For decades, buying eyeglasses has been an often-expensive proposition that typically costs hundreds of dollars and involves time-consuming trips to the store. Since 2003, Zenni Optical has been doing everything in its power to turn the act of purchasing eyeglasses on its head.
The ultimate success of Zenni could utterly upend the dynamic of driving to a bricks-and-mortar retail store or to the mall to purchase a pair of glasses. By the company’s estimates, a family of five can save an estimated $25,000 over a 12-year period by shopping at ZenniOptical.com.
Erik Ritchie was formerly Zenni’s chief commercial officer, overseeing the company’s marketing, merchandising, supply chain and IT operations. Ritchie discussed how Zenni became an optical industry giant in just 15 years and the company’s rapid growth plans with STORES contributing writer Bruce Horovitz.
It starts with the fact that people are more comfortable buying things online — from clothing to cars — than ever before. We are seeing more and more of this in our category. Our purpose is to make the user experience the best it can be.
Not really. We have a really low return rate — about 2 percent. That’s low compared to industry norms.
What is the return policy?
You can return the glasses and get 100 percent store credit — or you can get a 50 percent refund on your purchase price. Our product is a highly customized product, so once a pair of glasses are returned, we can’t re-sell them due to FDA regulations.
It’s a wide variety of reasons. We hear everything from they just don’t like them, to they were looking for something different to they don’t like the way they look on their face.
No. But if your glasses break, we can help you find that pair again. Our price point is such that our customers can afford to replace broken glasses by ordering another pair. Paying $10, $20 or $30 for a pair of kids’ glasses is much easier than paying $300 or $400 or $500 from the store.
We are about eyewear for everyone. Zenni has a big heart and we’re a big tent. Until we came along, glasses were too expensive and a wide swath of the population couldn’t access this critical medical device.
Yes. That ranks among our top five sellers. We carry about 20 percent of our styles at that price point.
I recently had an experience at a trade show coffee bar when a barista saw my glasses and recognized them. When I told her that I worked for Zenni, she started to tear up. She was a mother, and she told me that without Zenni, her kids wouldn’t have glasses.
Folks who are interested in fashion. At our price points, you can afford to buy multiple pairs of glasses. That’s a lot easier to do at $20, $30 or $40 than it is at the mall for $300, $400 or $500.
We own whole supply chains, so there’s no middleman. We do our own grinding. We own our own labs.
Our factory is in China. About 89 percent of the glasses sold in the United States are made in China. We are right in the center of excellence for glass manufacturing. Just as Switzerland is known for making great watches, China is known for great glasses. That’s where the talent, material and experts are.
We make our own frames, too. We have about 2,500 styles to choose from. We have our own frame manufacturing center and optical lab. We also source frames from other manufacturers, but none are brand names.
The average price is about $40 to $50, for a single vision lens versus $300 or $400 at retail. That includes a free cleaning cloth, case, anti-scratch coating and UV protection. For our $6.95 glasses, you’d pay about $150 in retail stores.
The Beyond UV blue blocker lenses. It blocks high-energy visible blue light and is made with a blue-light-blocking polymer built into the lens material. Many people are sensitive to the damage that can be done with high energy blue light from their electronic devices. About 20 percent of our orders are asking for this $16.95 upgrade. You’d spend about 10 times that for the same upgrade at retail locations.
We look at optometrists as being vital to the industry. We are strong believers in people having healthy vision and healthy eyes. If you want to purchase your first pair of glasses from your optometrist, go for it. But when you’re ready for your second, third and fourth pair, we’ll take care of you.
We just celebrated our 15th anniversary and our sales will hit $200 million this year. But the time we hit our 20th, we think we can be a $1 billion company.
We already run one of the largest laboratories in the world. We’re in the process of building out a new factory (in China) that would more than double our capacity. We could go from selling 14,000 glasses per day to 28,000.
The founders came up with the name. They wanted something around the word Zen. But they wanted the name to have a sense of fashion or style.
We are constantly monitoring fashion trends. We also work with an up-and-coming fashion designer, Timo Weiland.
You basically take a selfie of yourself. Then there’s a special reference point onto which we superimpose the frames onto your face. We use the distance between your two pupils as that reference point. It’s pretty accurate.
There are some extreme prescriptions where there’s a serious variance between the two eyes that might not work. But those are outliers. The vast majority of consumers can.
More women tend to buy from us. It’s probably about a 60-40 split. Women tend to be a little more into fashion than guys.
The average order is for 1.8 pairs of glasses. People like to buy more than one pair at a time. Sometimes the second pair is sunglasses. Other times, it’s the exact same frame, but in a different color.
At the moment, there are no plans. We really have been happy with our success online. We have tried some (temporary) pop-up stores with Timo in New York City. And there’s a college tour where we take a bus around colleges. But we see no need to open a bricks-and-mortar outlet.
A lot of people like our magnetic clip-ons. We developed the line that looks super cool so you can’t tell it’s a clip-on.
You can engrave all kinds of things on your glasses. I put my name inside the arm of my glasses, so I know they’re mine. The frames are laser-engraved for $1.95 per character. We have some emojis on the site too. We preclude anything that’s copyrighted and there is a list of profane words we flag, but for the most part, we tend to side on free speech.
I think we’re pretty focused on glasses. If we did anything else, it would be eye-related or eye health. We have no desire to become a sneaker brand.
Zenni Optical (formerly 19dollareyeglasses.com) is an American online retailer of prescription glasses and sunglasses. Founded in 2003 by Tibor Laczay and Julia Zhen, it is based in Novato, California.
The company sells more than 2,000 types of prescription glasses and sunglasses but does not sell contact lenses. Zenni created theme glasses through collaborations with professional gamers, sportspeople, the designer Iris Apfel and the actress Rashida Jones. It is able to keep costs low by selling its own brand of frames instead of name brands, manufacturing frames in China in a Danyang, factory, and not offering customer support. Reviewers praised Zenni for its low prices, diversity of options, and having sturdy glasses for children. After trying Zenni glasses, Los Angeles Times consumer columnist David Lazarus found the "overall quality was pretty good" but his frames did not fit well and needed to be adjusted by an optician, while Reviewed's Madison Durham said the glasses' prescription did not match the standard of competitors'. Reviewers found Zenni's return policy to be inferior compared to competitors.
History
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Zenni Optical mail orderZenni Optical was founded in 2003 by Tibor Laczay and Julia Zhen.[1][2] Before being renamed to Zenni Optical when it began offering $7 and $8 glasses, the company was named 19dollareyeglasses.com.[3][4][5] Around 2014, co-founder Zhen acquired the building occupied by the Marin Independent Journal to house Zenni.[6] The company is based in Novato, California, where it employed 100 people in 2020.[7] It has 1,000 employees at its 248,000-square-foot Chinese factory in Danyang, Jiangsu.[7][8] The company operates a California warehouse to support West Coast orders. In 2020, it purchased a building in Obetz, Ohio, to act as a lab that molded lenses for frames employed nearly 100 people there by the end of 2022. The Ohio facility is twice as large as the California one.[9] In 2022, robots took the place of some workers at Zenni's Novato facility. The robots checked a glasses' color and shape to confirm it is assigned to the right customer's bag.[10][11]
At the beginning of the 2018–19 NBA season, Zenni's name started being featured on the left side of the Chicago Bulls jersey. The company inked an agreement with the NBA team that lasted five years, allowing it to become the first brand featured on the Bulls' jersey patch.[2] Bulls team members Ryan Arcidiacono, Wendell Carter Jr., and Zach LaVine became Zenni ambassadors.[12] The company released an ad during Super Bowl LIV in February 2020 that featured George Kittle, a San Francisco 49ers tight end.[7] A number of customers who visited their website after seeing the commercial encountered a message that eyeglasses deliveries would be delayed for between three and four weeks owing to the government's required suspension of factory work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China.[7]
In 2013, Zenni had average daily sales of 3,500 glasses, which the San Francisco Chronicle said made it "one of the largest online purveyors of eyewear in the world".[13] In 2019, the company sold almost six million glasses that year.[14] Zenni had $390 million in revenue in 2021 and in 2022 had sold 45 million glasses starting from its founding.[9][15]
Website and products
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left) and right) wearing Zenni Optical eyeglassesA person () and Liz Gorinsky ) wearing Zenni Optical eyeglasses
The company sells glasses and sunglasses on the Internet only.[16][17] It sells 2,300 frames and supports progressive lens and bifocals but does not support contact lens.[17] It is able to keep costs down compared to glasses specialty stores by offering brands they have created instead of name brands.[18] The company's designers create every glasses frame sold on its website. The designers work with professional gamers and people in sports halls of fame to create themed glasses. Customers can add a tailor-made etching to the glasses' arm.[19] The company offers prescription safety glasses marketed for people studying science and collaborated with Rashida Jones for a line she organizes.[20] It has a four-year contract with the designer Iris Apfel to create a line of glasses.[21] Zenni offers a collection of glasses constructed entirely from recycled plastic.[19] It distributes some money made from sales of that collection, "ReMakes by Zenni", to One Percent for the Planet and the Wyland Foundation, two non-profit organizations focused on the environment.[19]
The company's blog features listicles and articles that discuss their products, arranging them by popular-culture occurrences and various subject matter such as Harry Potter houses and the zodiac.[20] The website allows users to select frames by size, shape, color, and material.[22] Zenni tracks their users' frame choices in an Oracle database to give the company a better idea of the inventory it needs to maintain.[23] It provides a widget that allows customers to do an online fitting of eyeglass frames.[16] The first option is Zenni Frame Fit.[19] After transferring their photo to the website, a user can put a frame on their face.[24] The second option is 3D Try-On in which users generate a 3-D rendering of their face, giving them the opportunity to observe their glasses-adorned face from different perspectives.[19] Writing in Reviewed, Madison Durham said the Try-On "works, but ultimately wasn't as comprehensive or workable as others we've tried".[20]
To order glasses, customers need to provide their eyeglass prescription and a measurement of their pupillary distance (PD).[24] Zenni has a web page that supports measuring the PD.[18] Columnist Mary Hunt praised Zenni for offering "the absolute cheapest prices on plastic frames" and said it has "a wide range of frame styles and lens options".[16] All glasses delivered to customers are accompanied by a glasses holder and a cloth for cleaning.[20][25] The company's products have a warranty of 30 days in which they can receive either a 100% credit to be used to purchase other products or 50% of their money back.[16][26] The health website Everyday Health said "the return policy for Zenni orders isn't as competitive as other retailers' return policies" and Wirecutter said the retailer has "an inferior return policy".[19][27] Authors Daniel Padgett and Andrew Loos said that Zenni competitor Warby Parker allows customers to ship and return products without charge whereas Zenni is "less lenient".[28]
Reception
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Columnist Mary Hunt said in 2022 that "while in the past Zenni has fallen short for its customer service, the company has really stepped it up in recent years".[16] On a report for purchasing glasses, the consumer organization Consumer Reports placed Zenni in the third position behind Costco's Costco Optical and Warby Parker.[16] Kiplinger's Personal Finance's Ryan Wilk in 2009 called Zenni's website "usable but [a] downright eyesore". Wilk purchased glasses from Zenni and compared them to those he could have gotten from Oliver Peoples which would have cost several hundred more. He said, "My pair was not as sturdy as the Peoples pair, but they looked just as sharp, and I could see just fine."[29] According to the Wirecutter, "Despite Zenni's ultra-low prices, we found that it surpassed our expectations, sometimes impressively so."[27]
Reviewed's Madison Durham criticized Zenni for being "a bit low on amenities" when contrasted with competitors and said glasses for competitors had a better prescription standard compared to the glasses she received from Zenni. She praised it for having "awesome product lines available for kids and teens". She said the teen glasses frames "managed to be trendy without trying too hard" and lauded how the kids' products were very sturdy glasses "that's designed to move as they move and stand up to play".[20] StyleCaster's Kristen Bousquet wrote, "Does a lower price point mean lower quality? And with Zenni, it actually didn't. I was genuinely surprised to find that Zenni's frames held up to my day-to-day manhandling as well as the other frames I tested for this piece."[30] Popular Mechanics's Eleanor Hildebrandt said that the outlet is a good option for people who frequently damage their glasses.[22]
Clark Howard said Zenni eyeglasses have such low prices for two reasons: Zenni manufactures them in China and once the glasses are sold, there is no customer service. He said the latter reason has "led some of my listeners to become disenchanted with Zenni" though he said he did not have issues through several purchases through Zenni."[31] Los Angeles Times consumer columnist David Lazarus wrote in 2019 of Zenni, "The more you rely on complex lenses, premium coatings and prisms, the more of a risk you'll face that things might not work out." He noted that the company was unable to support his prescription that required both prism correction and progressive lens so he had to purchase two glasses. After receiving the glasses, Lazarus found that the frames "had looked pretty cool online [but] appeared a bit cheaper in person". He found that the "overall quality was pretty good" even though he had to ask his optician to alter the frames since they had trouble fitting properly.[32]
References
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