Compare / Warby Parker vs Liquid Death
AT A GLANCE
FUNDING HISTORY
Warby Parker
Liquid Death
BUSINESS MODEL
Warby Parker
Vertically integrated direct-to-consumer eyewear. Warby Parker designs frames in-house, works directly with manufacturers, and sells through its website, app and its own stores, skipping the traditional licensing and wholesale markups.
Glasses still start at $95 including basic prescription lenses, with upgrades for progressives and special coatings. Revenue comes from prescription glasses, sunglasses, contact lenses and eye exams in stores.
What started online-only now runs mostly on physical retail, with 323 stores at the end of 2025. Net revenue was $872 million in 2025, and it was the company's first full year of net profit.
Liquid Death
Consumer packaged goods (CPG) — Liquid Death sells canned water and flavored beverages through retail stores, Amazon, and DTC. Revenue comes from wholesale to retailers (7-Eleven, Whole Foods, Target, Walmart) and direct online sales.
The aluminum can format commands a premium over plastic water bottles — a single tallboy typically retails for $1.89 to $2.49, significantly more than a bottle of Dasani. The brand licensing and merchandise arm (selling branded t-shirts, hats, and absurd limited-edition products) adds high-margin revenue.
Advertising partnerships and brand collaborations provide additional income. The company has a subscription model called the "Country Club" for DTC recurring orders.
HOW THEY STARTED
Warby Parker
Dave Gilboa lost a $700 pair of glasses while backpacking before starting at Wharton, and replacing them was so expensive he spent his first semester squinting. He complained about it to classmates Neil Blumenthal, Andrew Hunt and Jeffrey Raider, and they started digging into why glasses cost so much.
The answer was Luxottica, the Italian giant that owned Ray-Ban, Oakley, LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut and Pearle Vision, the vision insurer EyeMed, and licenses for luxury brands like Chanel and Prada. One company touched almost every step from design to retail.
With a small seed check from Wharton's Venture Initiation Program, the four launched Warby Parker in February 2010, selling prescription glasses online for $95. GQ called them "the Netflix of eyewear," they hit their first-year sales target in about three weeks, and they built a waitlist of around 20,000 people.
Liquid Death
Mike Cessario was a creative director who had worked at Netflix and various ad agencies. He noticed something at concerts and punk shows: everyone was drinking water out of plastic bottles, but nobody wanted to be seen doing it because water bottles looked lame next to a can of beer.
The branding insight was almost stupidly simple — put water in a tallboy can with aggressive heavy metal aesthetics, give it the most ridiculous name possible, and market it like an energy drink. He made a Facebook ad in 2018 for a product that didn't exist yet.
The ad went viral with 3 million views. He used the viral proof to raise seed funding and actually make the product.
The first cans shipped in 2019. By 2022, Liquid Death was in 60,000 retail locations and valued at over a billion dollars.
All from water in a can.
HOW THEY GREW
Warby Parker
The DTC playbook: build a beautiful brand, price far below incumbents, and tell a story about why the old way was a rip-off. Home Try-On, five frames mailed to try at home for free, doubled as marketing as customers posted photos asking friends to vote.
"Buy a Pair, Give a Pair" gave the brand a social mission, and by 2025 it had distributed more than 20 million pairs through its partners. Then it went physical, opening stores that now drive most sales, with 47 new stores in 2025 and about 50 more planned for 2026.
It added eye exams and Scout contact lenses to sell more to each customer, and in 2025 partnered with Google and Samsung on AI-powered smart glasses.
Liquid Death
Content-first marketing that acts like an entertainment company, not a beverage company. Liquid Death's social media posts, videos, and stunts generate millions of organic views — they've had a witch hex their water, made a real music album from hate comments, and partnered with adult film star Cherie DeVille for a commercial.
Retail distribution expansion from specialty stores to mass market (Walmart, Target, 7-Eleven). The aluminum can itself is a growth strategy — sustainability-minded consumers prefer cans over plastic, giving Liquid Death a values-based selling point beyond the comedy.
Celebrity investors (Tony Hawk, Steve Aoki, Wiz Khalifa) provided credibility and reach. Festival and live event sponsorships position the brand where its core demographic gathers.
The brand's absurdity is the moat — nobody else can copy the tone without looking like they're trying.
THE HARD PART
Warby Parker
EssilorLuxottica, formed when Luxottica merged with the world's biggest lens maker, is still a giant with resources Warby Parker cannot match, and it now sells the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. After the 2021 direct listing the stock fell more than 70% from its highs as the direct-to-consumer bubble deflated.
Opening dozens of stores a year is capital intensive, and each one has to earn its keep. Cheaper online rivals like Zenni and EyeBuyDirect undercut it on price.
And people only buy glasses every year or two, so the business depends on keeping customers for a long time. Its big new bet, AI glasses with Google, puts it head to head with Meta.
Liquid Death
It's still water. The product itself has zero differentiation from any other mountain spring water — the entire value is brand and marketing.
If the comedy stops being funny or the brand loses cultural relevance, there's nothing proprietary underneath. CPG margins are thin and retail shelf space is brutally competitive.
Scaling a premium water brand into mass market means competing on price with Coca-Cola (Dasani) and PepsiCo (Aquafina) who have unlimited distribution muscle. The $1.4 billion valuation requires the company to grow into a full beverage platform, not just a water brand — hence the expansion into iced tea and flavored water.
And there's a real question about whether the ironic marketing can sustain long-term or whether it's a cycle that peaks and fades.
THE PRODUCTS
Warby Parker
Prescription eyeglasses starting at $95 including basic lenses — the product that broke the Luxottica pricing model. Home Try-On — pick five frames online, receive them in a box, try them at home for free, return what you don't want.
Progressive lenses and blue-light-filtering options for higher-end needs. Prescription and non-prescription sunglasses.
Scout contact lenses — Warby Parker's daily disposable contact lens brand. In-store eye exams with licensed optometrists.
Virtual Try-On using iPhone face-scanning technology to see frames on your face through the app.
Liquid Death
Mountain Water — still water sourced from the Austrian Alps, sold in 16.9 oz and 19.2 oz tallboy cans. Sparkling Water — same Alpine source, carbonated.
Flavored sparkling water in flavors like Severed Lime, Berry It Alive, and Mango Chainsaw — names that sound like horror movies. Iced tea line expanding beyond water into flavored beverages.
The Country Club subscription for recurring DTC delivery. Merchandise and limited-edition collaborations — from branded caskets to a $50,000 enema kit that sold out.
Every product name and packaging decision is designed to be the opposite of what a water brand would normally do.
WHO BACKED THEM
Warby Parker
Tiger Global Management led the $12.5 million Series A in 2011 and the $60 million Series C in 2013, and was still sitting on a stake worth about $850 million at the direct listing. General Catalyst led the 2012 Series B.
T. Rowe Price led the 2015 and 2018 rounds, and D1 Capital Partners and Durable Capital Partners backed the $245 million raised in 2020 at a $3 billion valuation.
American Express and J.Crew's Mickey Drexler were also early investors. The company went public on the NYSE through a direct listing on September 29, 2021.
In 2025 Google agreed to put up to $150 million into a smart glasses partnership, part of it as an equity stake.
Liquid Death
Investors include Science Inc., Velvet Sea Ventures, Live Nation Entertainment, Conviction Partners, and celebrity investors including Tony Hawk, Steve Aoki, and Wiz Khalifa. Series D in 2022 valued the company at $700 million.
By 2023, valuation reached $1.4 billion.