Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker

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0:19Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me today is Neil Blumenthal, co-founder and co-CEO of Warby Parker.

0:54Neil, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. It's great to be back. Great to have you back. You were first on the show back in 2016, telling us how you and a few friends from your MBA program at Wharton basically realized that glasses were way too expensive than they had to be, and you decided to do something about it. And of course, your brand, Warby Parker, was the result. It's been an amazing success story. And you guys really changed the way people buy glasses. And by the way, for those of you listening who haven't heard that episode, we will put a link to it in the show notes. It's just an awesome story and well worth going back.

1:31I want to ask you a quick question before we get to our callers about your co-founder, Dave Gilboa, because he was also on the show with you. You guys are still the co-CEOs of Orby Parker all these years later since you founded the company back in 2010. Yeah. Which is about 15 years. 15 years. This is quite uncommon, right? We've seen it with like Wayfair and some other brands where the co-founders are still really running the thing together. But it's uncommon, right, to have such a long working relationship that's successful co-CEOs. You're both the CEOs. How do you explain it? I mean, for me, I think a lot of it is just chemistry.

2:11People have chemistry that just happens to work, but it still takes work. What works in your relationship to make that possible? Completely. I think it comes down to trust and respect. We implicitly trust each other to make any sort of decision, but also to seek each other's advice. and if I am thinking through a challenge, I immediately want to share it with Dave because I know that whatever ideas I have, he'll enhance them and make them better. And we still sit next to each other. So for 15 years, we've been sitting next to each other. In between meetings, we're constantly talking to each other.

2:56Often, we might call each other on the way to work or late at night, much to our wives' chagrin. But it's just been a lovely partnership in which we both make each other better. It's really great. And, you know, I know glasses or the technology of glasses have been around for a long time. It's basically, you know, ground down glass and in frames. Right. But I know you guys are really leaning into AI. Can you talk about how you're integrating AI into the actual products that you make? Yeah, we're really excited. were working with Google to launch AI glasses. They're sort of Warby Parker branded intelligent eyewear.

3:39If you think about it, right, your glasses sit on your face. They're able to see what you see, hear what you hear. And you can look at a plant or a building or a piece of art and you can learn more about it. Being able to communicate with somebody in another language where as they're speaking, your glasses could be translating in real time. So, you know, these are things that are really helpful and useful for all of us. Yeah, I mean, not to, you know, make any comparisons, but I have a pair of Meta glasses. They're really cool. The audio quality is great. And also not having to look down at a phone.

4:19It's really nice. Yeah, just, you know, the freedom to not take your phone out of your pocket for an hour. Right? We are beholden to these mobile devices, and I'm excited for that day where it can stay in your pocket or on your desk for a little longer. Yeah, for sure. All right, let's bring our first caller. Welcome to the advice line. You are on with Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business. Hi, my name is Kimber Crandall. I'm calling in from Utah, and I'm the co-founder of Pearl Pop. Pearl Pop is the first soft and chewy toothpaste, looks more like and feels like a gummy, and tastes like a treat, but it actually treats your teeth with clean ingredients, too.

5:05Okay, awesome. Kimber, I met you. I met you. You came to one of my book signings for my kid's book, Wow in the World, and I'm so psyched to have you on the show. So before we dive into all your questions, let's talk a little bit about Pearl Pop. These are, they're gummies. They look and they sort of have the texture like a gummy candy, but it's basically toothpaste. You chew on it and then you brush your teeth. But it's not like foam, right? It doesn't foam up. Tell me how it works. That's right. There is no foam and that's because we don't have sulfates. As we were formulating this, we wanted it to have cleaner ingredients.

5:41And so that was part of the process. So you pop it in your mouth, chew for a few seconds, and then you start brushing. And you brush those pearl bits into your teeth until it mostly dissolves. So about two minutes, spit, don't rinse. Then the nanohydroxylapatite and the xylitol can keep working even after you brush. Okay, so this nanohydroxylapatite, this replaces fluoride. These do not have fluoride. Correct. Tell me why you don't have fluoride in there. There is a huge market when we were initially starting out doing this. About 50 % from our surveys and studies showed that 50 % either don't want fluoride or they're looking for an alternative because they aren't passionate about fluoride.

6:21So we thought, let's go after that audience first, since they are looking for something and need an alternative. All right. Fair enough. Okay. Kimber, tell us a little bit about how you got into this, because I know this because I met you. You were a TV reporter. Yes. And a few Emmys and yeah, lived out that life. And now this is part two for me. Tell me what was the, like, what was the, What precipitated that pivot to just completely start something new? Yes. In 2020, I became a single mom of four little girls. At the time, they were between the ages of one and seven. And I knew I needed to revamp my career and figure out what to do.

6:58And so I applied to BYU to their executive MBA program. And this started out as a class project. We were in an entrepreneurial class. We were studying parents of young kids and bedtime as the pain point. Well, what about bedtime was hard? It's that you needed to get your kids to brush their teeth. You ask them five times. They squirted out all over the sink. You finally just send them to bed. You've yelled at them. You feel like a bad parent. Okay, so if we can just stop right there and give your kids something that makes them actually want to brush and with cleaner ingredients, then you're going to smile more confidently and your kids will too.

7:29Got it. And all direct to consumers, all being sold through the website, right? Mostly through the website. We do have some small retailers like local stores that are carrying it. Nice. Okay, that's great. Tell us what question you brought in for us today. Yeah, the question I brought is with something that requires so much education and is completely new to the market, how do you create a movement or a moment that changes the consumer habits and spreads awareness to essentially take it from something that's a niche to a mainstream product and behavior? All right, Neil Bloomfield, I want to bring you in.

8:00You don't have to answer the question right away, but any questions for Kimber or thoughts? Sure. You know, what I think is really interesting about your business is that you effectively have two customers, right? Yes. You have the child that is using the toothpaste, and then you have the parent that is generally the decision maker, the purchaser. What have you learned about those two different customers on how they make decisions around sort of dental care or brushing teeth or purchasing toothbrushes and toothpaste? That's a great question. So what we have found is that for kids, they want it to be fun.

8:41They want the flavors to be fun. So, right, we've got peach rings, groovy grape, bubblegum. And then for the parents, they want to know that it works. In fact, the science has proven to look so good that we had a lot of parents that were using peach rings and bubblegum themselves. And so they requested that we come out with an adult line. So we now have mint kiss for adults as well. So the adults really care more about the science and the kids care about the fun. You know, it does feel a lot like the early days of Warby Parker. And one of the things that I'm struck by in your story is that there's so many sort of messages and selling points, right, that this makes bedtime easier.

9:18This is actually better for your health and it's a cleaner product. We spent a lot of time at Warby trying to understand how do you prioritize a bunch of these different messages? And it should all come back to what is most important for the customer. We were trying to message glasses for a fraction of the price, great style and design, buying online. We have a social mission, right? For every pair of glasses we sell, we distribute one to someone in need. And after survey after survey, what we found was what mattered first and foremost was how these glasses look on your face. Second, price. You know, third, quality.

10:00Last, if at all, would be the social mission. Wow. So we almost never lead with the social mission. And often many of our customers don't find out about that until after they've purchased with us. So, you know, it's interesting you mentioned efficacy, right? If that is the most important thing, that might be what you lead with. One of the things that also I'm jealous of is that you can provide samples to people. Yes. You know, with – Yes. Yes. And you sell a product that has frequency and repeat use, whereas, you know, the average American buys glasses once every two years. That's it. Right. So I totally agree with you, I mean, I feel like the other thing is it's a non-fluoride product.

10:46Now, I'm going to just say this flat out. I use fluoride toothpaste. I will say that my dentist, this is very unusual, he is one of these very rare dentists that doesn't use fluoride. So I know both sides of this world, I don't have strong feelings on it either way, but people who do have strong feelings on it, that is a tribe. And they share information. They amplify what works. So I feel like it's not like you need to change everyone's habits at once. You really need to lean into this tribe because the tribe that you're talking about amplifies these things in ways that other people don't. Does that make sense?

11:27Definitely. What I might think about is who are these customer segments, which are the biggest ones, and sort of rank order them and go after them sort of piece by piece. So, for example, if, you know, parents that don't want a fluoride-free toothpaste is particularly large, you know, how do you sort of use that messaging and go on as many, you know, parent podcasts as possible to speak about it or advertise on those mediums? And then the question is, okay, well, how do you get this product in the hands of as many kids as possible? And that might be partnering with places where kids have birthdays and more and more stores and distribution.

12:15You know, if most of the people already buy their toothpaste through existing stores, you know, how can you be alongside where those other products are? Because at the end of the day, changing habits is really hard and you almost don't want to change. You want to take the world as it is and then sort of insert your product into it. Yeah. I mean, there are probably millions, but you want to really focus on like 10 ,000 parents, right, who live on TikTok or in Facebook groups who are who sort of gather around some of these issues of brushing, fluoride free, et cetera. Sampling makes is to me, I completely agree with Neil.

12:56It's like sample, sample, sample. You can make these small packets and you – whoever is willing to give a daycare center, swim schools, summer camps, you know, Neil said birthday party goodie bags. You know, because what you have, right, your product essentially is a gummy toothpaste. But what it makes me think of, Neil and I were talking about this earlier off mic, Jeff Rader, who co-founded Warby Parker and then went on to start Harry's, they have a product that they now bought called Lumi deodorant. Right, Neil? Is that right? Yeah, exactly. And Lumi deodorant, I believe, was started by a doctor.

13:31And that was the marketing of it was your doctor has solved underarm deodorant. What if you thought of your brand as like the mom who finally fixed brushing, something like that? I love that idea. Yeah. And partnering too with dentists and orthodontists and endodontists so that we have that science backing, right? Because they are using it. They're liking it. I got a text from an endodontist the other day that said he has had major sensitivity issues. Nothing's worked for his teeth with cold and he's used Sensodyne, all the things, and this is finally breaking through for him. Amazing. So I think, yeah, you're right.

14:07As we partner with more of those authority voices, that would be a great start. And there the question also is, how important is the parents to have that credibility from the medical and dental community? You know, for at Warby Parker, for example, people generally trust glasses and you put it on, you can see it works. However, if you're going to go and get an eye exam, right, and we now hire hundreds of doctors, it's really important to demonstrate, hey, these doctors are some of the best in the country. They're highly credentialed. They're using top of the line equipment. So again, And depending on in that hierarchy of how people make decisions, right, whether you want it blessed by, you know, the American Dental Association or whatever group it is to give added credibility.

14:55Yeah, I mean, that may be tricky because of the fluoride issue. But another, I mean, building on that, right, this ingredient you're using, and I don't know it, right, I'm sure I've heard of it, nanohydroxyapatite, right? Ninohydroxyapatite. Right. Okay. It may be worth really, you know, leaning into that as well. And you may already be doing that. But, you know, it sounds like there are plenty of dentists who are using this as a replacement for fluoride. So it seems to me like those are also the partners you want to try and reach out to and work with and just offer samples to them and let them pass them out in their offices.

15:37Definitely. We especially find with pediatric dentists, because their parent population is younger, right? Like in their 30s, maybe low 40s. Those people are more aware of fluoride and nanohydroxyapatite and realize that there's an alternative. Another idea, because you were saying, how do you build a moment? And, you know, we took advantage when there was a solar eclipse that was going to be across the whole continental U.S. So we created all these solar eclipse viewers and we made them blue, warby blue, and we gave out thousands of them. If I think about where do I run the risk of cavities, for example, it's when I eat candy.

16:21And when do you eat candy the most? Perhaps it's around Halloween. So, you know, is there an opportunity to break through and create a moment when, you know, parents are worried, oh, my kids are going to be bouncing off the wall because they're eating so much candy and is this bad, you know, for their teeth? You know, that might be a marketing moment. There might be a there there. But I think the bottom line is just, you know, when can you sort of insert yourself into the conversation? Yeah. Yeah. You don't really need to convince all of America right away, right? You really just need to get and I think you're doing it.

16:58You need to convince one circle of parents who tell every other parent. Think of so many products we've done. RX Bar is a great example. They started with CrossFitters and it just blew up from there. I think you really want to double down on the people who are attracted to what your value proposition is and let them let them be your force multipliers. I love that idea. It would just be amazing too if we can, yeah, just get the word out through the people that are already using it, which is a lot of times what we find, right? There was a big influencer who posted the other day about us and I asked her, I was like, hey, how'd you find out?

17:31And she said it was actually from one of her friends that came over to her house, brought it into her kitchen and said, try this right now, your kids need this. So hopefully that'll just keep happening over and over. Awesome. Kimber Crandall, the brand is called Pearl Pop. Good luck. Thanks so much for calling in. Thanks for coming to see me in San Francisco. Well, thank you so much for having me. And I can just only hope that we're going to change toothpaste like Neil, like you changed eyewear. And just something I've learned from this podcast is if you don't dream and go for it, we'll never know.

17:56So we'll just try. Never know. Good luck. Thank you so much. Appreciate all the advice. All right. So great to meet you. Thank you. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller and another round of advice. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.

18:26Welcome back to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker, and we are taking your calls. And Neil, are you ready for our next call? Ready and excited. All right, let's bring in our next caller. Welcome to The Advice Line. You're on with Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a line about your business. Hi, Guy. Hi, Neil. It's an honor to be on the show with you two legends today. My name is Brian DeMent. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Salt and Light Wellness.

18:53We are a three studio chain of wellness centers here in Southern California, and we specialize in light therapies. Awesome. Welcome to the show, Brian. So you have got three locations in Southern California around LA. Where are you? Yeah, we're kind of like wedged below LA and Orange County, but above San Diego in the Inland Empire. Yeah. Okay. I love the light thing. I do my morning light dog walk every morning, you know, make sure to get the dopamine levels up and going. And it is actually really amazing and effective. Okay. So these are, this is a light therapy. These are not like sun tanning salons.

19:25You go in and you, what, you sit in front of red lights and tell me a little bit more about what you do. Like what's the experience? Yeah, with our modern busy schedules, it's not always feasible for people to get outside at the right times of the day to get their proper doses of red light, infrared light, and a healthy dose of UV. So at Salt and Light, we make that easy. We mimic kind of the full outdoor exposure if you were to go to the beach, say, for example, because we also pair it with salt therapy and cold plunge for contrast with our infrared light. You get a salt room, you get the cold plunge.

19:59Nice. I just did a cold plunge in the San Francisco Bay. It was so freaking cold. I can't believe I was in that water, but it was all right. So you probably felt great afterwards. I felt amazing. It does really, you know, it reduces inflammation, lowers blood sugar. It's all does all those things. Okay. Brian, tell me, how did you start the business? And give us a sort of the basic story here. Yeah. Yeah. So my wife and I, we founded it out of college in 2008. So Neil right there with you when you guys started as well, we, we just always believed in sunshine. I was, I was an athlete growing up.

20:31Um, and because my athletic background, we had this idea of the team room, division one sports, professional sports, after they train, they have a place to go and recover. Um, we're in a hobbyist culture as well, especially here in Southern California and people treat their hobbies every bit as serious as a division one athlete does in college and, and, and adult hobbyists actually have the money to spend on their recovery and take care of themselves. And so that's the market that we really looked to integrate with. Yeah, I mean, it's cool because you think of like a stretch lab and we can talk more about that later.

21:04But yeah, I mean, the fact that people wear whoops, there's, you know, even Hoka shoes were designed for people who wanted to train like professionals. Tell me a little bit about the business. How is the business doing? Are they, I mean, you've got three locations. I'm assuming that they're sustainable, that you're turning a profit? Yeah, we opened as a red light and UV studio, but nobody knew what red light was in 2008. Our name used to be perfect tan. We knew the market understood tanning. That wasn't what I believed in. We would always make sure to coach people on appropriate times. We didn't run it like a fake and bake type of establishment.

21:43And I think that bore out results in the long run, but we actually rebranded to salt and light about three years ago. Rebranding and refocusing our marketing as a salt and light brand gave us a pop of about 30 % over our previous operations. Just out of curiosity, and you may not be able to talk about specifics, but roughly what, you know, in terms of revenue, give me a range. What does one of these locations, what can they do a year? Yeah. One studio, our top performance studio does about$575 ,000 per year. Okay. Great. Okay. So before we dive in further, tell us your question. Yeah. So I get about a dozen inquiries per week from people all around the country who want to open a salt and light.

22:22My question for you guys is how do we properly vet these people, especially with the volume? I mean, we're a fairly small operation, so a dozen per week is actually a lot for me. How do we properly vet these people to ensure that we're getting people who align with our brand values and that we can create sustainable scaling? Awesome. Great question and a very solvable one. Neil, I want to bring you in. First of all, questions or thoughts for Brian? Sure. Well, congratulations. I love the rebrand, and it immediately evokes health and wellness for me. So exactly what the mission of the company is.

22:55I'm not an expert in franchising per se. Warby Parker owns and operates all of our own stores, of which we have over 300. We certainly go through quite a vetting process to hire our store leaders, and I actually still interview every single one. Wow. Wow. Wow. We think that the key to success is people and culture. And if you look at enduring brands, right, it all comes down to people and culture. And what is culture? It's shared values, shared rituals, right, and a shared mission. So I think you're on the right track here in saying, hey, selecting is really important. So I think the first thing is putting out into the world what the company stands for, what your mission and your values are.

23:46Then people are already self-selecting and reaching out to you. Then do you actually want to put some barriers in place? So that way you can narrow without investing too much time who you might want to work with. And that might be an application process. It's interesting. Now, I would say that if you do license or franchise, your business model changes quite a bit. You now have a new customer. And those customers are the franchisees. So it's just something to think about as you decide on your strategy. How do you want to be spending your time? And are you going to build a product for franchisees?

24:33Yeah, Brian, I couldn't agree more with Neil's advice. We have an episode on Gymboree. And Gymboree went into the franchising direction. And the founder, she reached out to somebody who had expertise in franchising, which really helped the business. But that's down the road. I mean, in the short term, as Neil said, you want to build some barriers in just to make your workflow more efficient, right? So if there's inbound, you basically create a questionnaire with like 15 or 20 questions. Ask about their business experience, their available capital, any demographic information on where they are, why they're motivated.