Wharton Guys Sticking it to "The Man"

Founders: Neil Blumenthal; David Gilboa; Andrew Hunt; Jeffrey Raider, 30

Company: Warby Parker

Founded: February 2010

Site: warbyparker.com

What Warby Parker does: Warby Parker designs, produces, and sells highquality, vintage-inspired frames with antireflection prescription lenses for less than $100 per pair. The company partners with non-profits to distribute one pair of glasses to someone in need for every pair they sell. 

How they are changing the game: For anyone who wears prescription glasses, the notion of paying only $95 for a pair may seem like a dream come true. By designing their own frames and selling direct to the consumer through the website, Warby Parker is able to cut the licensing and retail costs. 

While the concepts of buying prescription glasses online (prescription eyewear is a $16 billion industry and less than 1 percent of that is online), paying less than $100 a pair, and helping people living in poverty to see may all be game changing, the plan for the business came about in a very usual way—four friends at a bar. The partners were all looking for an entrepreneurial opportunity while studying at Wharton business school. Previously, Blumenthal had worked for Vision Spring, a non-profit that provided glasses to impoverished people around the world. Through that experience, he learned how inexpensive it really is to produce glasses and how many people had to go without clear vision because of the incredible mark-up being charged by the eyewear giants. The guys knew they could not only make a profit, but could also afford to do some good in the world by supplying customers with affordable eyewear. “When we were in school, we had all these different opportunities ahead of us, and to the extent that we were going to dedicate the vast majority of our time to creating an organization, we wanted it to be one that stood for something good in the world,” said Gilboa. “We thought really long and hard about how we could create a really innovative company, that we also would feel good about and would feel it was having a pretty strong impact in the world.” 

The Warby Parker guys also can feel good about the impact they are having on their customers. When the site launched, their eyewear was featured in both GQ and Vogue and within four weeks, they had sold out of 15 styles and had a waitlist of more than 20,000 people. 

What’s next: “We seem to be incredibly poor predictors of the future, particularly in terms of demand and how quickly we can grow,” said Gilboa. “We tried to be conservative in our expectations, and we continue to be blown away by how much demand there is out there and how much this idea and this brand we’re building really resonates with customers. Our goal is to be the largest and most innovative eyewear company in the world. We probably won’t get there by next year, but we think we’re taking all the right steps.”