Q&A With This Year's Most Innovative Company: Warby Parker
Join us for a live chat with Warby Parker’s co-CEOs Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa. The event will begin at 11:30 a.m. EST on Thursday, February 26th.
Five years ago, Neil Blumenthal and David Gilboa launched Warby Parker out of their Philadelphia apartment with a plan to transform the business of selling eyeglasses. Their low-cost frames are a hit--as is their buy-one-give-one business model--and they've inspired countless copycats. “Warby Parker for X” is now a fundable business model in Silicon Valley.
But what has really set Warby Parker apart, and the reason Fast Company named it the most innovative company of 2015, has been Blumenthal and Gilboa's knack for brand-building in the Internet age. Their approach involves innovative technology, smart social media marketing, and a growing physical retail presence. They’ve also built an enviable company culture and pioneered a new approach to corporate giving.
We’ll cover these topics and more on Thursday, February 26th, at 11:30 a.m. EST when Blumenthal and Gilboa join Fast Company contributing writer Max Chafkin for a live chat. Start submitting your questions now by using the comment box below.
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We have a dedicated team that really understands the brand. Many of the team members grew up on our Customer Experience team, so they're accustomed to making customers happy and working in a fast pace environment. Ultimately, it's all about hiring the right people and that those people live and breath the brand. We also tend to spend a lot of time reading what people are saying about us online and how others react to what we post. It's an important customer touchpoint just like our website and our stores.
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We really view social media platforms as a way to create a conversation with customers. We started getting a lot of customer service inquiries through channels like Twitter and one fun thing our team started doing was to record video responses instead of 140 character responses. We don't have a fancy studio--our team would just record a webcam video, upload the link to YouTube and tweet the link back to the customer. On average these videos are getting 130+ views as people retweet them, which is the equivalent of getting a friendly customer service email and forwarding that email to 130 friends.
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The transparency of the world today due to social media differentially benefits companies
that provide excellent service and harms those that don't -
Currently our dedicated social media team is around 10 people, but other team members chip in when things get a little crazy (after a collection launch, after a TV feature, etc.) Even when it's not crazy other team members jump in - members of our Customer Experience team star in customer videos that we tweet to customers who ask questions, people from all different teams shoot over great photos, etc. Our CFO has filmed a bunch of customer responses speaking backwards (a rare and amazing talent.) We also often ask our partners to get involved like Karlie Kloss.
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A related thing that I've been thinking about: When I started writing the Fast Company story, you guys had your entire customer service operation in New York City. Now you've got a customer service center in Nashville. How's that going?
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I imagine it's hard to make sure there's consistency between the team in NYC that is close to you everyday, and a team hundreds of miles away
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Our team in Nashville is awesome. We opened our office there in the fall and have 30 people working out of that office, with plans to scale quickly. There were a bunch of reasons we chose Nashville as a second home--the city has so much energy and vibrancy and there is incredible access to talent--but one of the reasons is that its a 1.5 hr flight from our headquarters in NYC and there are dozens of flights per day so we have a lot of people from our NYC office visiting to create continuity--Neil is heading there on Monday actually. And we had 4 people move from NYC to Nashville to help start the office there.
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I don't think I've ever written a story about a company with two CEOs. It seems like it'd be a disaster, but somehow you've made it work. How is that?
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It's actually awesome. We can blame the other if something goes wrong. But seriously, it forces us to be smarter, to build on each others ideas, to challenge one another. Of course, it requires work. We spend a lot of time together, debating, discussing, ensuring we're speaking with one voice. It requires trust and respect to be successful and thankfully we've been able to build a lot of trust and respect.
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It also just makes it more fun--being a CEO can be a lonely job and having a friend along for the journey makes it that much more enjoyable
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This is a bit out of left field, but I've always wondered as well. We've gotten a lot of questions about the cost of free shipping, free return shipping, and shipping your home try on kits...isn't that a huge drag on the business?
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It is expensive, but we look at it holistically as part of the customer experience. If it makes customers happy, they'll come back and they'll tell their friends, so that we can spend less on marketing. Research has shown time and time again that customers that learn about products and services from friends end up spending more money on those products and services than those that come through other means like paid media.
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We have also seen Home Try-On be a great awareness generator--on average people that get a Home Try-On ask for feedback from at least 5 people so its a great way to introduce others to the brand, and increasingly we are seeing people post photos of themselves wearing the different frames on Instagram and Facebook
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Are you guys ready to talk about the future for a quick second
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Have you seen any counter-moves from industry giants like Luxotica in response to your market disruption?
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And I'd add to that, what do you plan to do about it?
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From the big competitors.. we've seen lots of similarities emerge in their web business and their retail chains (UX, creative, etc) to our business. And, a lot more advertising for $95, $99 and $100 glasses, but that's always a bait and switch (an old move in the optical industry.)
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We've also seen hundreds of copycats (many of whom have gone out of business by now) but have not seen any real impact on our business. In general we don't spend much time focused on competitors. We recognize that if we focus on our customers by constantly adding value and enhancing experiences everything else will fall into place
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Okay, let's take one last question. Also about the future, and also something I've wondered:
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We started Warby Parker to be one of the most impactful brands in the world 100 years from now and think that over time the brand will be known for a lot more than eyewear...but we have no immediate plans to expand into other categories
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During the holidays, we launched Warby Parker Press and self-published our first book, Good Omens for the Modern Era. We also designed stationary to sell out of our stores. We also partnered with Beck on an eyewear collection and to produce an album which was a lot of fun.
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All right, with that I think we need to let Neil and Dave escape from Fast Company HQ. There were way more good questions than we got today, but hopefully we'll have a chance to do this again soon. Thanks guys for making the time, and thanks to the readers for joining us!
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Thanks everybody for coming! If you haven't already, be sure to read our feature on Warby Parker, this year's Most Innovative Company. Sorry we couldn't get to everyone's questions, but you can tweet them with anything we didn't get to today: @davegilboa @NeilBlumenthal