The company that basically owns the entire eyewear industry top-to-bottom is Italian. Just merged with a French company.
I know it's popular on HN to talk about how crappy the US is, but in this case you jumped to the wrong conclusion.
That is in the US (and maybe Europe). In India I got my glasses with all the regular filters from Titan for about 50$ including the frame.
Titan is a brand owned by the Indian conglomerate Tata. Not by Luxottica. So your example is still US-centric.
In the Netherlands, an eye measurement, a decent pair of glasses and a pair of sunglasses (both non reflective) will cost you ~ €250,- and that seems reasonable to me.
What's stopping you from selling mom and pop? Mostly nothing. Warby Parker – and to a lesser degree, coastal – are doing this. But it's a weird middle-market place to live. Similar to things like Daniel Wellington in the watch game – you're selling $5 chinese products for $100 because you have a marketing and brand engine that fashionable but unlearned people don't question. In reality, the same products can be had for far less. EyeBuyDirect is the best place for cheap glasses. First pairs are often free but for shipping, about $7, and later pairs are about #30.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica [2]https://www.thestreet.com/story/1509351/1/oakley-suffers-as-...
Those modern glasses get scratches after just a few years of careful handling and cleaning only with „Mikrofaser“ in my experience. No fun having weak eyes in Germany.
I carry lenses made from mineral glass so I can wipe them with any cloth I've got handy. They are not more expensive and scratch significantly less. The lenses are heavier and shatter quicker though.
I‘ll also try buying glasses online as suggested elsewhere. I do that with contact lenses already (dailies for when I’m on stage).
France: 380 EUR, including cheapest frame (80 EUR), regular lenses and ophthalmologist (80 EUR). (I had no health insurance.)
Japan: 10800 JPY including pretty good quality frame (5000 JPY) best lenses from the store and no ophthalmologist.
In France, it is not uncommon to have a 500-1000 EUR pair on your nose. Not because people are wealthy, but because they have the health insurance which pays. The first question a glasses store clerk asks is: "Do you have your health insurance card, please? We're gonna check how much we can spend".
I wonder if the San Francisco JINS store is priced the same, or they try to make themselves look like a premium brand like how Uniqlo does?
Because people can go long periods of time between exams/pairs as adults, it's possible they keep their cash prices low to convince the uninsured to step in the door.
I believe PRSI (the government social insurance scheme) pays about 30 euro for a basic eye test. At the big local chain, people without either PRSI or medical card (this would mostly be non-resident foreigners, plus maybe some early retirees etc), pay 30 euro, plus about 60 euro for basic frames with basic lenses.
They do. Mine are from Germany, but still cost $700, large part because of my prescription.
In India one could get a fancy, top of line pair of glasses for around 50$.
Recently I bought new glasses in Thailand and there (to my surprise) they weren't much differently prices compared to The Netherlands, which didn't make sense to me, because that would make glasses too expensive for most people here (it's about a monthly wage upcountry). Or perhaps the government provides citizens through health insurance over here, I am not sure.
In the end, one glasses cost 18€ (special deal) and the other one about 57€ (sunglasses, special frame). Given the 2+ hours, we stayed at that shop (sales talk + eye testing + frame adjustments) it was probably a net loss for the company on that day. I know other people who got their glasses for about 700€ from the same shop (more expensive frame + more features (e.g. thinner lenses)).
So it might be that the market situation is kinda bad and is getting abused. Nevertheless, I have the anecdotal evidence that if you are just after a vision correction (and not some fashion accessory), you don't have to pay a fortune (in Germany). This might be helpful to keep in mind when you are after your next glasses.
Uhm. Maybe this depends on the glasses you need? I'd not even come close to paying that little and my parents are paying even more.
The German glasses shop also have a bad habit of keeping the perscriptions after they have tested your eyes and not giving you a copy. Very frustrating!
E: it has all the coatings too
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They require you to send your prescription (a photo is fine) before they make them, which makes me think they are being required to do that legally, or at least concerned they don’t want to get it wrong.
So this doesn’t turn into an advert for one company, I did notice that lots of other companies seem to offer a very similar service and they all seem to offer various guarantees regarding your happiness with the product, presumably because people are still wary of this way to buy glasses.
Another reason I’m slightly evangelistic about using these ‘online’ glasses services is that the high street opticians are obviously overpriced and I don’t think it’s right to make so much money unnecessarily from people who just want/need to see well - some of whom really struggle to afford the costs.
(The second optician was helpful, so I bought glasses from her. I'll use Glasses Direct for sunglasses and so on.)
My prescription hasn't changed but the prices definitely have.
The US is the standard for the overwhelming majority of things that are commonly discussed day-to-day on this site. I'm not sure why anyone would take issue with this, other than having had their pride scratched.
Please stop using the US as the "that's how it is"-standard.
In Germany, you pay a very reasonable (from my layman perspective) price for the lenses, maybe about 40$ plus another 30$ if you want to have non-reflective glasses or product from big name producers and stuff like that. Like every fashion product, frames start at a few bucks up to whatever you want to pay. Measurements, bending the frame are included in the service. None of this involves health insurance, as far as I know.