little bit about the optical industry and glasses. So we got to talking and thought, huh, um, maybe we can work to solve this problem.

Yeah. No, I think we believe that you can have your cake and eat it too, that you can do well and do good. Um, we thought it was an inherent good to make a quality product and provide exceptional value. So, charge $95 for glasses instead of $400. Um, but we also wanted to sort of solve this issue of about a billion people around the planet don't have glasses. Um, and we think that's crazy. Again, glasses were invented a thousand years ago. So we're failing as a species if we can't make an innovation, um, and a technological advancement like glasses available to every human on earth. So we thought, well, what could we do through business to help solve this broader problem? Um, and we defined our mission as vision for all. And we mean that figuratively and literally. Literally, how do we provide the tools to see? Figuratively, how do we serve as a business that inspires other businesses to do good? Um, and in the early days as we were working through our business plan, um, we baked in that for every pair of glasses we'd sell, we'd distribute one to someone in need. Um, and that was after sort of thinking through there's a million different mechanisms to do this. We could give a percent of profits, a percent of revenue. I think the thought was that those could be manipulated at some point, especially if we didn't control the company. Um, you know, somebody could always come in and change it. Whereas the thought is if this was tied to our branding and everybody knew that for every pair of glasses we sold, we distributed one to someone in need, that you would do, um, a lot of damage, perhaps irreparable damage to the brand to stop that. And ultimately, our goal was to get glasses on faces because we knew that had the outcomes that we wanted: better educational outcomes, uh, the ability to earn a livelihood and so on.

We still do it. Um, we've distributed over 15 million pairs of glasses, uh, to people in need around the world. Um, as we've... Thank you.

Uh, as we've scaled, one of the things that's been exciting is that we've been able to do it in more expensive, more challenging environments. Um, and what we mean by that is that we actually have gone into like New York City public schools. Um, and I say more challenging because you have to like work through bureaucracy, for example. Um, and there's more regulation distributing glasses, um, here in the US. So, there's about three million, uh, kids, uh, across the country that don't have glasses and need them. And we're now working in 42 cities in school districts to provide vision screenings. Um, if a kid then fails that, to provide comprehensive eye exams and then glasses. Um, and one thing that I take a lot of pride in is that the students get to choose their glasses, um, because we know that as much as this is a health product, it's a fashion accessory and, you know, the kids need to have agency and take pride in what they're wearing or they won't wear them and then we won't have again the educational impact that we seek.

Yeah. So, um, you know, we were one of the first sort of eyewear brands at scale in the last, um, you know, probably 40-plus years. The last one was Oakley. Um, before that, the largest, Ray-Ban, right, it's been around since, uh, I think the 50s or 60s. Um, and you know, again recognizing the market that we were in, um, optical and eyewear, that has got to convey some credibility from a health standpoint, that is a fashion object that is so tied to one's identity that's often the first thing that people see. Um, we wanted to build a brand. We also thought that building a lifestyle brand, um, created, um, barriers to entry from a competitive standpoint. We thought that that was really a reason for being that could always guide our strategy. Um, we want to work for brands. Brands have impact on culture and society. So, we spent, um, literally over a year writing and working through our brand architecture that we stand for fun, creativity, doing good in the world, working through a brand identity. Um, we went through 2,000 different names, um, and finally when my co-founder Dave was visiting an exhibit at the New York Public Library on Jack Kerouac and there were these two characters, Warby Pepper and Zag Parker, that we then sort of came up with the name.

Yeah. So, um, you know, one of the things I think is so critical to, um, sort of building an authentic brand, especially in the age of the internet, um, is that you have to live that brand every single day and live those values. So, um, as I think about what's the key to long-term success, it's people and culture. And how do we, um, put ourselves out there so people are self-selecting to come and work at Warby Parker because of our brand, because of our values? Um, Dave and I, um, who are still the co-CEOs of the company, still interview, um, everybody at headquarters, all of our store managers. We now have over 260 stores across the country. Um, the leadership of our manufacturing facilities, of our customer service teams, we now have about 4,000 employees. And the reason why we do that is because, um, we want to make sure that people coming into Warby know that we really care and, uh, we're looking for folks whose values are already aligned with ours.

You know, one of the reasons why we did sort of buy a pair, give a pair, um, was to make it easy and digestible for customers. And we think that that's important, but on the hierarchy of their sort of purchase calculus, it's certainly not as important as sort of style and price and quality and convenience. Um, so, um, we think it's important and we think it makes people more likely to talk about us and sort of love their glasses and the brand, but we're not sure that's moving the needle significantly from a customer standpoint. But certainly from a people standpoint, um, it's the number one reason why people come and work for us and stay working at Warby.

That is for sure.