Join Dr. Darryl Glover as he sits down with Mr. Dave Gilboa, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Warby Parker, as they talk about Warby Parker’s role in the eyecare industry and the future demands and unmet needs of our patients.

Gilboa shares his background and interest in both eyewear and ocular health goes back to childhood. Both of Gilboa’s parents are doctors, and growing up he was 100% sure he was also going to medical school. After majoring in biomedical engineering at U.C. Berkeley, his plan was to take the MCAT and apply to medical school. But at the time (early 2000s), his parents and other doctors that were in his life were expressing larger frustrations with the changes in healthcare -from the rise of HMOs, to the increased time required outside of patient care to perform their important jobs.  Their concerns over the future of medicine led him to reconsider his path, and after a stint in business and then returning to school for an MBA at Wharton, he teamed up with fellow MBA classmates for an idea that combined business innovation with the medical path he had always envisioned for his life; Warby Parker was born. 

The story has been well covered, but Gilboa describes in this podcast that the price of glasses was the primary influence in his and his classmates’ decision to create Warby Parker. In 2008 he was in the market to purchase new glasses, and was concerned to find his glasses were more expensive than his recent iPhone purchase (roughly $200 at that time). A fellow classmate at Wharton was involved with a service project called VisionSpring that was providing eyewear to people in need with incomes of under $4 a day in other countries, and that relationship with the service project helped create a pathway for them to find less expensive eyewear manufacturing routes. 

Dave Gilboa, Co-Founder of Warby Parker

Gilboa explains that innovation in Warby Parker is focused on making the experience as consumer-friendly as possible. “We don’t try to focus on developing technology or new tools just for the sake of it; we start by getting customer feedback and looking at customer data and then thinking about the mechanism we could create or develop that would reduce friction and make things easier for our customers.” Key customer feedback they’ve received is the desire for an enhanced ability to “try on” glasses from home, and they’ve created a virtual try-on feature in their app to address this need. But many customers also wanted to try glasses on in person, and that was the feedback that inspired their need for brick-and-mortar opticals (they have 135 locations as of March, 2021 with plans to open 35 new locations in the next year). Other needs their customers have addressed is frustration over the need to renew their prescription with an in-person exam when they feel their prescription has not changed, and they are looking at technology solutions for this issue. 

“We certainly don’t think of ourselves as a marketing company,” Gilboa explains when asked about the branding enterprise that has made Warby Parker a success. “First and foremost, we think about creating the best products and experiences for our customers. If we get those things right, the awareness will follow.” They closely follow consumer Net Promoter Scores; their NPS has been in the 80s for their entire company history. With over 11 years in business, the majority of their customers tell them that they heard about Warby Parker from a friend. Their strongest marketing channel is word of mouth referrals – not unlike traditional eyecare practices.