YouSaid · the spoken record

Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal

lines on the record: 55
first: 2016-04-11
most recent: 2016-04-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, we got some good advice from our board that the winds might be changing in the funding environment and we raised in April and raised over $100 million then and now have just great runway to continue to scale Warby Parker in a way that delivers exceptional experiences to our brand.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll just discuss the bell We don't have a plan right now to go public. We believe in sustainable growth, and that's growing aggressively while simultaneously investing in our brand and infrastructure. And you have a lot of...”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is a sale or an IPO. Many people have told me when it comes to a liquidity event and IPOs is what the plan is, but that maybe it's several years out. Is that a fair assessment of where you're at?”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That we found a lot of people were in our stores and they were deciding between a couple different frames. They wanted advice from their husband or wife. They wanted to see how much money they have left in their FlexBand account, or they were just in a rush and didn't have their prescription information handy. And so they weren't quite ready to check out in the store. And so we said, well, why don't we just use technology where our point of everything is iPad-based? We can just take photos of our customers wearing the different frames. Our associates can quickly select the frames that they're looking at, and it auto-generates this beautifully formatted email that once customers get this is custom built. Right. And the last thing before we have to go, unfortunately, is, you know, you're a New York City company, not sure if we mentioned that. You are the ecosystem here of young companies sort of looking at always looks for, you know, the big hit and often the way they measure.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Consistent and integrated experience in refining that 85% of people that buy in our physical stores have been to our website first and more and more of our customers that make their first purchase in a retail store making their next purchase online and starting as a technology company we really thought about okay how can we build technology that enhances these cross-channel experiences and so we built our own custom commerce platform that powers our e-commerce experience whether you're on desktop mobile any device it's also the same commerce platform that powers our point of sale which we call our point of everything which is iPad based in our stores so if you've done a home try on if you bought a pair of sunglasses from us online you walk into one of our stores and you see everything in one spot right can pull up your customer record they can provide you with very personalized service having that technology plumbing in place allows us to then build applications on top of that so one example”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe not, but it wouldn't seem crazy to us. And we just learned along the way. So we opened our first proper store in Soho about a little less than three years ago. And it's around the corner from the Apple store next to Ralph Lauren. It's a beautiful space. And we had enough data from our pop-up shops, from the school bus, from our showrooms that we knew that the store wasn't going to lose money. And we were okay if it broke even. We thought there would be just a lot of benefit from a branding and marketing perspective. But since that store opened and since every subsequent store has opened, we've just been blown away by the economics and the response we've seen from customers. And what's been, I think most interesting to us is that customers don't think in channels. They don't think channels, meaning they don't think I only buy online. I only buy in a physical store. Exactly. They think about Orbie Parker and they want a consistent.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thanks. I don't think it came from us. We've really always thought of ourselves as a brand that, as Neil mentioned, exists to deliver a great product and great experiences. And we viewed e-commerce as a very efficient business model that would allow us to launch in a capital efficient way. So we bootstrap the business. We're working out of our apartments. We didn't raise any external funding until we had been live for 15 months. And so we were really scrappy in the early days and e-commerce allowed us to really launch. We didn't have the capital or the credibility to sign a 10-year lease and open a store at that time. And so we were able to gain a pretty big user base, start generating cash, have customers, and learn along the way. And now if you had asked us three, four years ago, would we be on track to have 40 to 50 stores at the end of this year? We probably would have said, well,”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of you was the lucky driver. Neither. One of our customer experience associates is Guy Phineas, who ended up being the best driver for quite a while. So I spent about an hour last night, turned out it was fruitless, trying to dig up a quote that I could have sworn I read years ago of one of you saying like retail. Not saying we would never do it, but I remember something making me think that what I see today, I'm very surprised by and sort of how aggressive you've been. Was there ever a feeling that you would experiment or you'd just do the showroom thing, but real stores weren't for you? Did I imagine my beef from a different company or brand? Because for us, we've always thought of ourselves as it'd be a different founder.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's right. It's not so bad. We continue to test. We did a pop up store. We bought an old yellow school bus, ripped out the interior, made a mobile store, and went to 15 different cities in each city. We put the other.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A proper office, we did so in Manhattan and Union Square, where all the subways are, so it's easily located. We got a loft space with high ceilings with big windows southern facing. So there was good light, and we allocated that part of the office to a showroom. And we just learned how people want to shop for glasses. So at first we had glasses on a West Elm table, then we built shelves on the wall because people prefer to look at glasses at eye level. Again, something that probably makes a lot of sense to a retailer, but we had to learn. We start to learn that people prefer full-length mirrors rather than head or vanity mirrors. Suddenly, we were on track to do a couple million dollars of sales out of the six floor commercial building out of a 200 square foot space.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our top 15 styles in four weeks. There we go, and had a waitlist of about 20,000 people. Within that period, we had to temporarily suspend our home try-on program because we ran out of inventory and people started calling up saying, hey, can we try on some of your glasses? Can we come to your office? And at the time, we were working out of my apartment. So as a test, we were like, hey, five people, why don't you come and try on glasses? Thereby, if the experience was so bad that we ruined our reputation would only be with five people. And those first people came in, we laid the glasses on the dining room table. The first person checked out on Dave's laptop just through our website. And we noticed that we could build really special relationships with customers and that there were some customers that wanted to touch and feel the glasses in a setting. So when we opened up.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And for us, that's fine, right? If it's not a thing, we've got other mediums to go through. We just know in a couple years, right, it's not going to be just mobile commerce, right? It might be VR. So we can't be married to a particular mode of selling. And we were never so dogmatic to say, no, bricks and mortar ever because it does play a role in the majority of people by the majority of products through physical storage.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our stores are highly profitable on a four wall basis. They increase awareness. They help elevate the brand. So it just works. So when we think about being medium agnostic, when we started six years ago, e-commerce was all about desktop e-commerce. Now it's all about mobile e-commerce. We were one of the first to sell things on Twitter. So we've gotten into social commerce. We don't know what...”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very jargony. I'm surprised more people have gifted it up. Explain that for us. It means that we exist to provide exceptional customer experiences, whether it's selling a pair of glasses at $95 instead of $500 or ensuring that when somebody's interacting with us that they're having a fun and convenient and easy time shopping.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So today there's this trend going on in the e commerce world, at least, where a lot of younger companies are opening up one, maybe two physical locations and saying it's about branding or it's an experiment, what I find through reporting is often for them it's about we feel like we've hit a ceiling online and we're going to try out this thing that maybe five years ago told reporters was not for us or never for us. You now have 27 locations. I think 20 more on the way this year. Is that right? I get it a little bit because it's eyeglasses still find it a little counterintuitive sometimes. Why does that make sense? And have you felt this way? all along”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we spend a lot of time ensuring that we're aligned and communicate several times throughout the day. So for one thing, we sit right next to each other. So when we are at our desk, which is actually not that common, we'll just turn to each other and quickly spend two seconds talking. We often anticipate what the other is thinking. We have scheduled meetings, just the two of us on a weekly basis to walk through stuff in greater depth. We're often on the phone to the point that my wife and Dave's girlfriend make fun of us and are probably a little jealous. The amount we”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Helping to make that decision if there are any major brand decisions, I'm providing input helping to make that decision. And so it allows us to divide and conquer, but it effectively operates as a Venn diagram where for kind of major decisions, we're both pretty hands-on and involved. So major decisions made together.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay. But yeah, I mean, ultimately, we just think of ourselves as partners. And how does that practically work quickly on a data? I mean, are you a technology guy and you are a marketing guy? How should I think about the roles or the divisions of the company and how they roll up? So we wanted to make sure that we knew that the two of us could work effectively together, but we wanted to make sure, particularly as the organization grew, that it wasn't confusing to people and we didn't run into a situation where if mom says no, go ask dad kind of thing. And so each of us have departments that roll up into us for our direct reporting. The one exception is our head of people who reports into both of us. And so, you know, for example, technology reports to me, brand management reports to Neil. But if there are any major technology decisions, Neil is going to be providing input.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We don't think there's been enough written on sort of shared leadership, but there are some good examples. Whole Foods is one, for example. But for us, it's just, it made sense for us. One, we were friends. We demonstrated success in working together along with Jeff and Andy to craft the brand and launch the business. And it seemed bizarre that one of us would have a subordinate relationship to the other. And we were both sort of filling the need of a CEO providing vision, providing direction, management, and overall leadership. And it allows us, number one, to ensure that we're being really thoughtful because either one of us has an idea, it's got to pass the other sort of SNP test before implementation. And it also, you know, there's probably no better success in planning in that there's always.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thanks, Kara. We're back with the co-CEOs of Warby Parker. And just saying co-CEO brings up a question to me, which is when you think of big successful companies, the ones I think of right away in the tech world, Amazon's Facebooks, Google's, there's one CEO. Why do you have it this way? And how does that actually work day to day?”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It into any of his published works. One of them was Warby Pepper, another was Zag Parker, and those kind of jumped off the page and went back and Neil, Jeff, Andy, and I were talking about, okay, well, we love these.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You when you decided on it and what was the final impetus to say this has to be it. We spend a lot of time talking about how what we were creating was a fashion lifestyle brand. Those tend to have proper names. And there were a number of other sites that were selling glasses online at the time. They had names like $39 glasses.com, iBuyDirect.com, frames direct.com. And we wanted our name to be different to glasses, perhaps.com. Yeah, so we didn't think Gilboa Blumenthal really rolled off the tongue. And so we spent a lot of time talking about authors or artists that represented the brand ideals that we were trying to create and in particular spent a lot of time talking about the beat generation writers and Jack Kerouac and coincidentally the New York Public Library had an exhibit on Jack Kerowac's private diaries. And so went up to the main branch and he had written about characters with pretty interesting names that never”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the name is a good example of kind of how deliberate we were about every piece of the branding. And I think a lot of people think that a brand is synonymous with a name and a logo when it's really much more than that. It's just a consistent point of view and every touch point with a consumer. But with the name, it took us six months to come up with a name that we all liked. I still have our spreadsheet of 2,000 names that we tested on our friends. We're worried.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The brand architecture, the name is something that we did all ourselves. We hired one of my friends from high school's younger brother to help us with the visual identity. And then we didn't hire our first external marketing agency until maybe it was a year and a half or after launch. So at that point, we had been working on the brand for like three years. So again, even though it's been six years since we launched Warvie Parker, we've really been working at this for about seven and a half years now.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You talk about a year and a half while you're still in school, is that correct? That's right. And then afterward, I thought there was some help with branding from outsiders who helped you all sort of shape the voice and design.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A bunch of PowerPoint slides since a few of us were ex consultants and bankers, and it's been a lot of time in PowerPoint. And then we printed out those pages and would sit down with our friends or strangers and say, okay, here's the homepage. Imagine your finger's the mouse. Where would you click? They would point somewhere. And then based on where their finger was, we'd put another page in front of them and ask them to click. And that was kind of our first user interface user experience testing. And so we did get a lot of That a made up way to test, or is that common?”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And also, just given how important it was to gain credibility within the fashion community as designers. And so when we launched, we were able to get these great editorial features in GQ and Vogue that immediately put us on the map. We wouldn't have been able to get the attention of those editors if we had sort of a beta product that we just wanted to get feedback on and it wasn't polished. That's not to say that we were working in a vacuum. So we spent a year and a half from the time that we started talking about the idea to when we launched and we spent that year and a half really architecting every part of the business model, every part of the brand, spent hours on end debating individual words that were going on the website. And we did that. With the help of an agency at some point? No, we did this on our own, just out of our apartments. And we did get a lot of feedback, but it wasn't in the public domain. So none of us are technical. And so we actually mocked up our website in PowerPoint just created.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the tech world, there's this notion that you should get a product out as quickly as possible or rather quickly and get feedback right and then iterate and go on and on and on. And you're saying business like prescription glasses, if it doesn't work for someone the first time, you're not winning them back. Is that a fair summary?”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We think we're more easily able to do as a brand. So one thing that we haven't talked about that we can talk about in a little bit, but for every pair of glasses we sell, we distribute one to someone in need. But when we were thinking about building Warby Parker as a brand, there's a different threshold for viability when you're in the fashion space, when you're providing not only fashion accessory, but a health product. And while we subscribe to the notion of building a minimum viable product, minimally viable within the fashion and health realms is much higher than in traditional sort of software world.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think there's a few things. One is versus a traditional retailer that may sell other brands. So if you're selling other brands, you can't be direct to consumer and you can't cut out the middleman that well, so you don't have as much gross margin to play with. You don't have that sort of pricing power ability to lower prices like you do when you're direct to consumer. The second thing about a brand is one promise or several promises and consistently delivering on that. And we think that brand's hold a special place in society where brands actually are part of culture and able to influence culture. And we think when we think about what personally motivates us while we love eyewear, we want to build a company that scales, that's profitable, that does good in the world, and doesn't charge a premium for that. And if we do that, hopefully we can influence the way that other entrepreneurs and executives are running their business. And that is something that”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And just so people are listening, when you say we wanted to build a brand, you meant something that people cared about and wouldn't price compare on or there was more to it than just good quality at value or.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To start, you know, when we were developing the idea for Warby Parker, we knew we wanted to build a brand. And that was a very conscious decision. And we wanted to do that because, well, financially, brands get sort of valued higher than non-brands.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I sent some frustration when I hear this from some of these startup founders. And so can you help explain, I mean, you have a very strong brand, I'm sure you probably have a long way to go nationally with awareness to where you want to get. But can you explain where the brand name came from and when you think it sort of clicked as something that young professionals in urban centers sort of knew and loved?”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thanks, Kara, and we're back with Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa, co-CEOs of Warby Parker. When I talk to startups in and around the fashion and retail worlds today, a lot of them come to me and say, you know, that Warby Parker, it seems like they just had a brand overnight. And I know, and the company is now, what, six years old?”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to get back to your business in a second. We're going to kick it to Kara, who's going to have a word from our sponsors who helped pay for this discussion. Kara?”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where most brands are licensed, right? Luxotica and other eyewear licensing companies pay everyday fashion brands like Prada and Dolce Gabana 10 to 15% of sales. Where Warby Parker, where our own brand. So that 10 to 15% licensing fee, we're also able to pass on to our customers.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our unit economics are great. We have strong gross margins and that's what will enable us to be a highly profitable company in the future. And again, to your point about e-commerce can often have deflationary effects on a market or on an industry. It's really for two reasons. One is that the internet provides access to information to enable people to price compare, but also to enable people to understand the industry dynamics, like to Google, Luxotica and understand that the eyewear industry is kind of messed up. And second, it enables these direct to consumer relationships that Dave was mentioning where we don't wholesale our product to retailers who then have to market up when they sell it to customers. So all that retail markup, we just pass on to our customers. And because our industry is also one”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Including, and still make money Make And do all of this and still have a business model where you're going to see some black at the bottom of that bottom line and not red. Is that currently how the business operates or long-term plans at bigger scale that you can turn a profit”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Brands like Ray Ban, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, Persoul. You have to play the game with the biggest player. But with the adoption of e-commerce, there was an opportunity for us to create our own brand and also sell them directly to consumers and do that in a pretty capital efficient way. And we recognize that when we were trying to change consumer behavior, most consumers aren't used to buying glasses online, and that just put the onus on us to deliver not just an incrementally better experience, but one that was in order of magnitude better in terms of the value that people were getting for the dollars that they were spending and also the experience of offering free shipping, free returns, offering home try-ons where people could physically touch and feel the product, get feedback from people that they trust, not a salesperson that's trying to upsell them, offer very simple, transparent pricing, all our frames start at $95.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a great business. They also in iMed, which is the second largest vision insurance plan in the US. And so consumers don't often realize when they walk into a sunglass hut or a lens crafters, they see 50 different brands of glasses. All those brands are owned by the same company that owns the store that they're standing in, that owns the vision insurance plan they're using to pay for those losses. And as a result, they're paying 10 to 20 times the cost of manufacturing the glasses that they're buying really with little value add. And as a result of this concentration of power, there's also been a little innovation on the technology side, really very little effort to sell glasses effectively online. And that just left a huge opportunity for us to create our own brand and control our own distribution. And so historically, if you wanted to create a brand of glasses, you would have to get distribution through retailers like Lenscrafter or Sunglass Hat, Pearl Vision, or if you're an eyeglass retailer, you had to...”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wearing glasses since I was 12 years old, I had bought a bunch of glasses that were produced by Exotica brands, but I'd never heard of that company. And they really rolled up most of the industry. And so including retail stores. Yeah. So they own most eyewear-only brands that consumers have heard of, Rayban, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, Persoul, Arnett. They have exclusive eyewear licenses for most major fashion labels, Chanel Prada, Dolce Gibbana, DCNY, Ralph Lauren, dozens of others. They own lenscrafter, sunglass hut, pearl vision, target optical, Sears Optical, Macy's Optical, and then they also own. Sounds like a good business.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, a lot of people I talk to today, this is not supposed to be a plug, but my sister wears Warbury Parker glasses. She always asks me, especially when I told her I was coming in here to do this, how do they sell them for $95? And how do they send them to me for free and also sell them for $95? And they still look like glasses I'd like to wear. She considers herself fashionable. She would kill me if I said otherwise. I mean, can you run us through quickly? There's this concept of the e-commerce of cutting out middlemen. It doesn't go a lot deeper than that when people describe it. So explain to us how you're doing this. I think we operate in a pretty unique category. This is Dave speaking now for our listeners. Make sure we get everyone knowing who's who. So the eyewear industry is over $100 billion globally, and it's really controlled by a couple large companies. And so most consumers have never heard of a company called Lexotica.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And realize, you know what? Like, this is good, but it's not great. Will it actually get people over the hurdle to purchase? And that doubt really pushed us to try and think of another solution, which”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. And I think when you're starting a business, there are all these fits and starts, and there are these moments where you think that you have it all figured out. And then like the next day, right, you feel like you're in utter failure. And we had one of those moments where in surveying and having focus groups, we literally invite our friends to our apartments and just grill them about how they bought glasses. And yeah, a lot of people said, hey, I'm never going to buy glasses online because I need a touch and feel them. I need to try them on, make sure they look good. So given that while we were starting a lifestyle and a fashion brand, we were starting a tech company. We thought, oh, there must be a technological solution here. And we found some interesting virtual try-on technology that we were able to license where you could take a photo of yourself and virtually try on glasses. And the next day we thought, oh, we solved this problem. But then we started testing it a bit and even testing it on our”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Products that we love cut out all the middlemen and sell them directly to consumers, primarily online. That was the initial idea. And we talked to a lot of people, got a lot of feedback. Almost everyone we talked to said, this is such a good idea. Someone would have done it already. So I would have been the only one telling you this was a terrible idea. No, but I mean, there was a reason why a lot of people weren't doing it, right? Which is, you know, prescription glasses obviously are something you need to try on. They're something that you wear every single day. And so it's not like buying. Or at the time a CD or pants or something else, right? So I would assume there was that big barrier to try to convincing some people that this was a business that could start as a digital business.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Neil was the one who had spent several years working in the industry running this great nonprofit called Vision Spring and knew a lot more about glasses than any of the rest of us. And also just couldn't understand why no one was effectively selling glasses online at that point. Zappos was really big. Dipers.com was big. Amazon was really starting to sell every category of consumer products. But less than 1% of eyeglasses were sold online. And it just didn't make sense to us that here was this technology that's been around for 800 years. Products are marked up 10 to 20 times what they cost to manufacture. The experience of buying them is really frustrating. And us as consumers, we just really wanted to solve our own problems and we talked to a lot of other people and seemed like they were also frustrated by the high price and the shopping experience of buying glasses. And so we thought there was a pretty interesting opportunity to create a vertically integrated brand where we would design”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we're going to talk a lot about where you're at today, but I want to just back up for a second. The original idea selling glasses, fashionable glasses at under $100 and doing a lot of it online seems like you would have run into some resistance. I mean, how many people did you have telling you that this was a crazy idea at the start? Yeah, so Neil and I met in business school in 2008 and along with our other two co-founders, Jeff and Andy, we're all classmates and friends getting our MBAs at Wharton. And we all had that frustrating experience where we lost a pair of glasses or broke a pair of glasses and couldn't understand why they were so expensive. Except for Neil.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Selfish reason I ask is I was in college and I was feeling not as smart as my classmates and so I popped on a pair of glasses for a few days, quickly was called out. As a phony, and I haven't put them on since, but now that I know that you do it, maybe, what do you think?”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. We were still on our hands and knees saying thank you, thank you for featuring us. But it's funny that my whole professional career has been dedicated towards glasses and increasing accessibility to them, whereas, yeah, my vision's pretty good. Although increasingly as, because now I get eye exams probably more regularly than the normal person, I actually do have a very slight astigmatism, but I still don't have any prescription lenses in my glasses.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And who got on the phone to yell, try to yell at the reporter? You were not that big time yet, so you couldn't do that? Right, exactly.”
2016-04-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, co-CEOs, Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT