Glasses are expensive because there is no competition. One company - Luxottica - owns pretty much everything.
You go to LensCrafters and prices seem super expensive, so you go to Pearle Vision and that's expensive too, so you go to Target Optical and prices are still high and then you think maybe glasses are expensive, since you went to multiple stores and they all have similar prices. What you don't realize is that all those retail brands are owned by the same company - Luxottica [1]. They operate under several names, so there is an appearance of competition but there isn't.
But wait, it isn't just stores, they also own eyewear brands such as Ray-Ban, Chanel, Coach, Oakley, Prada, Tiffany, and so on. Yes, all of those brands are owned by Luxottica [2].
Wait, not done yet. They also own insurance. Luxottica owns the vision insurance company EyeMed. [3]
Still not done. Luxottica has merged with Essilor and now own multiple lens brands [4].
See 60 Minutes story on Luxottica if you're not outraged yet [5].
Where are the anti-trust enforcers in this country and other countries, and why are they not doing anything?
I worked on the retail IT side of things at Luxottica.
I don't even think that you've scratched the surface of just how prevalent Luxottica is: you've touched the retail side of things, but, you also haven't touched the manufacturing side of things (Lux has patents on the hinges used in glasses), the wholesaling side of things (Lux supplies generic and branded frames to your local optician on less-than-preferred terms), and then just the genetic beast that is their optimization efforts.
I discovered some ineffective linux and db management that was adding 15-30 minutes of closing time every night -- time where we'd have employees on the clock waiting to close the store -- and figured out why it was behaving the way that it was and fixed it so the 'point of sales' part of closing wouldn't be the hold up. Saved the company almost 13 million dollars a year in labor costs and 45 million in licensing costs when I came up with a way to replace the POS systems OS without needing a cross-ship of new hardware...and still got screwed around when it came to my hourly rate increased or getting my contract renewed...
When my girlfriend's son passed away from complications with cancer, I had flowers and cards sent from some former coworkers, but, not a single person even reached out to me until a few months later, where they asked me if I was 'ready to go back to work' after cutting my contract.
It was well known that if someone robbed a Sunglass hut, the most expensive item in the store to replace was the iPad...
My fiance did store tech support, and holy SHIT I cannot believe that place manages to function day to day. There was some weird system that support staff had to RDP into, but the server was set to Spanish. Instead of, I dunno, fixing the language, all the support staff were given a document with translations of everything they need to use.
There was another HR system that support staff again had to RDP into to change passwords or personnel details or something. But it was so horribly misconfigured that there was a delay of minutes between keypress on the staff's client and response from the server. This task routinely took half an hour to update a few text fields.
Also yeah, they totally fucked him on hours and pay. The real big problem was the constant verbal harassment from store employees who are angry about systemic IT issues that have gone unresolved for years. One store has their internet drop out every single weekend. There's a ticket that's been open for years with hundreds of notes because the manager calls every weekend to report it.
Huh. That's interesting. I've wondered for over fifteen years why the parts of glasses appear to be so incredibly similar between brands, never really having stumbled across any quality stuff that's markedly different.
Is it US-specific thing?
In my country most offered branded lenses are Hoya (Japanese optical glass manufacturer) and Zeiss (German one). And, of course, a lot of cheap no-name lenses. Does Luxottica owns Hoya and/or Zeiss brands? I don't think so.
Frames are other story, of course, if you want Ray Ban you pay for (Luxottica-owned) Ray Ban. But, again, a lot of dirt-cheap non-name frames but, also, local-produced high-quality ones are available (cheaper than Ray Ban, much more expensive than no-name).
I know, that Luxottica owns all brands which will be sold to you in Tax-free shop or in in-flight magazine, but still.
For me there is one problem: Luxottica bought Oakley. Best technical sun shades ever. Now owned by Luxottica :-(
About ordering on-line: good to you if you can wear random frame without pain in nose bridge and ears :-( I don't need prescription glasses, but I've spent a lot of time to buy shades for cycling - something, which seems Ok in shop is painful after 8 hours of wearing for me.
Luxottica is an Italian company, though. I’m not sure its presence is much stronger in US than in Europe. I think they focus more on the frames than on lenses.
Essilor which merged with Luxottica is pretty big in Europe as well. And it’s also a French company
Check out Shuron. USA-made and not owned by Luxottica. Superior quality zyl frames and five-barrel hinges, unlike almost everything Luxottica sells. And they are full service and have top-notch customer service—they'll fill your prescription and also send you five different frames to try on and return:
I wanted to like these, but these are some ugly frames compared to some of Lux's Italian-made frames. Same deal with a lot of discount frames (including some from Luxottica) - very old styling and cheap looking materials. But to each his own - I'm sure some people will like Shuron and maybe I'm not up on the latest trends.
I’ve gotten my last 8+ pairs at one of those two (may have been a third but can’t remember) the most I paid was for some sunglasses where I wanted a few upgrades $80… the rest averaged $12
eyebuydirect.com is owned by Essilor, which is part of Luxottica. Despite that I still buy my glasses from them since its way cheaper than a retail store.
https://www.eyebuydirect.com/terms-of-use "Thank you for visiting EyeBuyDirect.com! — an Essilor Group US Inc. website (the "Site")."
I just ordered a pair from zenni using their "fastframe" service. Not so much because I needed a pair fast. Just because they at least they cut the lenses to fit the frame and assemble them in the USA.
Your employer may offer pre-tax vision insurance, this vision insurance is run by Luxottica, and works exclusively at their retail locations and brands.
Sometimes employers will even pay part of the vision insurance premium, thus making it, so your choices are to leave that money on the table OR pay completely out of pocket post-tax dollars.
There are alternative ways to use pretax dollars on eyeware, but many people aren't familiar with them and they require some management.
I'm guessing that part of is that they have a very tight relationship with insurance. Insurance covers Luxottica much more than the budget brands, so for me personally, it's actually a similar price if I choose a frame that's on sale. I tried a pair of Zennis, but they honestly felt super low-quality compared to my other glasses, even though I got all the upgrades.
There are two markets: The cheap, and the "brand". You either buy a "cheap" one for $10 and get a lens for it; or you go for a "brand" name like RayBan (which is Luxottica).
I started buying cheap 4 years ago, and surprisingly the frame is still doing well (brand frames usually last 2-3 years)
It's probably higher than appears at first blush, at least to do at scale. But not a huge barrier.
But there isn't an open market for manufactured lenses, you have to get them into consumers hands, and you have to get prescriptions, and people want fitting and ability to try frames.
Superficially it seems that glasses are highly vertical in practice, which is why budget outfits like zenni and warby parker seem mostly to be focused on the margins of direct-to-consumer.
Not for manufacturing, but you need good designs first, something people will want to buy. And most people will want to buy something with a BIG BRAND NAME on it.
I tried buying glasses online and discovered another problem: the industry hasn't standardized on measurements. It's very difficult to buy frames online. The numbers/measurements will be, for example, for lens width and nose bridge width only — go figure how large the entire frame is. I tried, and failed, accepting that I pretty much need to visit a store.
True. But. Even before Luxottica started buying up the industry, glasses were expensive. I worked in the industry in the early 90s (paid for college). We could buy CR-39 bifocal blanks for about $3.50. A frame in the Frames catalog (name brand) was about $10. Tint and UV were about $4 a bottle and would last a week, and that would tint/UV hundreds of lenses. I was making $7.50 and hour and it would take me half an hour to make them in the lab. We'd sell that pair for about $250.
Wow you just described Canada in every industry sectors! It’s the same. That’s why Canada is overpriced everywhere (telecom, banks, groceries, etc): no competition.
Is there some way to make this comment a billboard?
The lenses are manufactured per individual according to their need. Granted it's within a spectrum of choices such as it's -1.5 or -2, not -1.66421 (right?). Then one can add features to the lenses like anti-glare, anti-scratch, spectrum, blue light filter. Insurance covers 100%, and it's not a lot. But the frames?? They're very, very small amounts of metal and mass produced. What a sham. But yeah I do buy them at Lens Crafters after my optometrist appointment for the convenience.
> Granted it's within a spectrum of choices such as it's -1.5 or -2, not -1.66421 (right?)
Usually right, typically in 0.25 steps. Then there's Zeiss i.Scription [0], with lenses produced not only to weird numbers, but also to correct higher order deviations than just spherical and cylindrical.
I haven't tried those yet, seeing slightly changing test results on the needed standard correction, so I assume that higher order correction would be a short term improvement only.
The steps are .25 on the diopters. I suspect I would have slightly better vision for a while if they went to .125 as there have been plenty of times I felt that her 1 and 2 were bracketing ideal. I don't know the resolution of the axis and cylinder numbers.
> Glasses are expensive because there is no competition. One company - Luxottica - owns pretty much everything.
When I first heard about their dominance I checked my frames, and the maybe 3 old ones I still had around. To my surprise none of them were Luxottica. My latest were Safilo. I don't remember what the other 3 were but I did look them up and they were not brands from Luxottica.
I'm pretty sure some of the places I bought some of those from did carry Luxottica too, so I'm not sure how I ended up with something else. I am pretty picky about frames (not the appearance...as long as I don't look like I'm having a go at Elton John cosplay the appearance probably won't bother me--it's the feel and size as seen from my side that matters) and usually end up going through around 90% of the frames at a glasses store before finding some I like.
I wonder now if it is just coincidence that I keep ending up with non-Luxottica frames or if there actually is some difference between their designs and the others that makes me just not like Luxottica even in a blind comparison?
Leica (makers of lenses for cameras and phones) is moving in the market. They have the knowledge and the tools to make it, but they are still very small compared to Luxottica.
Capitalism stops working when monopolies take over markets.
It is urgently needed to break up all the monopolies and go back to healthy competition.
Many problems that we see in society today come from power accumulation in a few hands. The economy is becoming an authoritarian power.
Kill monopolies and growth will come back in full force. People is not out of ideas, it is just that companies do not care anymore because they have their market share assured.
Well, no. Monopolising a market with the economy, which is a tiny fraction of all decision-making power, is not authoritarian.
The main thing to ask is: are there high barriers to entry for new players? If not, then competition will arise when it needs to. If there are, then we have a problem. If there are, and they're government/state regulations, then we have a common problem :)
> Capitalism stops working when monopolies take over markets.
It is an inherit property of capitalism that it works towards this goal. There are forms of capitalism that exert more regulatory influence to help prevent this, but the way capitalism works is that it constantly tries to erode regulation and trend towards monopolies. We see this constantly and nonstop in real life.
Take a trip to an EU country and buy some glasses. Do your research beforehand though, not all stores are cheap either. Most of the cost is on the frame usually, so if you go with a cheap frame, there's a high chance the glasses will be cheap, unless your lenses have some crazy requirements that is.
I got sunglasses and "normal" glasses for 100€ both, not each, both. And they do not use premade lenses.
I still use the sunglasses to this day but I broke the normal glasses due to my own stupidity after 3 years or so. Then I decided to try a different store and payed 300€ just for normal glasses. I will never go there again, they are not any better then the ones I broke before but are waaay more expensive.
Same reason medical care is so expensive in the US: Insurance and the art of the upsell. The provider gets to charge high prices because the bulk of the cost is covered by insurance and thus "hidden" from consumers. The insurance company gets a non-trivial cut of the pie, which pads the bill further. And in my experience, when you go in with something wrong with you, most doctors will recommend (or perform without asking) tests that aren't covered by insurance and you don't find that out until the bill arrives in the mail.
I have a pretty standard vision insurance plan and need glasses roughly every two years. (Two pairs: one for indoors, and sunglasses for outdoors and driving.) I go into an optometrist office and get my vision checked. $10 copay or whatever for the exam. Then the pain starts. The frame selection is terrible and it turns out that the only decent-looking frames and lenses cost 3-4x what insurance will cover. And insurance doesn't cover more-or-less "required" add-ons to lenses like anti-glare coatings. And the person selling you the glasses is _very_ good at convincing you that you need all the extras.
I did the math one time and I paid $200 per year for vision insurance to save $190 (including the cost of the exam) on one pair of glasses.
The last time I bought glasses, I took my (recent) prescription to an online eyelasses e-tailer website and purchased a pair that included all the fancy extras for $60 out the door. I don't _love_ them, but I can certainly live with them for the price.
It's healthcare monopolies, from supply to distribution, it's all wrapped up pretty tightly. There's also one large payer that covers most of the market already.
Zero people have effective choices in this system. So.. prices go up.
I would suggest checking out other optometrists, most have a much better insurance wall than they had a couple of decades ago. Or go online (to order, not suggesting an eye exam over webcam :D ).
That said, I'm currently getting cataracts removed and IOL implants and insurance is like "correcting your astigmatism isn't needed so we won't cover the IOL that does that, just your distance vision". If correcting my vision isn't necessary then why cover any IOL at all??? :-/
This gets into the weeds a little but the reason boils down to money and tradition, and “what is needed” is a shifting goalpost for society.
Just thirty years ago you may have never even gotten an IOL due to tradition or cost. After adoption in the developed world there was a huge push to prevent lower income countries from accessing the technology because they “didn’t need” that technology and could benefit from lower cost interventions such as glasses.
So as companies started to innovate and lower cost, single vision non toric IOLs became cheap enough for insurance to cover. Then to make some money on premium lenses companies (and ophthalmologists, sadly) really started to push torics and multifocal lenses.
The fact of the matter is that few patients benefit all that much from toric lenses that fix astigmatism. Most people have less than 1 diopter of astigmatic error, which they don’t even manufacture a toric lens for at any usable tolerance (the FDA allows a +/-0.50D tolerance to all lenses including torics), and surgical modifications can nullify that to some extent. Veterans get it free at most VA hospitals though, so they probably get more implanted than the average population.
In the next fifteen years though I bet Medicare will begin to cover toric lenses, and the rest of the insurance industry will follow. The surgery doesn’t change much between toric and non toric. The Multifocal IOLs will remain “premium” for a while to come I expect.
"Warby Parker recognized this as a business opportunity. I’m surprised others haven’t jumped in as well with reasonably priced eyewear."
This author is uninformed. Others have jumped in. And Warby Parker wasn't even the first.
15 years ago I would buy my single-vision prescription glasses from optical4less.com. The cost was $58 for 2 pairs, including worldwide shipping.
Today I buy my glasses from Zenni. Last month, I paid $176.75 total for two pairs of glasses, each with single-vision photochromic lenses (and one pair with additional blue light blocking).
You know, my family member bought a pair of cheap glasses for 2 $ in India. Granted it was probably not very powerful or may last long. But I am shocked at the definition of what is cheap. I am now skeptical if the glasses he bought actually work well enough for him.
You can buy "reading glasses" from a supermarket in Britain for $4.
They might be OK, but custom lenses will almost certainly be better.
(Also, glasses ordered online in Britain start at less than $10 a pair. Once something purchased that infrequently costs less than a McDonald's meal, there's not much pressure to further reduce the price. It's one hour work at the legal minimum wage.)
Sure, it's enough to pay for the materials (frames cost pennies, and cheap lenses maybe $1?).
But someone still has to cut the the lenses to size, and fit them to the frame. This requires both equipment and skill.
I don't think I've ever paid less than $15-$20 for prescription single-vision glasses. I've paid more even in the 'wholesale' optical market in Beijing.
$2 is easily achievable for reading glasses, which are mass produced with lenses installed at the factory.
Glass lenses cost me Rs 1000 (about $12.5) a few months back (myopia, -5) - I'd say these were on the cheaper side, and no special coating (they cost as much as the lenses themselves!!). Frames on the cheaper end also cost around this much.
$2 is cheap, but the best glasses I've ever bought start at $6, up to $30 for all the filters, so I'm not surprised you can buy something useful for $2.
Yup, Zenni is like 20 years old. My partner worked there for 7 years on the eyewear supply chain and catalog. There are tons and tons of low-cost eyewear startups like payneglasses.com
Agreed! I love Payne. I have over 100 pair because it's so inexpensive to buy online. Why not have multiple pair? You can get sunglasses or computer glasses, so you're not just stuck with one pair.
When you buy glasses from a bricks and mortar optician, you're getting whatever bog-standard lenses they sell, unless they specifically mention they're high index, or have some specific feature/coating, or are from some specific manufacturer.
Just like when you buy glasses online.
There are definitely differences in lens quality, but the available range is just as wide in retail stores as it is online.
Removes the need to customise the product to the individual, and the need to see an optometrist - it reduces the cost of the product and makes 'prescription' glasses a viable option even in nations without adequate medical services.
Interestingly, a pair of glasses here in Vietnam -- including eye exam, fancy lenses (high refractive index, anti-glare etc.), and frame -- usually runs in the 20-40$ range. As with most things here, you can find cheaper if you need (e.g. secondhand).
I'm not certain, but it sure feels like the inflated cost in North America makes it seem like eyeglasses are less affordable here than they actually are, at least in the cities.
The kicker is when I fly to North America and I see the same frames being sold there!
Edit: Eyeglasses are one of the things I recommend colleagues buy here while visiting. It's conceivable some (from nearby countries) save more than the cost of their trip!
Uh, they aren't. You go to Zenni Optical and it's a solved problem. You basically choose what you want to pay. Their $7 glasses work great. My every days were $25, until I decided to try out their UV blocking lenses, which bumped them to $50. My prescription sunglasses and prescription safety goggles were each $80.
If you've got a stronger prescription or need more than single vision lenses you'll pay a bit more. But nothing compared to the many hundreds by the time you walk out of an optician. Reasonable pricing completely changes the dynamic from bundling every what-if into a single pair, to one of why-not try something new - the way markets are supposed to work. Maybe next time I'll even try auto-darkening lenses, despite having had a lackluster experience with them decades ago.
Ctrl-F Zenni in the article show no results though. I know there are even some competitors by now, but the ones I've seen are still trying to gouge a bit.
Japanese brands are slowly starting to make inroads overseas too. Owndays (cheap) and 999.9 (expensive but great service and very high quality) are now available in Australia and many Asian countries, Zoff has made its way to Singapore and Hong Kong.
Glasses actually aren't expensive. I pay like $20-40 per prescription glasses from China. Firmoo, Zenni, ... No quality issues so far and a far more realistic price.
No 'classic' glasses dealer makes their glasses in-house anyway. They all produce in cheap countries.
Readit News
You go to LensCrafters and prices seem super expensive, so you go to Pearle Vision and that's expensive too, so you go to Target Optical and prices are still high and then you think maybe glasses are expensive, since you went to multiple stores and they all have similar prices. What you don't realize is that all those retail brands are owned by the same company - Luxottica [1]. They operate under several names, so there is an appearance of competition but there isn't.
But wait, it isn't just stores, they also own eyewear brands such as Ray-Ban, Chanel, Coach, Oakley, Prada, Tiffany, and so on. Yes, all of those brands are owned by Luxottica [2].
Wait, not done yet. They also own insurance. Luxottica owns the vision insurance company EyeMed. [3]
Still not done. Luxottica has merged with Essilor and now own multiple lens brands [4].
See 60 Minutes story on Luxottica if you're not outraged yet [5].
Where are the anti-trust enforcers in this country and other countries, and why are they not doing anything?
[1] https://www.luxottica.com/en/retail-brands
[2] https://www.luxottica.com/en/eyewear-brands
[3] https://eyemed.com/en-us/about-us
[4] https://www.essilorluxottica.com/brands
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM
I don't even think that you've scratched the surface of just how prevalent Luxottica is: you've touched the retail side of things, but, you also haven't touched the manufacturing side of things (Lux has patents on the hinges used in glasses), the wholesaling side of things (Lux supplies generic and branded frames to your local optician on less-than-preferred terms), and then just the genetic beast that is their optimization efforts.
I discovered some ineffective linux and db management that was adding 15-30 minutes of closing time every night -- time where we'd have employees on the clock waiting to close the store -- and figured out why it was behaving the way that it was and fixed it so the 'point of sales' part of closing wouldn't be the hold up. Saved the company almost 13 million dollars a year in labor costs and 45 million in licensing costs when I came up with a way to replace the POS systems OS without needing a cross-ship of new hardware...and still got screwed around when it came to my hourly rate increased or getting my contract renewed...
When my girlfriend's son passed away from complications with cancer, I had flowers and cards sent from some former coworkers, but, not a single person even reached out to me until a few months later, where they asked me if I was 'ready to go back to work' after cutting my contract.
It was well known that if someone robbed a Sunglass hut, the most expensive item in the store to replace was the iPad...
I buy them from https://zennioptical.com
I don't think that I'd ever pay more than $100 for a frame again.
The sunglasses that we buy in a drugstore can be had for paltry sums, why not prescription eyewear?
Wow, that's a powerful and damning assessment.
There was another HR system that support staff again had to RDP into to change passwords or personnel details or something. But it was so horribly misconfigured that there was a delay of minutes between keypress on the staff's client and response from the server. This task routinely took half an hour to update a few text fields.
Also yeah, they totally fucked him on hours and pay. The real big problem was the constant verbal harassment from store employees who are angry about systemic IT issues that have gone unresolved for years. One store has their internet drop out every single weekend. There's a ticket that's been open for years with hundreds of notes because the manager calls every weekend to report it.
Frames are other story, of course, if you want Ray Ban you pay for (Luxottica-owned) Ray Ban. But, again, a lot of dirt-cheap non-name frames but, also, local-produced high-quality ones are available (cheaper than Ray Ban, much more expensive than no-name).
I know, that Luxottica owns all brands which will be sold to you in Tax-free shop or in in-flight magazine, but still.
For me there is one problem: Luxottica bought Oakley. Best technical sun shades ever. Now owned by Luxottica :-(
About ordering on-line: good to you if you can wear random frame without pain in nose bridge and ears :-( I don't need prescription glasses, but I've spent a lot of time to buy shades for cycling - something, which seems Ok in shop is painful after 8 hours of wearing for me.
Essilor which merged with Luxottica is pretty big in Europe as well. And it’s also a French company
https://shop.shuron.com/
Anyone want to start a little low-cost, low-quality glasses manufacturing company, with the aim of being bought by Luxottica and closed down?
https://zennioptical.com
https://www.eyebuydirect.com/
I’ve gotten my last 8+ pairs at one of those two (may have been a third but can’t remember) the most I paid was for some sunglasses where I wanted a few upgrades $80… the rest averaged $12
They can and they do [1]. They just don't have the same marketing budget, so you don't hear as much about them.
[1] https://www.zennioptical.com/
Sometimes employers will even pay part of the vision insurance premium, thus making it, so your choices are to leave that money on the table OR pay completely out of pocket post-tax dollars.
There are alternative ways to use pretax dollars on eyeware, but many people aren't familiar with them and they require some management.
I started buying cheap 4 years ago, and surprisingly the frame is still doing well (brand frames usually last 2-3 years)
But there isn't an open market for manufactured lenses, you have to get them into consumers hands, and you have to get prescriptions, and people want fitting and ability to try frames.
Superficially it seems that glasses are highly vertical in practice, which is why budget outfits like zenni and warby parker seem mostly to be focused on the margins of direct-to-consumer.
I tried buying glasses online and discovered another problem: the industry hasn't standardized on measurements. It's very difficult to buy frames online. The numbers/measurements will be, for example, for lens width and nose bridge width only — go figure how large the entire frame is. I tried, and failed, accepting that I pretty much need to visit a store.
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The lenses are manufactured per individual according to their need. Granted it's within a spectrum of choices such as it's -1.5 or -2, not -1.66421 (right?). Then one can add features to the lenses like anti-glare, anti-scratch, spectrum, blue light filter. Insurance covers 100%, and it's not a lot. But the frames?? They're very, very small amounts of metal and mass produced. What a sham. But yeah I do buy them at Lens Crafters after my optometrist appointment for the convenience.
Usually right, typically in 0.25 steps. Then there's Zeiss i.Scription [0], with lenses produced not only to weird numbers, but also to correct higher order deviations than just spherical and cylindrical.
I haven't tried those yet, seeing slightly changing test results on the needed standard correction, so I assume that higher order correction would be a short term improvement only.
[0] https://www.zeiss.com/vision-care/us/eyeglass-lenses-from-ze...
When I first heard about their dominance I checked my frames, and the maybe 3 old ones I still had around. To my surprise none of them were Luxottica. My latest were Safilo. I don't remember what the other 3 were but I did look them up and they were not brands from Luxottica.
I'm pretty sure some of the places I bought some of those from did carry Luxottica too, so I'm not sure how I ended up with something else. I am pretty picky about frames (not the appearance...as long as I don't look like I'm having a go at Elton John cosplay the appearance probably won't bother me--it's the feel and size as seen from my side that matters) and usually end up going through around 90% of the frames at a glasses store before finding some I like.
I wonder now if it is just coincidence that I keep ending up with non-Luxottica frames or if there actually is some difference between their designs and the others that makes me just not like Luxottica even in a blind comparison?
It is urgently needed to break up all the monopolies and go back to healthy competition.
Many problems that we see in society today come from power accumulation in a few hands. The economy is becoming an authoritarian power.
Kill monopolies and growth will come back in full force. People is not out of ideas, it is just that companies do not care anymore because they have their market share assured.
Well, no. Monopolising a market with the economy, which is a tiny fraction of all decision-making power, is not authoritarian.
The main thing to ask is: are there high barriers to entry for new players? If not, then competition will arise when it needs to. If there are, then we have a problem. If there are, and they're government/state regulations, then we have a common problem :)
It is an inherit property of capitalism that it works towards this goal. There are forms of capitalism that exert more regulatory influence to help prevent this, but the way capitalism works is that it constantly tries to erode regulation and trend towards monopolies. We see this constantly and nonstop in real life.
I got sunglasses and "normal" glasses for 100€ both, not each, both. And they do not use premade lenses.
I still use the sunglasses to this day but I broke the normal glasses due to my own stupidity after 3 years or so. Then I decided to try a different store and payed 300€ just for normal glasses. I will never go there again, they are not any better then the ones I broke before but are waaay more expensive.
I have a pretty standard vision insurance plan and need glasses roughly every two years. (Two pairs: one for indoors, and sunglasses for outdoors and driving.) I go into an optometrist office and get my vision checked. $10 copay or whatever for the exam. Then the pain starts. The frame selection is terrible and it turns out that the only decent-looking frames and lenses cost 3-4x what insurance will cover. And insurance doesn't cover more-or-less "required" add-ons to lenses like anti-glare coatings. And the person selling you the glasses is _very_ good at convincing you that you need all the extras.
I did the math one time and I paid $200 per year for vision insurance to save $190 (including the cost of the exam) on one pair of glasses.
The last time I bought glasses, I took my (recent) prescription to an online eyelasses e-tailer website and purchased a pair that included all the fancy extras for $60 out the door. I don't _love_ them, but I can certainly live with them for the price.
Zero people have effective choices in this system. So.. prices go up.
That said, I'm currently getting cataracts removed and IOL implants and insurance is like "correcting your astigmatism isn't needed so we won't cover the IOL that does that, just your distance vision". If correcting my vision isn't necessary then why cover any IOL at all??? :-/
Just thirty years ago you may have never even gotten an IOL due to tradition or cost. After adoption in the developed world there was a huge push to prevent lower income countries from accessing the technology because they “didn’t need” that technology and could benefit from lower cost interventions such as glasses.
So as companies started to innovate and lower cost, single vision non toric IOLs became cheap enough for insurance to cover. Then to make some money on premium lenses companies (and ophthalmologists, sadly) really started to push torics and multifocal lenses.
The fact of the matter is that few patients benefit all that much from toric lenses that fix astigmatism. Most people have less than 1 diopter of astigmatic error, which they don’t even manufacture a toric lens for at any usable tolerance (the FDA allows a +/-0.50D tolerance to all lenses including torics), and surgical modifications can nullify that to some extent. Veterans get it free at most VA hospitals though, so they probably get more implanted than the average population.
In the next fifteen years though I bet Medicare will begin to cover toric lenses, and the rest of the insurance industry will follow. The surgery doesn’t change much between toric and non toric. The Multifocal IOLs will remain “premium” for a while to come I expect.
This author is uninformed. Others have jumped in. And Warby Parker wasn't even the first.
15 years ago I would buy my single-vision prescription glasses from optical4less.com. The cost was $58 for 2 pairs, including worldwide shipping.
Today I buy my glasses from Zenni. Last month, I paid $176.75 total for two pairs of glasses, each with single-vision photochromic lenses (and one pair with additional blue light blocking).
They might be OK, but custom lenses will almost certainly be better.
(Also, glasses ordered online in Britain start at less than $10 a pair. Once something purchased that infrequently costs less than a McDonald's meal, there's not much pressure to further reduce the price. It's one hour work at the legal minimum wage.)
Sure, it's enough to pay for the materials (frames cost pennies, and cheap lenses maybe $1?).
But someone still has to cut the the lenses to size, and fit them to the frame. This requires both equipment and skill.
I don't think I've ever paid less than $15-$20 for prescription single-vision glasses. I've paid more even in the 'wholesale' optical market in Beijing.
$2 is easily achievable for reading glasses, which are mass produced with lenses installed at the factory.
Glass lenses cost me Rs 1000 (about $12.5) a few months back (myopia, -5) - I'd say these were on the cheaper side, and no special coating (they cost as much as the lenses themselves!!). Frames on the cheaper end also cost around this much.
I know a lot of them advertise identical quality but did you ever confirm that to be the case?
https://www.zennioptical.com/glasses-lenses
When you buy glasses from a bricks and mortar optician, you're getting whatever bog-standard lenses they sell, unless they specifically mention they're high index, or have some specific feature/coating, or are from some specific manufacturer.
Just like when you buy glasses online.
There are definitely differences in lens quality, but the available range is just as wide in retail stores as it is online.
Anyway, reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpKWHSsBpnE; glasses with user adjustable lenses.
Removes the need to customise the product to the individual, and the need to see an optometrist - it reduces the cost of the product and makes 'prescription' glasses a viable option even in nations without adequate medical services.
I'm not certain, but it sure feels like the inflated cost in North America makes it seem like eyeglasses are less affordable here than they actually are, at least in the cities.
The kicker is when I fly to North America and I see the same frames being sold there!
Edit: Eyeglasses are one of the things I recommend colleagues buy here while visiting. It's conceivable some (from nearby countries) save more than the cost of their trip!
I'd love to eliminate the cost and hassle of visiting an optometrist when the current prescription is working just fine.
If you've got a stronger prescription or need more than single vision lenses you'll pay a bit more. But nothing compared to the many hundreds by the time you walk out of an optician. Reasonable pricing completely changes the dynamic from bundling every what-if into a single pair, to one of why-not try something new - the way markets are supposed to work. Maybe next time I'll even try auto-darkening lenses, despite having had a lackluster experience with them decades ago.
Ctrl-F Zenni in the article show no results though. I know there are even some competitors by now, but the ones I've seen are still trying to gouge a bit.
NOTE: it's not reimbursed but nobody cares because it's cheap.
My current set from them is a high index lens and anti glare, which were only $30 shipped. They’re going on 3 years now and still look new.
No 'classic' glasses dealer makes their glasses in-house anyway. They all produce in cheap countries.