In short
Warby Parker’s rise as a direct-to-consumer disruptor to Luxottica’s eyewear dominance, and how Warby evolved into a more conventional brick-and-mortar, tech-and-brand business by 2026.
Guests (backgrounds)
Max Chafkin, senior reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and co-host of Bloomberg’s Everybody’s Business; previously covered business/tech for Fast Company and Vanity Fair and authored The Contrarian (Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley oligarchs).
Key claims
Warby’s early advantage wasn’t just low prices; it built a durable brand by making the buying experience “considered” (home try-on, customer service, social media). Its anti-Luxottica messaging functioned as sophisticated “populist” marketing, but Warby later began resembling Luxottica (stores, eye exams revenue, smart-glasses deals with Samsung/Google). E-commerce alone became harder due to platform power and higher shipping/tariff costs; stores and customer relationships became more important.
Notable examples
the original “pick 4 frames, try at home, return” box; Warby’s Abbot Kinney (LA) store design; comparison to Dollar Shave Club’s viral YouTube model; Warby store count (~352) and revenue expectations (~$1B).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOWarby Parker's Disruption of Eyewear
0:39 to 2:10
Discussion on Warby Parker's entry into the eyewear market and its impact.
“Warby Parker seemed to disrupt not just the price point of eyeglasses, but also how customers purchased them.”
Interview with Max Chafkin
3:43 to 8:27
Interview with journalist Max Chafkin discussing Warby Parker's origins.
“It's a relatively new podcast coming out of Business Week, and Business Week tries to bring the world of business to make it more accessible, make people understand it.”
Marketing and Retail Evolution
8:27 to 14:00
Exploration of Warby Parker's marketing strategies and retail evolution.
“It can be very aggressive sales pitch where there are suddenly you're buying a car.”
The Marketing Genius of Warby Parker
14:00 to 19:12
Learn how Warby Parker's marketing strategy questions luxury pricing in eyewear.
“And I think that was really, really, really smart because the internet, like the internet as it was back then, was kind of in its final couple of years.”
Warby Parker's Evolution and Future
19:56 to 28:01
Explore Warby Parker's shift towards traditional retail and its implications.
“You started listening to an epic sci-fi book on Audible.”
The Unique Position of Warby Parker
28:01 to 29:48
Learn about Warby Parker's market position and retail strategies against Luxottica.
“And yet, to the extent that these four guys go into business school thought that they might be able to slay the giant.”
The Unique Position of Warby Parker
30:00 to 31:56
Learn about Warby Parker's market position and retail strategies against Luxottica.
“And then when they fall away, often what's left over is not as much as you thought was there.”
Evolution of Retail Landscape
33:46 to 42:00
Explore the changing retail environment and the impact on brands like Warby Parker.
“We're talking with Max Chafkin, who's a senior reporter with Bloomberg Businessweek.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00David Brown:Hey, Business Wars fans, have you heard? Audible subscribers can listen to new episodes of Business Wars early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. From Audible Originals, I'm David Brown and this is Business Wars.
0:39David Brown:When Warby Parker first broke into the eyewear space in 2010, it was a welcome surprise for consumers who could now sport a pair of designer prescription specs for less than$100, just a fraction of what you might pay for Oliver Peoples or Prada frames. Warby Parker seemed to disrupt not just the price point of eyeglasses, but also how customers purchased them. Its direct-to-consumer digital-native business model made Warby Parker the company to copy, and left many wondering whether Luxottica's long-standing reign over the industry would soon be over. In the decade and a half since Warby Parker opened its doors, the answer to that question is still evolving.
1:20David Brown:And with more than 350 retail outlets and counting, the company seems to have fully embraced the brick-and-mortar strategy. Journalist Max Chafkin profiled Warby Parker and its founders back in 2015 at the height of the company's ascension. Max is currently a senior reporter with Bloomberg Businessweek and the co-host of Bloomberg's Everybody's Business podcast. He's covered business and tech for Fast Company and Vanity Fair and is the author of The Contrarian, Peter Thiel and the Rise of the Silicon Valley Oligarchs. We'll talk about the rise of Warby Parker and what the company looks like today and dive into the current state of retail and e-commerce.
2:00David Brown:No prescription required for this episode, so stick with us.
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2:13Max Chafkin:Hey, I'm Jabron. Between teaching and coaching, managing diabetes felt like an extra job. With the Freestyle Libre 3CGM, I get real-time glucose readings and have the insights to make informed decisions. My life feels lighter now. Learn more at freestyllibre.us. The views expressed should not be used for medical diagnosis or treatment as a substitute for professional medical advice. Individual circumstances may vary. For prescription only. Safety info found at freestyllibre.us.
2:40David Brown:Police in Irvine, California are investigating the double murder of a young couple in the parking lot of their apartment complex. A double homicide grabs the public's attention by the throat. We have identified Christopher Dorner as a suspect in this double homicide. A former cop and still on the loose. Considered armed and extremely dangerous. And scariest of all, he left something behind. A particular interest is a multi-page manifesto. This manifesto on Facebook is 11 pages long. Trace, this manifesto from this suspect who's targeting cops, it's stunning.
3:15Max Chafkin:Listen to the show The New Yorker calls one of the best podcasts of the summer, Dan Taberski's Manifesto.
3:21David Brown:And I tell you, this manifesto, it scares the hell out of me.
3:25Max Chafkin:Listen to Dan Taberski's Manifesto wherever you get your podcasts or binge the entire series right now, only with Audible.
3:42David Brown:Max Chafkin, welcome to Business Wars. Hey, David. How's it going? It's going great. Congratulations on the podcast. How did you get looped into that? Were you the founding host or what?
3:54Max Chafkin:Yeah, yeah. It's a relatively new podcast coming out of Business Week, and Business Week tries to bring the world of business to make it more accessible, make people understand it. And we're trying to do some of the same thing, take these complex economic stories and explain how they affect the lives of normal people.
4:12David Brown:And as it happens, you work with co-host Stacey Vanek-Smith, who I remember from my marketplace days. She says hi, by the way. Oh, well, tell her I said howdy. I will. But we're here to talk about glasses. And you wrote quite the story on Warby Parker. You've been covering business and tech for quite a while now. And in 2015, you profiled Warby Parker and two of its founders, Neil Rosenthal and David Gilboa for Fast Company. And at the time, I think a lot of people saw Warby Parker as the great disruptor in the eyeglass space. I know it's been a while, but maybe you can take us back to the moment when Warby Parker first sort of broke through.
4:52David Brown:What was so exciting about it?
4:54Max Chafkin:Yeah, you know, Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa, I met them. It must have been in 2013 or so. But they were part of this wave. wave warby parker was part of this wave of what people were calling you know direct to consumer businesses i mean weirdly a lot of them went to the same business school like a lot of these guys came out of wharton really um yeah warby was started of course in a wharton dorm but but then one of the founders went on to start harry's which was like a direct consumer razor blade thing and there was just this kind of explosion of companies where they were cutting out a bunch of different middlemen.
5:34Max Chafkin:So there was, you brought up the Luxottica as a middleman, but there was also sort of the retail middleman, the marketing middleman, the idea that you just sort of like put up a website and start selling a product. And the other piece of this that feels a little bit like a time capsule to me when I think of it is that a lot of these businesses were sort of wrapped up in ideas of sort of social enterprise. Neil Blumenthal coming out of Vision Spring, which was a nonprofit. Warby had, you know, like a Tom's Shoes style, buy one, give one or whatever. You know, they were donating money to buy eyeglasses for people in need.
6:11Max Chafkin:And you sort of make the world a better place kind of thing. Yeah. You had this promise of kind of cool or I don't know, knowing products, products that were like good enough. And maybe it was cool in that you hadn't spent that much money that were also easier to approach as a consumer and better for the world. And all of that, all at the same time, all wrapped in still the kind of promise of the Internet. And it was like an exciting area of growth, of economic growth.
6:41David Brown:You know, it's funny because you say that and I think about how that was when the podcasting space was starting to explode. And a lot of these companies were big advertisers on podcasts at the time, too. Remember that?
6:53Max Chafkin:Yeah, no, totally. You're so right. I mean, podcasts were a huge thing for them. And I almost feel like the democratizing forces in media that made that podcasting moment so exciting, you know, that was playing out in fashion and in retail. And with all of these sort of, you know, when I worked at Fast Company back then, you know, we would constantly get pitches of like, we're the Warby Parker. Maybe you've talked about this. Yeah, for sure. No, no, no. We're the Warby Parker of mattresses. We're the Warby Parker of this. We're the Warby Parker of that. You know, it's almost like bordering on parody, but also a total compliment to what they were building.
7:29David Brown:But I think for a lot of folks, it felt like part of a unique experience. You know, it was like to be ordering frames from a website. Right. When that's something, you know, wearing glasses, that's a hard thing to do. And you're putting a lot of faith in the process. Right. I mean, because the showrooms weren't everywhere. You had to dig around to to to find one at the time. Right.
7:53Max Chafkin:Yeah, yeah. I mean, the original way you bought them was you would pick out four different frames and they would ship it in this like clever little box. And you would try it on at home and then you would send it back and get what you were looking for. And it had a feeling of being very, you know, consumer friendly. And now I know this. For sure. I do have a prescription and I know and, you know, I think different, you know, optical shops are different. But there is a line between sort of where you're you're at the doctor one minute and all of a sudden you're in the middle of this very aggressive.
8:28Max Chafkin:It can be very aggressive sales pitch where there are suddenly you're buying a car. They're like, well, which finish would you like? And and and it's clear that all of a sudden you have to protect yourself from being, you know, taken advantage of. And I think Warby spoke to that indirectly just by making this thing very convenient and slick and everything, but also at times directly. Like they made Luxottica and Luxottica's, you know, de facto monopoly on the eyeglasses industry a huge part of their sales pitch. This was you were getting one over on big business when you use this service.
9:03David Brown:You know, for sure. I know exactly what you're talking about. And I'll be honest, I actually tried it. I thought, could this really be that they would send you, trust you with four eyeglass frames and just, you know, let you go from there? And it was really cool. part of what I really enjoyed about the process was that I could kind of try them on, wear them around the house for a while, maybe go back to that other pair that I kind of liked, but I wasn't so sure. And just, I didn't feel that sense of rush, you know, sort of being pushed into making that big purchase because I had these four specs that I could, I could play around with for a few days.
9:39David Brown:It was a really neat feeling. I gather you were there at the opening of its Los Angeles Outpost, when it started sort of moving into this brick and mortar space, what was that like? Any memories spring to mind?
9:52Max Chafkin:Yeah. I mean, the thing that I wrote about, and as I've thought back about it, I think it helps explain why Warby has had a staying power that many of these other direct-to-consumer companies have not had, is that it was all very considered. And I think, you know, at one point, like Dave maybe told me that that's the one thing about this brand is that it's considered. And that showed up in all different areas. A lot of it and a lot of what I was writing about at the time was about how they talked to the customers on social media, how they responded to customer service queries. But part of it also was in this store, which was on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, which is, you know, is like one of the more pricier parts of LA real estate in Venice.
10:31Max Chafkin:And it was just this store that was designed very cleanly. It was a relatively large space considering, you know, the amount of real estate given over to the actual products was very small. And it was all just so. And I remember, and I wrote about this in the story, they had this like freak out right before people started coming in because, you know, some of the duct work was visible. They didn't want the duct work to show up, you know, in pictures and stuff. So they had put these balloons to cover it. And then, but the balloons were, you know, were pulling off the wall because there's air coming out of the ducts.
11:08Max Chafkin:Um, so, so it was just this kind of everything was just so, and what was interesting about that. I mean, I think some of this is just, that's just like merchandising 101. And if we were talking to, you know, some one, it's one of these like longtime retail folks, Mickey Drexler, who of course was involved in Warby Parker, you know, they would say like, that's just how you open a successful store. What was unusual, I think, is that this was a venture capital backed web startup that That was making a massive investment of money and time in physical real estate. I think at the time that L.A. store opened, they only had like two other they were sort of almost more like pop up shops rather than full fledged, you know, store stores.
11:54Max Chafkin:And I see. And at the time they were, you know, just just huge revenue per square foot. But there was a faddishness to it for a while. But really, like, really smart, really well-designed, and just everything very careful.
12:11David Brown:Let's talk a little bit more about disruption. Your Fast Company article has this great title, Warby Parker Sees the Future of Retail for Building the First Great Made-On-the-Internet Brand. What do you think Warby could see or that they got right that other companies couldn't?
12:29Max Chafkin:Well, like I said, at the time, it was unusual. The idea of building a store was unusual. When I think about other companies that were playing in this way, the one that I keep coming back to in my head is like Dollar Shave Club, which was also a direct-to-consumer thing, but it was really focused on discount. and it was just like a YouTube video, basically. Like the founder made a really, really, really, really great and funny. It was a true viral YouTube video about how messed up the razor blade industry was. And then they just shipped you really cheap razors by mail. And like that was the business.
13:10Max Chafkin:And Warby was doing things that were similar to that because a big part of what they were doing is just like getting cheap frames and not marking them up as much as Luxottica would. But they were also very aware, even then, even in, I wrote this story in 2015, still relatively early in their journey, even then there were knockoffs and there would be more knockoffs and it was becoming more and more easy to buy glasses on the internet. Like no part of that business model is sort of proprietary. Like it's pretty easy to just, even for Luxottica, to just do the exact same thing. And so they sort of realized that they had to actually build a brand.
13:50Max Chafkin:They actually had to have an identity and they had to advertise. They had to do marketing and then they had to do marketing in this other way, which is by opening stores. And I think that was really, really, really smart because the internet, like the internet as it was back then, was kind of in its final couple of years. And it was about to become much, much, much, much harder to just like put up a website and have people come to it in the way that it had worked for Dollar Shave Club. Because you had social media becoming much more important, the much greater importance of platforms and the ways that like Facebook especially, but also Google, started making it harder for retailers to attract new customers.
14:36Max Chafkin:And then you just also had crowding in the market. So, like, they started making these investments in stores at a time when it wasn't super obvious that was necessary, but it would become very obvious it was necessary in just a couple of years.
14:50David Brown:You know, Max, the thing that stood out to me with the launch of Warby Parker was how, in a sense, as part of their marketing, they were inviting potential customers to think through the economics of a pair of glasses. You know, the co-founder was David Goboa was talking about comparing a pair of$700 Prada glasses that he had just lost to the price of a new iPhone that he had. And it had him wondering, look, why do designer glasses have to cost this much? And I wonder if that sort of, you know, stripping it away, forcing you to think about what the heck am I paying for in the first place? If that wasn't part of the secret sauce here, right?
15:30David Brown:Not just figuring out how to lower the cost, but in a way forcing the would-be purchaser to think through that too.
15:38Max Chafkin:Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, I think no coincidence that I brought up Dollar Shave Club, right? It's the exact same thing where they're – it sounds weird to say this, but they're almost telling like a populist story. And until we started having this conversation, it hadn't occurred to me that a lot of these businesses were founded right in the aftermath of Occupy Wall Street. I mean, I think these were like a little bit of an instance of tapping into some consumer – some feelings among consumers that they were getting screwed over essentially and trying to use that as marketing and to turn that into an advantage.
16:12Max Chafkin:When you think about it, it's a very sophisticated bit of marketing to ask customers to consider Luxottica and the way that their horizontal integration – wait, is it horizontal or – you know, the way that they've like – this vertically integrated thing is super consumer unfriendly. Like it's it's almost like you're asking normal people to think about like antitrust law as they're buying glasses, which is like a very sophisticated bit of marketing. It's almost amazing that it worked.
16:43David Brown:But at the same time, I was always suspect about that sort of messaging because, you know, I don't know anything about the about the glass, the glasses industry. Right. I mean, we're sort of everyone sort of being invited. hey look we're cutting out the middleman we're getting you these inexpensive glasses and in terms of cost i just i kind of wondered how are you able to make glasses for 95 bucks there's so much going on here the fashion aspect you've got the prescription lenses you'd normally get fit by an optometrist or you go to a specialty retailer like lens crafters and i'm wondering was it a was it a genuine sincere thing that they were doing here or was it kind of glossing glossing over, you know, this middleman aspect?
17:31Max Chafkin:I mean, I think it's both. I mean, one of the things that I've thought about when I'm reflecting on Warby now is that they are becoming more and more like Luxottica. And I guess that's how it goes, right? Like now they own stores and they, if you look at their financial disclosures, you know, they're increasingly collecting revenue on eye exams and they have a deal with Samsung and Google to make smart glasses. And like it's increasingly becomes the thing that they were disrupting like that. That is just the evolution of it. But I also think that there is something real in this message. I think consumers all know that there's a lot of sleight of hand in fashion.
18:14Max Chafkin:Like we all know that like a T-shirt doesn't need to cost five hundred dollars. Like if it's a super designer t-shirt or like that you're buying a bunch of different things, some of which are craftsmanship and some of which are brand. And you don't really know where one of those things stops and another thing ends. And the eyewear industry, people who would never buy like a pair of Prada dress slacks or something are buying Prada frames. Like there's a mismatch there. And I think they picked up on that, that people understand that when they're buying something from a designer, they're paying a lot of extra money for that brand.
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18:52Max Chafkin:And I think, you know, Warby just figured it out and then to their credit, figured out how to turn that insight into a, you know, into a durable business. Because I think it very easily could have gone the way that some of these other less successful direct-to-consumer companies went.
19:07David Brown:We're talking with Max Chafkin. He's senior reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and co-host of the Everybody's Business podcast. When we come back, we're going to take a look at the Warby Parker story through a 2026 lens. Stay with us.
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20:31David Brown:hey welcome back to business wars our guest is bloomberg senior reporter max chafkin max uh you and that 2015 fast company profile wondering about the future of warby parker so here we are i want to talk a little bit about how it all panned out retail stores were something Warby Parker sort of flirted with from the beginning. But over time, they've actually become, it seems to me, essential to its business model. You teased at this, but in 2026, is Warby Parker looking more like a traditional brick and mortar retailer?
21:10Max Chafkin:Yeah, I mean, it definitely is. And if you look at the way that they're emphasizing eye exams a little bit more, just the sheer number of stores in a bunch of different ways. The fact that they're starting to emphasize these technology products, which is the kind of product that I think a lot of people want to try out and which has mostly been successful in contexts where people have a chance to put them on. I think in so many different ways, they look more like a conventional business and less like that kind of flashy direct-to-consumer thing that they looked before. If you look at the stock price, It's way down from when they went public.
21:51Max Chafkin:The stock is around a seventh or a sixth of what it was in the COVID, in that era when the markets were really hot and direct-to-consumer brands still had a lot of advantages that they don't have now. But also, like you said, it's a business that has proven much more durable than Allbirds, which has gone through this bizarre transformation where the stock is now a ticker for an AI thing And am I making this up right? That's that's it's all that had that happen. I think I think you're right. Yes. Or a lot of these other brands that that were kind of like swallowed up by private equity firms. You know, that's kind of like the Harry's path, which was like there's like a private equity roll up that includes a bunch of these similar direct to consumer things.
22:38Max Chafkin:Warby is, you know, it's a standalone business. It's a it's a legitimate fashion brand. I mean, they have become, you know, I guess what they always wanted to be, which was like a true competitor. to Luxottica, even if Luxottica is, you know, much, much, much, much bigger than Warby Parker still.
22:53David Brown:Well, I wonder if there's a greater lesson, though, that can be extracted from this. You know, we've been hearing about the death of malls and in-person retail for years, but ultimately, the success of Warby Parker shows how important it is, at least in some industries, to have that store, that place you can go to. What do you think the bigger lesson is here?
23:16Max Chafkin:I mean, I think the lesson is maybe even more elemental, which is just like you need to have a tremendous respect for your customers and be fanatical about figuring out what they want and attempting to get there. And that was what they were trying to do. But I also think you're 100 % right that the way that the internet has evolved and the way that consumer tastes have evolved, I think when you look back on their early years, they were kind of picking low-hanging fruit. There was sort of easy money in what they were doing and that to really build a durable consumer-facing business, you need to find ways for people in the world to interact with your product.
24:04Max Chafkin:And, you know, malls, obviously the death of malls has been totally overstated. I have an 11-year-old and she loves malls. I go to a lot of malls now. And some of them are very crowded. And so there's just this like elemental human need, right, to connect and connect in the real world. And that exists, I think, you know, even in a world that is mediated by tons and tons of technology.
24:29David Brown:And I can't get away, though, from the idea that perhaps this has to do with what sort of business you're in, that things may be different depending on the types of goods that you're selling as a retailer. Or maybe the pop-up or food truck model is great when you're a startup, but to grow and be sustainable, you still need physical locations. Maybe as a company matures, you're going to have to, you know, that there's still life in the idea of physical locations as the anchor. We sort of need that as consumers, I suppose.
25:03Max Chafkin:I mean, maybe this just makes me old, but I hope that's true. And I do believe it's true, but yeah, there's still these fundamental needs that we have.
25:13David Brown:You know, recently I purchased a new pair of glasses and I've really liked them. They're a pair of Ray-Bans. And I remember that when I went to the store, I liked the way that they looked, but I know deep down I was responding to, you know, what Ray-Ban meant to me, that it's a classic, that it's got a great backstory. And I remember getting home and looking at the box, you know, the little, you know, glasses case that they came in and it had a little Luxottica brand stamp on it. And I thought, well, was Warby really able to disrupt Luxottica's monopoly of the industry? Or is there something else going on that maybe Warby carved out their own niche within the eyewear landscape?
25:58David Brown:Because there are many of us who, whether we acknowledge it or not, are ultimately drawn to, you know, when we pull the trigger, we actually make the purchase. We're drawn to these brands that mean something to us.
26:14Max Chafkin:Yeah, totally. And, you know, like I said, I mean, they're still like a fly in Luxottica.
26:21David Brown:Compared to Luxottica, right.
26:23Max Chafkin:And my guess is that in the minds of a lot of consumers, they coexist together, right? Like people are willing to have a pair of Warby Parker glasses and a pair of Ray-Bans, right? There's no reason you can't buy both or switch off or whatever. It's funny. The way I buy glasses is I just buy the cheapest. I go to a normal optical shop and say, I just want the cheapest pair you possibly have. And if you don't give me the cheapest pair, I'm going to walk out. And so it's the opposite of what I'm saying. Wow.
26:55David Brown:You're a tough customer, man.
26:57Max Chafkin:It's the opposite of what you're saying. I buy the no-name, even less than Warby Parker, like the no-name, cut rate, whatever.
27:07David Brown:Has Warby ever come up with a brand of its own or a kind of recognizable style that people will seek out the way that some people will seek out, say, Ray-Bans or other brands like that?
27:18Max Chafkin:I am not conversant enough in like eyewear fashion to answer this question, I think, in a satisfying way. I do think if you had somebody from Warby Parker here, they would say that like their look is vintage inspired. Classic almost.
27:33David Brown:I think of Warby Parker and it's sort of like classic frames. Right. Kind of a look that's kind of reliable, dependable. You've seen it before.
27:42Max Chafkin:Yeah, I think that's right. But I mean, I think the brand is Warby Parker. It's the logo. It's the store. It's the notion that you are going to get something that looks good enough, but is going to be like very friendly to you as a consumer. And it's the story. Yeah, it's the story.
28:02David Brown:And yet, to the extent that these four guys go into business school thought that they might be able to slay the giant. Not so much. Right. I mean, the giant still lives.
28:14Max Chafkin:Absolutely. And I think some of that has to do with that Luxottica, you know, very quickly figured out that they had to compete. You know, they had their own online discounting things and, you know, like they were able to adapt. And then I think the other part of it is what you said, is that some of these brands really mean something and it's so personal. Part of what made the fact that Warby Parker was successful so kind of surprising is that it's a thing you wear on your face all the time. It's not – I mean maybe for some people it's an accessory, but for a lot of people this is like a part of your face.
28:50Max Chafkin:So do you really want to scrimp on that?
28:53David Brown:Probably not. Right, right, right. Just taking a look at some current numbers. Warby Parker has 352 stores, 2.7 million active customers. they expect close to a billion in revenue this year. When you were writing in 2015 about Warby Parker, is that, did you ever think that we'd be talking about Warby Parker as a business of that scale?
29:19Max Chafkin:I think I was still in the mindset that these retail investments were pretty far out there and that we weren't going to be talking about a conventional retail business or whatever. Like, I'm surprised by that. I guess I'm also, you know, surprised that despite the fact that they weren't able to do all the things that they've done and that they went public and it hasn't, you know, it's been a rocky road, that they've also built something pretty durable. And I think that is always impressive in business. But I think it's particularly impressive when you're talking about these companies that shoot out, you know, powered by tons of venture capital money and fads.
29:59Max Chafkin:Because, like, both of those things can sort of evaporate very quickly. And then when they fall away, often what's left over is not as much as you thought was there.
30:09David Brown:Maybe I'm overlooking somebody, but I can't think of a real rival to Warby Parker because Luxottica is in a different category altogether. They're playing a different game in a sense, almost.
30:21Max Chafkin:There are a couple of other online eyeglasses sellers, but in terms of that kind of combination of building a strong retail brand and a strong digital business together, that's always what has made them pretty unique.
30:36David Brown:Well, maybe the retail, the brick and mortar stores are Warby Parker's fortress. I mean, the barrier to entry to doing something like Warby Parker would, if you just follow the story, seem to be rather low. Anybody else could go and find some supplier of inexpensive frames and do something like Warby Parker has done. But not anyone can, you know, start up a business like what Warby Parker has become. Absolutely, yeah. Maybe that's the recipe, the secret sauce there.
31:04Max Chafkin:You know, and some of this is they're a fashion company now. And, you know, the gap has been around for a long time and gap has gone through some good periods and some bad periods. And I think that's the next thing is that they will have to figure out how to navigate. At some point, they will either stop being cool or fail to innovate in some way and fall behind. And it's like, how can you navigate that? How do you add new customers? I think a lot of elder millennial types, that's my cohort, really like Warby Parker. And it really speaks to their kind of how they see themselves and how they see the world.
31:39Max Chafkin:And you wonder, like, as those people get older and they're new consumers, like, they will have to find ways, just like any retail business, to attract those new customers.
31:49David Brown:Max Chafkin is currently a senior reporter with Bloomberg Businessweek, co-host of Bloomberg's Everybody's Business podcast. We're going to take a quick break and zoom out to examine the broader retail landscape today. Stay with us.
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33:44David Brown:Hey, welcome back to Business Wars. We're talking with Max Chafkin, who's a senior reporter with Bloomberg Businessweek. Let's zoom out just a little bit here, Max. What is Warby Parker's trajectory as a company say about the broader retail landscape in 2026? How are we doing?
34:00Max Chafkin:I mean, there's some there's some piece of it, which is that a lot of these flash in the pan type brands have run into reality. And in the case of Warby Parker, reality just meant the stock falling a bit. But but them continuing to make revenue and profits and so on. Or the reality is with Casper or Allbirds, which is like – it feels like a flash in the pan that completely flamed out. And then the other part of it to me that's super interesting about this is just the way the internet has changed in that time and how different the internet of 2015 when you could just make a cool website and have people show up there.
34:43Max Chafkin:and where a website was really like a store almost to the internet of now where a lot of these experiences end up being mediated by these very, very powerful social media companies that make it harder for entrepreneurs today to start a company like Warby Parker. To start Warby Parker today, you would have to think a lot about these big platforms in a way that Dave and Neil, the co-CEOs, I don't think they really had to think about it at all. or if they thought about it as a very small amount.
35:15David Brown:You know, I think in a way that's because we're getting more mature about the narrative that we've built up around e-commerce. In a sense, it used to be e-commerce is here, long-leave e-commerce, and it's the death of retail as we've known it. But really the story is more like e-commerce coexists with brick-and-mortar retail, and depending on the business that you're in, you're now working two spaces, not just one.
35:42Max Chafkin:Yeah, and there's a cost element to this story because during the kind of real explosion of e-commerce growth, these companies were all subsidizing the shipping costs and really covering a lot of costs. Warby Parker, when they were sending you that package containing four frames and you're shipping it back to them and then they're shipping you another thing and they're doing that all at no – That's a lot of shipping. Yeah, that's three shipments for which you as a consumer aren't really directly paying for. And I think some of what made that possible is venture capital. They were a money-losing operation and they were using their investors to finance the business.
36:23Max Chafkin:But then COVID and then tariffs, I mean, this stuff has just gotten more expensive. And companies, even companies that are super sophisticated and have massive scale, have run into these cost challenges. So I think that's the other thing. We had unrealistic ideas about how much it should cost to ship something somewhere.
36:44David Brown:For sure. You know, I was trying to think of somebody else who has achieved liftoff around the same time Wayfair comes to mind. You know, they seem to be, you know, selling a lot of products. They've become a name brand. You can say Wayfair people know what you're talking about, but as of yet, they haven't turned a profit. And a big part of that has to be the shipping equation. You have to have the capital to keep yourself sustaining until you reach some kind of tipping point at some point in your development.
37:18Max Chafkin:Yeah, I mean the traditional kind of tech model, which is a thing that I wrote. I wrote a book about Peter Thiel. It's a thing that Peter Thiel has written a lot about and in a lot of ways pioneered, but it's just, you know, you try to dominate a market by losing money and then eventually you're able to like jack prices up, which is, you know, Facebook has done that to some extent with their advertisers. You know, Ubers cost a lot more today than they used to cost. You try to develop some kind of hold on the market or at least a hold on some piece of the market and then turn up the price dial.
37:52Max Chafkin:And I think it's been pretty hard for these e-commerce companies to do that. And you can get around that. One thing that Warby has done to get around that, one way to get around that is to have a really strong relationship with your customers. So maybe you ask them to pay a little bit more money, but because they really like you, they're willing to do it. Or you find other distributions. You open stores and do these kind of conventional things rather than trying to run like a classic internet business. I wonder Wayfair as maybe I think the hope would be scale plus eventually maybe you're able to raise prices when people feel like they associate you with quality or something like that.
38:33Max Chafkin:But I think you're talking about a very difficult road if your primary source of distribution is online sales and very, very expensive shipping.
38:45David Brown:You know, we started out talking a little bit about how people latched on to that sort of version of socially conscious capitalism. You know, the Tom's idea, you know, giving back to society. And Warby was part of that back in the day. You know, you think that that still exists, that that's still a part of the startup culture? Or has that sort of been lost along the way?
39:10Max Chafkin:I mean, doesn't that feel like ancient history to you? It does. It does to me. It does. I think there's a bunch of different things happening where, you know, Warby and companies like it were able to kind of ride a wave of like, you know, consumers are mad at big companies and they're feeling jerked around. And so you can make money by saying we have a better, cheaper product than this big player Luxottica and we are going to do good for the world. And now enough things have happened that have made it harder for tech companies in particular to sort of portray themselves as insurgents. It's just harder to be an insurgent when your peer group includes, you know, some of the biggest companies in the world by market cap.
40:00Max Chafkin:And I think it's harder to claim like doing good, making money while doing good, to claim that mantle when you just have a lot of power. And I think that's unfair in some cases, like not every tech company has power and there are still startups or whatever. But I think the sort of brand of Silicon Valley has just gotten much more complicated as these technologies have taken over our lives. There's more skepticism. And that's a thing that entrepreneurs now have to figure out and maybe try to work to their advantage. And I mean, you know, and we're seeing that we're going to see products and founders and so on who who just like the Warby Parker founders did look at what's happening, look at the social trends and then find a, you know, find a niche within that.
40:50David Brown:Maybe this is Gen Z's moment. You know, maybe we're at a kind of point where there's a shift that's taking place right under our feet as we talk.
40:59Max Chafkin:I think that's definitely something that I am paying attention to and trying to think about in my reporting is like how are younger people's feelings about technology and business different from older generations? And I think there was – we had this assumption for a long time that each generation would be sort of more plugged in than the last. And I mean in retrospect, obviously there would be a point where that would stop being true where you just – you become so plugged in. There's no way to get more plugged in. And I do think we've sort of hit that point and that younger consumers, as much as they are – as much as we say they are digital natives, they are also often more skeptical of digital technologies and technology than people my age.
41:46Max Chafkin:I'm 44. And so that's something that I think is worth paying attention to. And when we look back on the brands that are being built today and the companies that are being founded today, I think that's going to be one of the underlying conditions of that story.
42:01David Brown:Max Chafkin is senior reporter with Bloomberg Businessweek, and he's also the co-host of the podcast Everybody's Business. Max, thanks so much for joining us on Business Wars. I've really enjoyed your insightful commentary here. Thanks, David. Really, really enjoyed it, too. Next time on Business Wars, sweet and low, equal, splenda. These artificial sweeteners are the household names that built a billion-dollar industry. But between patent wars, attack ads, and a public health panic, the fight to replace sugar gets ugly.
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43:01David Brown:From Audible Originals, this is Episode 3 of Warby Parker vs. Luxottica for Business Wars. I'm your host, David Brown. Our senior interview producer is Peter Arkuni. Our senior producers are Jenny Bloom and Emily Frost. Our producer is Tristan Donovan of Yellow Ant. Karen Lowe is our producer emeritus, engineered by Sergio Enriquez. Our managing producer is Desi Blaylock. Kyle Randall is our lead sound designer. Executive producer for Audible, Jenny Lauer Beckman. Head of creative development at Audible, Kate Naven. Head of Audible Originals North America, Marshall Louis. Chief content officer, Rachel Giazza.
43:37David Brown:Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC. Sound recording copyright 2026. by Audible Originals, LLC.
43:58Max Chafkin:What if AI could recreate the voice of somebody you loved who died? What if it destroyed your reputation with words you never said? And what if you fell in love with something that was never human? I'm Mark Fennell, and in my brand new Audible Original Podcast, I'm travelling the globe to investigate the very personal ways AI is already changing our relationships, our memories, and our sense of what is real. Unreal. Listen now on Audible.
From the publisher
When Warby Parker debuted in 2010, the brand disrupted not just how much eyeglasses cost, but also how customers purchased them. Its direct-to-consumer e-commerce business model left many wondering whether Luxottica’s longstanding reign over the industry would soon be over. In the decade-and-a-half since, the answer to that question is still evolving. Max Chafkin profiled Warby Parker in its early days for Fast Company, and is currently a senior reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. He joins David to discuss Warby Parker’s staying power, the company’s embrace of brick-and-mortar retail, and the current state of e-commerce.
Check out Max’s Bloomberg podcast Everybody’s Business.
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