I got my first pair of Warby Parkers this week. Overall, my experience with them has been pretty good.
It made me reflect on why Warby Parker works. It works primarily because they’re inexpensive. For most of us in North America, buying any half-decent pair of glasses is usually an expensive ordeal which can easily amount to several hundreds of dollars. Enter Warby Parker. The price point was the hook. The brand value, ordering process, friendly support, and a really well-made site followed and made me complete the checkout process. But if it wasn’t for the price point, I wouldn’t have seen the value.
The same model seems to work for another brand I started using a while back for shaving supplies — Harry’s. Buying new shaving supplies from the local drugstore is time-consuming and more expensive than it needs to be. After using Harrys for a few months now, I’m convinced that its razors are of superior quality than the much higher priced Gillette ones. Again, if it wasn’t for the price point, I wouldn’t have considered switching.
That said, there’s been a lot of “Warby Parker for something” startups lately. I think it’s great model to emulate, but I don’t think it can work for everything. There are certain things I am willing to spend on — shoes, jeans, jackets etc. And a Warby Parker for these things will just become another brand with no killer advantage over the existing ones. But for the things that are unreasonably expensive, there is tons of room to emulate and create value.