Originals

On  a  cool  fall  evening  in  2008,  four  students  decided  to  change  an  industry.  They  were  all  deep  in  debt,  and  they  had  all  lost  or  broken  their  glasses.  They  were  shocked  at  how  much  it  would  cost  to  replace  them.  One  of  them  had  been  wearing  the  same  pair  of  broken  and  repaired  glasses  for  five  years.  He  refused  to  pay  for  an  expense  new  pair.

Luxotica,  the  biggest  company  in  the  glasses  industry,  controlled  more  than  80%  of  the  market.  To  make  glasses  cheaper,  the  four  students  would  need  to  fight  a  giant.  The  four  had  watched  Zappos  change  the  shoe  market  by  selling  shoes  online,  and  they  wondered  if  they  could  do  the  same  with  glasses.  They  discussed  the  idea  with  friends,  most  of  whom  were  very  negative.  Nobody  would  buy  glasses  over  the  internet,  they  said.

People  needed  to  try  them  first.  Okay,  Zappos  had  done  it  with  shoes,  but  there  were  reasons  why  it  wouldn't  work  with  glasses.  If  this  were  a  good  idea,  people  said,  someone  would  have  done  it  already.  None  of  the  students  had  worked  in  internet  sales  or  technology,  and  they  knew  nothing  about  glasses  or  fashion.  But  they  agreed  to  start  a  company.

They  decided  to  sell  glasses  that  would  cost  $500  in  stores  for  $95  online.  And  they  would  also  give  another  pair  of  glasses  to  someone  in  the  poorer  countries  in  the  developing  world.  For  each  pair  that  they  sold,  they  called  their  company  Warby  Parker.  The  most  important  part  of  the  business  would  be  its  website.  And  their  warby.

Parker  website  was  ready.  In  February  2010,  they  expected  to  sell  one  or  two  pairs  of  glasses  a  day.  But  in  less  than  one  month,  they  had  20,000  customers  on  a  waiting  list.  In  2015,  the  magazine  fast  company  published  its  yearly  list  of  the  world's  most  innovative  companies.  Warby  Parker  was  the  first  company  on  that  list.

In  the  three  previous  years,  the  winners  had  been  Google,  Nike,  and  Apple,  companies  with  over  50,000  employee,  warby  Parker  had  just  500  employees.  But  in  five  years,  the  company  had  given  more  than  1  million  free  pairs  of  glasses  to  the  developing  world.  The  company  was  making  $100  million  a  year  and  was  worth  more  than  $1  billion.  Back  in  2009,  one  of  those  four  students  asked  me  to  invest  in  Warby  Parker.  I  refused.

It  was  the  worst  financial  decision  I  have  ever  made.  I  needed  to  understand  where  I  went  wrong.  Conformity  and  originality.