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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.