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
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
Anyone want to start a little low-cost, low-quality glasses manufacturing company, with the aim of being bought by Luxottica and closed down?
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.
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.
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...
> anti-glare, anti-scratch, spectrum, blue light filter
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?
I've heard ...
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.
The moment you aren't buying the frame from the optometrist office the price craters, and has been that way for at least a couple of decades at this point.
Now I’m sure that they make a bit more money in an absolute sense from coatings, but nothing like the full $8 or whatever it costs these days.
The biggest markup items they have are the frames, as there are many different manufacturers the frame manufacturers do have to offer margins to the places that sell them.
The basics are fine. I could use a $20 test and get fixed focus lenses cheap. Getting them to re-produce what I wear appears hard. I can't find anyone to explain the small piece of paper the machine spits out with a grid of numbers. (the very experienced ocular professor who assessed some structural eye issues for me used a 20second test machine and laughed at the professionals who still use the eye chart and a face sheet of lenses. He's confident they will ultimately stop using that stuff routinely, the box does it very well)
Probably there is a canonical formula to reproduce it, I broke a pair in flight once and took the bust lenses to an optician in Paris who made me a pair from the lenses in 2 days.
Some things demand fit. where the eye sweet spot is for variable focus depends how the lenses sit on your face.
Maybe breaking the monopoly on price starts with fixed focus or bi or tri focals first, not continuous variable focus.
I've bought around a dozen and have only had good experiences. In case of bad experiences (one arrived a bit bent) you can get a refund.
I'd recommend going for a metal frame though, since they're more durable.
Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18980191 - Jan 2019 (588 comments)
Related:
Ask HN: Recommend sunglasses made in the west and independent of Luxotica - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28029206 - Aug 2021 (35 comments)
Making My Own Glasses - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21156637 - Oct 2019 (187 comments)
How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19312499 - March 2019 (301 comments)
The spectacular power of Big Lens - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17061380 - May 2018 (43 comments)
The One Product You Should Buy Online: Eyeglasses - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16040924 - Dec 2017 (97 comments)
Vision Insurance Is Making Glasses More Expensive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15736573 - Nov 2017 (86 comments)
A Closer Look at the $13B Premium Eyewear Market - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15429826 - Oct 2017 (135 comments)
One Dollar Glasses – Help for 150M people - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13091936 - Dec 2016 (114 comments)
Why are glasses so expensive? (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9183464 - March 2015 (113 comments)
Sticker shock: Why are glasses so expensive? [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6718224 - Nov 2013 (48 comments)
In the UK I use glasses direct, you can pick up a pair with a prescription for £50. They regularly have discount codes so most of the time that would be £35/40. Sure they aren't designer but they look ok for the price if you don't want to spend a lot, if you use them just got driving you can probably get an even cheaper pair that don't look as good.
My current pair were about £30 from Aliexpress, a gorgeous rimless set with anti-glare lenses included. Needless to say I won't be buying from local retailers anymore.
I'm sure here in the UK we're also affected by the Luxottica monopoly in the US, especially when it comes to designer brands.
There is some podcasts about the founder, how he managed to do it.
10€ a pair of glass from the same quality within 10mn in store.
goggles4u
speckyfoureyes
GlassesDirect
Varifocals are also cheap (49GBP, or 57USD, for one pair).
Nothing new under the sun.
If there was a tire that never wore our, would it be manufactured?
If there was a simple, cheap cancer treatment, would all associated businesses that profit from the treatment of cancer shut down?
If internet could be offered at 10x for the speed, for 1/10th the cost, would it be? Only if the incentives line up for the dominant player(s).
By US logic it's better if people don't have any glasses than bad glasses, strange logic to me.
(disclaimer: prices are likely to be different in other countries)
Prices and quality of LES seems to have dropped significantly even as glasses have become more expensive. I had some annoying myopy / astigmastism combo so I used to pay up to 200-300€ for glasses, and prescription sunglasses were also expensive.
Femto-LASIK surgery cost me a whopping 1500€ a couple of years ago, whereas an older acquaintance told me that he had paid 10x as much in the mid-aughts. A couple of decades of glasses would not have cost me much less, and the difference it makes in quality of life cannot be overstated. Easily in the running for the best money I ever spent.
Of course, not everybody can get lasered - children and teenagers, first and foremost - but a lot more people do than realize it.
I'm not saying it is a bad option, just that it isn't as great as it sounds when you are young.
I usually get the same set, for $100-- frameless. And that price includes blue-blocks (to reduce blue light from screens). They last long and are easily replaceable.
I started buying in bulk and worrying less about losing or babying them.
-shape (those need to be big and go over forehead so you see clearly from hunched position)
-lenses (tint, increased color contrast, preferably not polarized), anti fog -safe in case of a crash
I tried shopping around but couldn't find anything that fits as well as 165$ pair of Speedcrafts (the lenses are amazing as well). The glasses are just 4 pieces of plastic (frame, lenses, nose bridge, nose pad) but somehow it's not easy to find a decent cheaper alternative.
I will admit, they are of much higher quality than the glasses that I order online as a back-up.
But outside of that pair, I get a print out of my prescription and go to places like www.eyebuydirect.com to get any other pairs.
The quality isn't there but we are talking about hundreds of dollars cheaper. And if anything was to happen to my main pair, I can quickly grab the $80 and I doubt anyone would even notice.
Plus, it makes wearing different styles from time to time a much more attractive offer.
Face fit is tricky, they allow you to select things like your "size" but this is broken down into "small/medium/large" when in reality it needs to take into account things like temple (arm) length, bridge width, etc.
My main pair is perfect because I spent the big bucks on them and had a professional constantly tweaking them, putting them back on my face, tweaking them some more. And that comes with the ability to return to the store and have them do it again for free if I feel like I need to.
Online you won't get any of that, so the fit isn't perfect.
Optical clarity, no complaints. The lenses are good.
But we're talking $500+ vs. $80.
I have to try about 20-30 frames or so, until I find something that looks OK on me.
But! It is still possible to buy cheap enough frames that look fine. Why the _lenses_ are so expensive, that’s a different question. I routinely pay $700 or so for the lenses. Many professional multi-component _camera_ lenses cost much less than that. And it has nothing to do with Luxottica.
Looking for a new one in the stores I found that prices for regular Ray-Ban (owned by Luxotica) were too expensive for my taste (~120 USD). So I decided to get a Polaroid sunglasses instead, for a third of the price (~40 USD).
My only concern was wether the lenses polarization would be up to standards. So I Googled it and found out that Polaroid was in fact the company that invented polarized lenses :)
Now I just order a 4-pack off Amazon for about a tenner - never been happier. I have a pair at home, at work, in the car, in my bag and if they break I just toss 'em away without a second thought.
I'm sure it must be a lot more tricky for those with unique prescriptions but for stock readers this is definitely the way to go.
Please share the evidence for this.
The golf balls are more interesting. Walmart/sams club actually had to give up on their own brand of golf balls due to the nonstop litigation from top flight, making it unprofitable to produce them.
People need to accept that you get ripped off all the time, it just a normal part of everyday life. when you think a $5 walmart tshirt is cheap, well, the factory gets probably 50c.
Would love to hear more about DIY corrective lenses.
You can get glasses from Zenni for under $10 (their website says they start at $6.95), you'd have a hard time beating their price with DIY, gas station sun glasses cost more than that around here. Of course, at that price you're not getting the lightest lenses, or coatings, but you're probably not getting that with DIY either.
My last pair was about the going rate, although it's been 4 years ago.
I still use Walmart for exams but buy all my glasses from Zenni.com.
They're so cheap, glasses have gone from sacred to disposable.
Sounds like a "neighborhood/artisan" lens and glass maker could so this easily for a reasonable size neighborhood lucratively?
Lots of people get benefits that pay for their glasses, so they're not incentivized to be economical.
Maybe we should tithe them in thanks for not making it way more expensive.
I know people that worked in the industry and mention up-front they are good tippers to the servers ... just in case!