#415 2010 · Warby Parker · Eyewear retail / e-commerceenter-their-reality
Warby Parker wanted to sell glasses online in a category everyone insists on trying on first, so it shipped the fitting room to people's houses instead of building one.
the problem
launching an online-only product in a category customers have always assumed requires trying it on in a physical store first
background
When four Wharton MBA students began planning what became Warby Parker in 2008, prescription glasses were sold almost exclusively through opticians and optical retail chains, where trying frames on in person before purchase was treated as non-negotiable — in 2010, less than 2.5% of eyewear sold in the US moved through any online channel. Early investors and even one of the founders themselves were skeptical that customers would ever buy glasses sight-unseen, since a pair that looked wrong on a stranger's face could look completely different on their own.
The team's original instinct was to compete for retail real estate the way every optical chain did, but a startup lacked the capital to open storefronts nationwide before it had proven demand. Rather than accept trying-on as a fixed cost only a physical store could solve, they treated the fitting room itself as detachable from the store — a problem of logistics, not location.
the move
At launch in February 2010, Warby Parker let customers pick any five frames on its website and receive them by mail for a free five-day home trial — no credit card required, no purchase obligation, and prepaid shipping label included for the return of whichever frames weren't kept.
the payoff
Home Try-On became the mechanism that let a startup with no stores sell glasses nationally from day one, driving word-of-mouth as customers photographed themselves in the mailed frames and posted them for friends to vote on, generating free social content the company never had to pay for. Warby Parker grew from that 2010 launch into a company valued in the billions, and Home Try-On remains a core acquisition channel even after the company later opened physical stores.
what came after
Home Try-On is now cited across e-commerce and DTC retail as the template for solving trial-dependent categories online — mattress, cosmetics and even prescription contact lens startups have since copied the free-trial-by-mail model directly from Warby Parker's example.
filed under
references
- [1]Warby Parker's Home Try-on Program Lets You Try 5 Pairs of Glasses for FreeInverse, 2018inverse.com
- [2]How some early feedback put Warby Parker on the path to successAOL Finance, 2023aol.com