Warby Parker CEOs on Snap's Spectacles: 'They're Interesting Toys at This Point'

Warby Parker's co-founders talk about Snapchat's spectacles and the future of wearable tech.

Author:: Natalie Walters
Publish date:: Jul 15, 2017 8:37 AM EDT

Warby Parker co-founders and co-CEOs Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa spoke with TheStreet's tech reporter Natalie Walters in the eyewear company's Soho, New York store to talk about the high-tech glasses trend.

"We've always viewed ourselves as a technology-enabled company," Gilboa said.

The company started in 2010 by offering to sell glasses online when nobody else was doing so effectively, he explained. In addition, their stores are equipped with some fun technology, such as a green screen room in its Melrose Avenue location in Los Angeles that lets customers record a 15-second video against fun backdrops with props and download it or share it on social media.

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In May, Warby Parker released a convenient app for spectacle-wearers called Prescription Check that lets eligible users take a vision assessment test that will be sent to an eye doctor to check out, thus cutting out the hassle of making a separate doctor's appointment.

But while the company is eager to stay ahead of tech trends, they think tech-savvy glasses like Snap's (SNAP) - Get ReportSpectacles and Google Glass from Alphabet's (GOOGL) - Get Report Google unit still need to improve before they appeal to the mass market. "We think they're interesting toys at this point but don't provide enough value to be worn all the time and think that's going to continue to be the case for quite some time," Gilboa explained.

Blumenthal smiled and said, "You don't see us walking around wearing them."

The glasses need to be smaller and they need to provide more value before they see broad market success, he said. But it's inevitable that the tech will eventually reach that point and people will be using glasses instead of phones, he added.

Warby Parker's financials also seem to mirror tech companies rather than a number of the struggling retailers. The company's last funding round brought in $100 million in April 2015 for a total of $215 million and much of that last round is still on its balance sheet, the founders said. "So there's not a strong need for a financing event immediately," Blumenthal said.

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