Warby Parker is ending its famous in-home try-on program by the end of the year, which allows customers to try out five glasses frames at home for five days. The unique program played a key role in popularizing the company after its 2010 launch, but now it's gotten much more expensive to operate.
DeAnn Campbell, a retail consultant for AAG Consulting, estimates that the company will save almost $100M per year by discontinuing the service, based on Warby Parker's volume of users and average shipping costs. Of course, that estimate doesn't take into consideration how much it'll lose in revenue by not offering the service, or how much returns will increase as a result.
In place of home try-on, Warby Parker is choosing to focus on reaching customers in-person via retail locations or through virtual try-on, having just launched an AI-powered virtual adviser to help people find the right glasses based on their facial dimensions and style preferences. The company noted that most of its recent home try-on users live within 30 minutes of one of Warby Parker’s 300 stores, and that it plans on opening five shop-in-shop stores within Target locations soon.
I think Warby Parker should better leverage brand ambassadors by sending them Try-On Kits with all their new frames, and then encouraging them to host eye glass try-on parties or bring the kits to their work and sell on commission. The same five pairs of try-on glasses they were sending out to a single customer for five days could reach dozens or hundreds of customers through well-selected ambassadors. Not to mention the social media reach of folks throwing “Warby Parties” and asking their friends online to vote on which pairs look the best.
Warby Parker already offers affiliate and influencer programs, so creating a commission-based offline ambassador program wouldn't be a big stretch. They've experimented with it in the past, but I believe the market is ripe for a 2.0 version. Imagine how many pairs of glasses a nurse ambassador could sell to coworkers at a large hospital if they brought their Warby Try On Kit with them to work and left it in the break room. Influencers, social media, and virtual try-on software are cool and all, but nothing beats picking up a pair of glasses and actually trying them on.