Warby Parker: the original DTC darling maturing

Friday’s post was about the “king of DTC”, Nike. This post covers how the original DTC darling, Warby Parker, has succeeded lately. Warby Parker made “the digitally native” Direct-To-Consumer start-ups popular.

It was founded as an online store and the founders declared that they want to sell eyeglasses online-only. It turned out that stores had an important role for the company.

Warby Parker has rapidly built a store network of 190 stores with stores that uniquely represent the quirkyness of the company.

The revenues used to grow rapidly during pre-pandemic times. For the last four quarters, Warby Parker’s growth has matured to low to mid-teens and during the latest quarter below ten percent (8,6% YoY).

Prior to pandemic stores generated already 2/3 of the revenues for Warby Parker. This was naturally transformed during the pandemic as e-commerce represented 60% of revenues. Stores have rebounded above the pre-pandemic levels, but remain a bit below the pre-pandemic share.

Store based revenue have increased by +21% since the pandemic. Much of the growth in the revenues have come from opening new stores. At the same time the number of stores has increased from 119 to 161 at the end of 2021 (and 190 at Q3/2022). This rapid growth in the store network has led the revenues per store remain below 2019 levels ($2,0M in 2019 vs $1,8M in 2021).