Why can't a new company simply undercut the competition? I don't imagine the barriers to entry are too high for manufacturing glasses, are they?

> Why can't a new company simply undercut the competition?

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/

Not to mention the pupillary distance is not commonly included on optical prescriptions which creates a significant hurdle, even though it can be measured yourself or usually given when asked.

Zenni will send you a cool little cardboard ruler that sits on the bridge of your nose to measure PD. It suffices (I am wearing my Zenni frames as I write this).

I hate hate hate EssilorLuxxotica.

My ophthalmologist claimed he didn’t have the equipment to add PD to his prescription. Bald-faced liar.

BTW, the app is called PD Measure.

Ophthalmologist or optometrist? Very different, and I think the difference needs to be overstated more and more.

I got it wrong the first time. He’s an MD ophthalmologist.

Unless there's need for specialized medical or surgical treatment, getting eye exams and eyeglass prescriptions from an ophthalmologist as opposed to a optometrist is like getting your teeth cleaned by an oral surgeon rather than a dentist. Astigmatism and/or myopia, refractive errors, corneal disease, amblyopia? Optometrist. Ptosis, proptosis, endophthalmitis, macular degeneration, excess tearing, detached retina or trauma? Ophthalmologist.

Fuck dude. I think I got macular degeneration just reading that! ;)

At the same time I agree with parent that this persons ophthalmologist was a liar and should honestly be reported for that kind of shady behavior.

EDIT: also re corneal disease unless the treatment is a contact lens go to an ophthalmologist for that one too

To be fair, I had a dentist who was technically an oral surgeon but would sometimes even bump the hygienist and do the cleanings himself; because they were easy and he was bored. Same cost to me so I didn't mind.

I've been seeing the same ophthalmologist for years, but last time, they told me I needed to get the COVID booster for next visit. So there was no next visit. I have other doctors and a dentist, and none of them push that.

He's also absolutely dogmatic and dismissive about how LASIK is safe (although he didn't push it for me).

He did give me my PD, though.

It’s clear at this point that vax/boosts don’t keep you from contracting or passing on the virus.

What matters to others is you showing up at the dentist exhibiting symptoms.

They reduce the chance, however. Imperfect protection is better than nothing.

... and yet no other doctor has that policy, or even a hospital. Pretty messed up that an ophthalmologist thinks he knows better than all of them.

I don't know anyone requiring a booster or even a vaccine for patients, but it's their practice and their health. Ophthalmologists are second only to ENT and Anesthesia in risk of contracting infectious diseases from patients due to our physical proximity to your face during the exam. Maybe that's what motivates their behavior.

Physicians do have to ask about vaccines and document the answer in order meet meaningful use requirements. Maybe this is what you experienced?

LASIK is safe, but when there are complications they're a big deal.

Not the poster but I see no reason to doubt the claim. A while back when dealing with glasses that didn't come out right my eye doc wanted to check the PD in an attempt to figure out why my glasses were bothering me (I'm incredibly sensitive on my computer pair, I can't tolerate anything that isn't absolutely spot on)--and she walked over to the optical center to borrow their PD measurer. She didn't have one because it's not something she normally needs.

A simple ruler is enough. I am wearing glasses for 30 years and I had the few pairs with wrong PD, the next optometrist used a simple ruler and I am working with him for the past 20 years.

> My ophthalmologist claimed he didn’t have the equipment to add PD to his prescription.

It's called a PD Ruler and it's literally just a mm ruler. Bald-faced liar indeed.

Correction: "the equipment to add PD to his prescription" is called a pen.

They usually have a machine that reads it a bit more accurately.

I've asked for my pupillary distance in the past and got a talking to about how evil online ordering is and how it'll ruin my eyes before they would give it to me.

All BS, and when I asked if they'd fill a prescription for lenses for my VR unit instead of ordering them online, they stared at me like I had grown a third arm.

Mine gave me the number without question. Mind you, by this time, I had spent about 2 hours at the store trying on different frames and asking for frames that were on their website only to be told something like "we have those at the other branch, not this one".

My understanding is that they are legally required to give it to you, at least in some places.

Correct! By law, they're required to give it to you. If they refuse, just use an app on your smartphone. (eyemeasure is the one i used)

In the US anyway, they're legally required to give you your prescription (SPH, CYL, prism, etc). However, PD and other ocular measurements aren't classified as part of a prescription.

I've had great experience with Zenni for single-vision prescriptions, but when I graduated to progressive (i.e. bifocal) lenses, the Zenni lenses were terrible and I couldn't use them. Not sure if it was the frame fit, or poor PD measuring on my part, but I tried twice and both times I couldn't use them.

The glasses I got from my optometrist are much better, at 3X - 4X the price of Zenni.

Zenni needs a "send in old glasses and we'll match" feature added.

It's easy to do your own PD measurement with a mirror and ruler

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33525673#33529513

my family won't even ask for the pd... so I can't buy them cheaper lenses... and I'm not going to have a giant fight with my spouse even tho for what I'm paying in vision coverage we could get 4-10x the glasses they get now.

I'll second this recommendation. I've had the same pair of $35 glasses for 5 years now, I wear them every day, and they're still good as new.

I have been using zennioptical for years, and I’ve saved friends and family lots of money with my recommendations. They don’t do fancy, brand name frames. But otherwise the quality is fine.

Those fancy brand name frames are literally just different names for Luxxotica.

What they don't have is a good anti-reflective coating. If you want that, you end up back with Luxottica (Essilor.)

It would be nice if any of these sites had an AR solution that was completely clientside. I can't bring myself to agree to let them store my face + face info for 3 years.

If you manufacture glasses, how are you going to get it into the hands of consumers? Luxottica owns the retail stores and the insurance company.

Retail stores can be started by anyone, and there are tons of optometrists that sell glasses from their own store.

The “insurance” company presents a higher barrier, since it is basically the government handing a discount to people for buying via employer subsidized vision “insurance”. The discount is that this benefit can be paid with pre tax dollars, so it obfuscates the real prices when people with vision insurance shop for eyewear.

I put “insurance” in quotes because the annual benefit maximums, like dental “insurance”, is so low that the premiums are simply prepaying for routine exams/eyeglasses. In effect, employer subsidized dental/vision insurance is just an advantage for large employers who can afford to administer those benefits and the employees who are lucky enough to work at those kinds of employers get to pay for routine dental/vision with pre tax dollars.

And, if you pay premiums, you’re more likely to actually go to your routine appointment and then your LTV is increased

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.

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)

Since Luxottica bought out RayBan, the quality has plummeted. I have a pair of original Wayfarer II's that I got years before the buyout. The plastic is noticeably higher quality, the lenses are polarized and Bausch & Lomb. And they have five barrel hinges! Built like a tank and have survived many drops. Mine are still going strong and are 'buy it for life' quality. Still going strong after 38 years...I got them when I was 16 years old and in HS for a trip to the Bahamas.

Compare that to current RayBans. Cheap plastic. Plastic lenses. Spring hinges that break quickly and don't last. And worst of all, branding everywhere. On the temple. And again on the lens. Terrible.

That’s how they make their money, brand names affords them to charge a lot of money, they lower the quality and the manufacturing the cost and then pocket the rest.

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.

Doesn’t all fsa account cover glasses? Pretty easy to use that for pre tax dollars on eyeware. You can spend it wherever you want.

Vision insurance will typically be subsidized by the employer around 50% or more, so it could still be more expensive to not use the vision insurance.

The crappy "vision insurance" we got "for free" was still more expensive out of pocket than a Walmart optometrist visit + 5 pairs from Zenni.

It's entirely a racket; would be like selling oil change insurance.

Not all of us have FSAs. We're both self-employed, no FSA money.

You know, the kind of health care self-employed people are more likely to have (high deductible) is more likely to qualify for HSA -- and an HSA is great because it's like a pre-tax extra IRA allowance if you don't use it for healthcare.

Because the people who can measure which glasses you need are in on it.

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.

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.

The frame size is normally written (in Europe, at least) on the inside of one of the arms of the glasses. Find an existing pair that fits you and note the measurements. That measure, together with your prescription and PD should be sufficient to order online.

Yeah, it's interesting. People get outraged about tech monopolies... but something we spend hundreds of dollars each year on, that's just fine.

People get outraged about things that they know about. (Most) tech monopolies don't attempt to hide behind many different brands.

And yet, most people don't know google own Waze, Youtube, Gmail, Android, Chrome, Chromecast and so on.

They also don't realize most sites use Google Analytics, meaning your activity on a site completely unrelated to google is still recorded.

They don't realize that Meta own not just Facebook, but also Instagram, WhatsApp or Oculus.

They also don't realize all sites that use "share with facebook" send date to facebook, meaning your activity on a site completely unrelated to FB is still recorded.

We know that on HN, but ask somebody in the street, they barely know what a URL is, how would they understand a monopoly?

Anecdotal, but the non-techies on my personal circle are, on average, more critical of Google and Facebook than techies are. And they understand that those are monopolies on a very visceral level - because it's so hard to escape from them as a casual user.

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...

<It was well known that if someone robbed a Sunglass hut, the most expensive item in the store to replace was the iPad.>

Wow, that's a powerful and damning assessment.

Glasses aren't that expensive.

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?

Indeed. I buy 5 pairs of glasses at a time (cheapest ones I can manage which look OK). 5 at a time is still cheaper than 1/3rd the price of low cost normal glasses.

And each of those 5 pairs is half as durable.

It is a similarly wild situation where eye exams at Walmart can be cheaper than at a regular eye doctor covered by my insurance.

I bought my lone pair of glasses in 2009 and I've replaced the lenses once since then. I wear them every day. Now I'm wondering what everyone else is doing.

FYI, I wear my glasses 16 hours a day (100% of awake time), so I replace them every year, just to get a fresh pair.

Mine generally last a two years or so, before they are scratched and fogged to the point that my vision is affected. The big culprit is dust - often metal dust, but also hardwood dust - in the shop. Even if you religiously use a non-scratching, micro-fiber wipe (which is hard), just dragging the stuff across the lenses damages them. Another culprit is glue, particularly CA (super) glue but also other types. You may not think it would end up on your glasses, but if you're using much of it, eventually microdroplets end up on your lenses. This does immediate, permanent damage to polycarbonate lenses.

My desk glasses, optimized for computer screen distance and never actually leaving my office, on the other hand - easily last a decade with no discernable damage. Because - no significant dust, no organic vapors, no glue, and always wiped with a clean micro-fiber wipe.

Rinse with water before wiping.

That removes way less than all of the abrasive dust, and to some extent just turns what remains in to an abrasive slurry. You still get abrasion of the coating over time. And water doesn't help at all with damage due to solvents, glue, and the like.

For me it’s always been chlorine and other cleaning products. Salt water and sweat doesn’t help either.

Forget to take the glasses off before you jump into the pool or readjust your glasses while cleaning the house and before you know it the coating starts to dissolve. Even if you’re religiously rinsing them, the accumulated damage to the coatings fogs up the lenses and weakens the surface against scratches.

I prefer thin frames which are more fragile.

I also toss and turn in my sleep, knocking things off the nightstand and then stepping on them when I get out of bed.

For me I've got regular driving glasses, safety glasses, computer glasses (you don't want to use your full prescription for close distance), and sun glasses.

well lots of peoples prescription changes frequently. and other people care about fashion.

Your style of glasses can say a lot about you as a person.

Some of us have eyes that don't permit that. From the point I started needed glasses I have only once gone a year on the pair I use for the computer--nothing wrong with the glass, it's just my eyes drift enough that they start giving me headaches. I usually get 2-3 years out of my progressives before they're too far off and need replacement. With an adaptable lens my brain simply automatically compensates as my eyes change, I only need replacement when the infinity goes wrong or as my astigmatism changes too much.

> It is a similarly wild situation where eye exams at Walmart can be cheaper than at a regular eye doctor covered by my insurance.

I don't know the situation, but it's possible that Walmart doesn't make any money on that, or even loses money, to get you into a Walmart store.

It might be, but I suspect not; the optometrist is 'independent' so if Walmart is subsidizing them it's by free rent or something.

It's likely that it's mainly volume (and NO insurance paperwork at all) - the one I went to doesn't even take insurance, cash or credit card only.

Unless state law says otherwise the optician is an independent business. Check your local laws, some states don't allow that arrangement.

I'm not sure what the business deal is, but it looks to me like the rent the space from walmart and wal-mart does the scheduling. That is the person who does the exam isn't a WalMart employee, but they use WalMart for services. If you watch close you will notice they use a different POS system for paying for your exam from the one you use to buy your glasses.

Independent doesn't mean that there isn't a profit to Walmart in having it there. I go to one of those Walmart eye docs--she's independent of the store and has her own office staff, but her office has a second door that opens into Walmart's optical center.

Something I have noticed with eye "insurance"--mostly they pay $X for particular things but when you look at what's available it's something like $X *above* what we pay at Costco. In one case I was even able to confirm that the "insurance" isn't actually paying anything.

And the only time I've paid over $100 for frames is when I order the ones with a magnetic polarized clip-on that are hard to find. (And I wish I could find something like my old ones where the magnets were on top instead of on the bottom. It was more secure.)

> I don't think that I'd ever pay more than $100 for a frame again.

$100 sounds like it's ~10x what the price should actually be for simple plastic shapes, and it's probably more than 100x the actual cost to manufacture them.

I assume that's $100 including the lenses—seems like a reasonable price for something that requires custom high-precision manufacturing, although it would be great for the price to come down even further over time.

I have a moderately strong prescription (with slight differences for each eye) and I got the best glasses I've ever had from Zenni for $72.90 + tax. Could have been $60 without a presumably overpriced anti-reflective coating. I don't remember how much my glasses cost from traditional sources, but I think it was on the order of $200–$300 after insurance.

Lenses are no longer custom high precision manufacturing... In fact a 50 cent laser pointer has far more far more precise lenses than a pair of glasses.

Lenses today tend to be polycarbonate plastic anyway - which means they can be produced rapidly like any other plastic moulding.

For a lot of people you can just take lenses from the production line and cut them to shape and be done but that is not always the case. Personally I always have to wait 2 to 3 weeks to get new glasses done as the lenses have to be made to spec and the lenses alone are around 350€ and no they are not any cheaper at any online retailer that operates here if they even offer to make lenses to my spec.

Which country and what is special about your eyes or glasses?

I have noticed that in France glasses with decent but standard frames cost around 5 times as much as in the UK. My suspicion is that the difference is related to how supplementary health insurance works in France rather than any special manufacturing requirements.

I'm not the OP but I just got new glasses and they were ~$500. The frames were about $180 (one of the cheaper sets in the store and about $60 more than I paid 2 years ago; yay inflation). So the lens were around $300 and took 2 weeks to produce.

I have a severe case of Strabismus (Exotropia) and my left lens requires a prism in order to keep my eyes focused on the same target. The required prism has gotten strong over the years and as it has, the price of the prism has gone up as well. The prism alone added nearly $200 to my lens cost this time around.

All that said, I imagine the lack of competition (the thread topic) is at least partly to blame for this. I highly doubt my glasses cost anywhere near that much, even if they are special.

Frames you can find for cheap if you look around a bit. The lenses cost a lot as I need massive amounts of prism (took me a bit of looking around to find an optometrist/eye doctor with equipment that could even measure it as it is outside of the range of normal measuring machines) on both to ensure that my eyes focus on the same point

The amount of prism is now to the point that adding more is not really possible and thus if it gets worse next step is surgery on the muscles controlling the eyes or intentionally letting one eye look away. Over time the brain starts to ignore the other eye for focused vision (it would still get used for peripheral vision)

But yeah without the prism the lenses are like 30€. Once you add prisms the lenses are around 350€.

Then you are an incredible outlier. The vast majority of folks that need glasses do not have this as the reason for the lenses being expensive. They're just being shafted.

Methods for cheap fully custom made lenses are also coming to fruition.

Both SLA and FDM 3D printers are now able to make curved surfaces with 10's of micrometer precision across the lens surface, and local 10's of nanometer smoothness (usually via a surface-tension based smoothing process).

Usually you then use that as part of a two part mould to make the lens out of polycarbonate or some resin which has optical and hardness properties you want.

The whole lot, if done in ~10M quantities should come out to only 10 cents or so per piece (with each piece having a custom geometry).

There are really big opportunities available for doing this to contact lenses, since the lens can then fully compensate for any unevenness in the eye below, and could possibly lead to superhuman vision if done right. The same can't be done for glasses since the eyeball moves - instead the best you can do is a best-fit approximation for looking ahead.

They explicitly said "more than $100 for a frame again."

Normally when you say "frames" you mean lenses excluded.

i work at Luxottica in a subsidiary that sells finished lenses to opticians or semifinished lenses to labs, cheap plastic lenses go for 0.15€/pcs, the expensive lenses range between 10-15€ each

You don't pay $100 on Zenni for simple glasses. I bought a pair of glasses there with metal frame, anti-glare and anti-fog coating for under $20 with shipping.

My current frames were on clearance. They were $0.00. Marked down from like $200. Its all bullshit.

Damn I bought mine for ₹ 5000 (~$60) and I think I overpaid.

why? lenskart gives you dirt cheap glasses

I wanted a good and sturdy metal frame, so I bought it from Titan.

Zenni is a Chinese company that wouldn’t ship to Lithuania presumably because of Taiwan situation. I’ve got new sunnies from them just few days ago, but still super wary. There must be better.

How does buying glasses online even work? I have never tried, so I'd expect it to be like buying shoes without trying them on (which I won't do either, based on in-store experience I'd be returning 9 pairs out of 10 for bad fit).

I wear glasses for 95% of time, I want to not hate how they feel.

you tyoe in your prescription and a week later they appear. if you dont like them, send them back.

I think you also need to measure the distance between your eyes. The only not supper easy part.

Measuring Pupillary Distance (PD, or distance between your pupils) is easy! Here's how:

1) Stand in front of a vertical mirror, making sure you are square to the mirror.

2) Place a horizontal ruler on the surface of the mirror.

3) Close one eye and move your head until the reflection of the centre of your pupil lines up with zero on the ruler.

4) Keeping your head still, open your eye and close the other eye.

5) The Pupillary Distance is the reading on the ruler that lines up with the centre of the reflection of your pupil.

6) If you want to double check it, just swap the opening of your eyes and check that the other eye still sees itself at zero.

I use this method whenever I order glasses online and have yet to have a pair of glasses that have any error in the manufacturing. I now only buy glasses online.

Can't read the ruler, too blurry. ;-)

Use a marker, allign eyes and put on the glasses when measuring:)

Wear your old glasses when measuring.

Or you get a single eye exam and call it a day. The results will have your PD, which doesn't change.

Not every opto is always willing to give you your PD. Some like to beat around the bush because they'd rather try to nudge you into buying in store instead.

Then communicate that you want it beforehand. This is just communication.

Further notes:

a) The method works because placing the ruler on the surface of the mirror guarantees that it is parallel to the mirror. The source and destination of the light ray is your pupil, so the ray is guranteed to be perpendicular to the mirror and the ruler.

b) The plane of your pupils needs to be parallel to the mirror/ruler. This is easy to judge as your eyes will be relaxed and looking straight ahead at your own reflection in the mirror. If your eyes are looking left or right you need to turn your head so you are looking straight ahead. People are generally pretty good at judging "straight ahead", so chances are that you are doing this correctly.

Satisfying the above two constraints means the geometry gives an accurate measurement, probably more accurate than an optometrist can judge by holding a ruler up to your eyes and trying to guesstimate that they have no parallax error.

A lot of online retailers have trial systems, you can try 3 or 4 different pairs for a week before buying them.

Yes. Like a charm. Biggest potential hitch is that your optometrist will give you your prescription (they are required by law), but won't include your ocular measurements, which you then have to make yourself at home in order to order the glasses. Get the inter-ocular distance wrong, in particular, and your glasses will not work correctly.

Hint, when buy glasses ask about swim goggles - they will write down the PD distance (since they don't have swim goggles), and then you can keep that number. You still need to buy one final set of glasses, but you can get their cheap frames and be done.

This life hack really isn't necessary, you can just ask for your PD distance and they'll bring out a little machine that measures it. No optometrist has ever been weird about it, a few have even told me a few sites to get cheaper glasses.

My optometrist was weird about it, presumably because he also sells frames and lenses. I went to an optometrist who doesn't sell frames or lenses and she was happy to spend less than a minute to measure my PD. I won't be going back to the former.

I go to Walmart Vision. They do all the measurements and write down everything without complaining at all for (I think) about $70. Then order a few pair from Zenni and restock every 5-7 years.

Just ask for your PD. Nobody cares. I'be never heard of anyone sleazy enough to not give this information out.

US scripts usually don't include the ocular measurements. I've had a pair where they got the vertical ever so slightly wrong on a progressive, truly horrible, I went back to the eye doc about it and it confounded him also--I could look through the script on his machine and it was fine. He finally figured out what had happened, dialed something into his machine and it was just as awful as the glasses. The optician recut the offending lens, no problem at all. I have no idea how you are even supposed to measure that at home, the opticians always seem to do it on the frame you're actually going to be using. It's not fixed like PD is. (If you're not doing progressive it doesn't have to be spot on, though.)

I paid $11 (shipped) for a pair of glasses from them for use in VR. I didn’t want to screw up my normal glasses. For eleven bucks they aren’t bad at all. Not my style. And I didn’t get any coating so the reflections are bad but man, I can’t see for shit without glasses and I’m happy that if I even fall on hard times I can at least pay for a new pair of glasses.

Why not get custom lenses inserts for your VR kit? Its what I did for my Index, not expensive at all.

https://vroptician.com is where I got mine from.

They charge $167 for my transition lenses, last time I got them locally I paid 262€. Per lens O.o I guess I’ll try them.

Another great site is goggles4u.com

I've had very good luck ordering from Zenni and Coastal. It is perhaps a bit harder to find a frame style you like, but once you have a frame of reference for say width measurements it's not so bad.

They're especially good for cheap prescription sun glasses. I bought a whole stack of them years ago I'm still working through. If I go to the river or where ever and something happens to them I'm out $25 instead of $250.

It also helped that the last time I went to a local shop it proved to be a ridiculous experience. I ordered a pair of clear acrylic frames, and for whatever reason when they came in the sales clerk got bored and thought it'd be interesting to use highlighter on the insides of the frame to see what it looked like. But then it wouldn't come off so she just kinda tried to play it off like nothing happened when I picked them up. It was completely absurd. I had to wait another month for them to reorder.

So yeah, eyeglasses are now one of those categories of local businesses where I've learned they're basically all scams.

Related: it's getting hard to find a cleaner that does alterations in house vs mailing them off to a service. Last couple times I've had to do that it turns into a 4 to 6 week long game of "where did your clothing disappear to and will the store find it this time or tell you to come back in a week yet again."

Why is it so many of these simple services increasingly feel like total scams in the US?

coastal.com redirects to eyebuydirect.com. Is that the same one you are talking about?

Eyebuydirect is a Luxottica subsidiary. Coastal became Clearly became a Luxottica subsidiary. I think Zenni is independent for now (couldn't find any evidence to the contrary).

> Why is it so many of these simple services increasingly feel like total scams in the US?

Because 'quiet franchising' is a huge money maker for those selling the franchises.

For alterations you need to look for someone who does full custom clothing in-house; cleaning services almost all now ship even the cleaning to some central location.

I was able to find an actual cobbler nearby; they're still out there but it can be hard to find.

Yeah, the guy in my neighborhood is a full tailor, which is why I was surprised he sent my jeans out. Guy has a bit of an ego too cuz he used to do Johny Carson's suits back in the day or something. But anyhow, getting some jeans taken up shouldn't turn into a 6 week adventure.

You can buy frames with glasses in India for less than Rs.800 (less than $10)

I would doubt the quality.

A few years back my wife bought a pair (single vision) in China for about $30--excellent at the time but they turned out not to be durable. (She had taken a tumble and smashed her pair.)

They are actually pretty decent quality - not Carl Zeiss lenses though :)

For Europe, Ace & Tate [1] are affordable and pretty good quality. Frame + lens go for €110, or €120 to include blue light filter coating.

Frankly, unless we're talking about real designer pieces, glasses have been a completely utilitarian/commodity item for the past half century. The real achievement of Luxottica (which also reflects in their brand name) is that they still manage to sell them as premium/craft products.

[1] https://www.aceandtate.com/

Zenni is a good choice _if you know your PD_ (pupillary distance) - the distance from nose to center of pupil. 1 mm off will turn your glasses into headache machines. And the phone apps that purport to measure this are universally bad. Get it professionally done at a place that will give you the value. Costco will do so.

If you don't want to purchase online Costco is decent price - $180ish for the progressives lenses I just purchased vs $400+ from LensCrafters. Downside of Costco is a limited selection of frames, but worth a look. Also heard good things about Warby Parker but have not purchased lenses from them.

Oh, Zenni's progressive lenses have a much narrower distance vision section in the lens than Costco's. So I get progressive glasses at Costco then single reading and computer glasses (for < $40 each) at Zenni.

PD is a distance between pupils' centers, not pupil and the nose.

Costco also* has actual "Transitions" lenses while a bunch of the Luxxotica brands don't.

* also, meaning, along with Zenni

My friend has purchased several pairs from Zenni but the frames kept cracking around the lens even though she only wears them for a couple of hours each day. They'd send her a new frame and it would do the same after a month or two. She didnt really like the metal frames they offered so kept choosing plastic frames. Finally she got fed up with Zenni and purchased slightly more expensive glasses from Warby Parker and has had zero issues since. It definitely feels like a "you get what you paid for" type of story here. Zenni is much cheaper than buying frames from Luxottica but there's definitely some happy medium where you aren't overpaying for glasses but still buying something of comparable quality to the overpriced brands. She used to get Ray-Ban frames while on her parent's insurance but when she got her own, she could get a free years supply of contacts or Luxottica-priced pair of glasses. So now she gets her big supply of contacts from a retailer using insurance and buys a new pair of Warby Parker glasses using HSA money.

Is that the same co as eyebuydirect.com? That’s who I’ve used

I definitely think it's cool that they have some pretty freaking cheap frames. That said, I didn't pay more than $100 for my frame.

They didn't have that many $100+ glasses at the store. I think the frames that I bought for like $60 (didn't even hit the max, so they were free). Honestly, think they're nicer than most of the frames there.

You can buy oakleys for like $40-70. Even the sale ones tend to look better than the ones on zenni. Some of the nicer zenni's are $40+ anyway.

Of course it is really cool to see decent frames for $20 or less. I'm going to keep it in mind in the future.

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.

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.

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:

https://shop.shuron.com/

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.

It's true, Shurons are retro style frames. And some of them are...eccentric to say the least. But the zyl they use is pretty high quality compared to others. My faves are either the Sidewinder or the Ronsir Zyl (the latter is the original "browline" style frame as worn by Malcolm X).

  > very old styling

Correction: Original styling. These were the guys who invented that styling. The problem is, they've hardly innovated styling at all for decades.

Yes, Shuron invented the classic "browline" frame and that's why Shuron Ronsirs are what Hollywood used for frames in "JFK" and "Malcolm X". Pretty sure they also invented the "cat's eye" style frames for women, too.

italian made? lol… china made

Probably Italian designed China made

It's a pretty long list of sub-brands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EssilorLuxottica#Brands

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.

> The economy is becoming an authoritarian power.

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 :)

Competition can arise but then it's bought out by the monopoly.

If it chooses to be. This is a voluntary arrangement. If the monopoly becomes destructive (e.g. it raises prices) then there will arise a competitor that sees they can make more money than the buyer can afford to pay by charging less and gaining a large chunk of the market.

> 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.

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.

They grew big by buying every startup eye brand.

Anyone want to start a little low-cost, low-quality glasses manufacturing company, with the aim of being bought by Luxottica and closed down?

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.

While it's good news and fun for photography nerds, I don't associate Leica with price-based competition.

It's actually quite reasonably priced (for the market, which is still absurdly marked up). Mine ran me 95€ a piece, where the Luxottica equivalent would be over 200.

Yes, the prices aren't really competitive. You do get really good quality, though, especially with their "individual" lenses. Also, in the EU at least, Luxottica is less dominant. There are many smaller designers (like ic berlin for example). I don't see much price competition, though — it's all ridiculously expensive.

EssilorLuxottica has a similar company has a comparable share in US and Europe (about 40%). I can only find figures for EMEA but I’d assume that it would have a higher share in richer European countries than in poorer ones.

Which makes sense considering both companies are European.

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.

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.

[0] https://www.zeiss.com/vision-care/us/eyeglass-lenses-from-ze...

  > anti-glare, anti-scratch, spectrum, blue light filter

What does "spectrum" mean in this context? Thanks.

Sorry the word is "prism", not spectrum.

Thanks. Now I just need to learn what prism means in this context ))

I believe it's tilting the lens relative to the frame.

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.

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

Yet, EL makes most of its revenue from North America. Europe-middle-east-africa is close behind :

NA : 9,87 B

EMEA : 7,95 B

AP : 2,54 B

LA : 1,13 B

I mean

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

I use https://www.firmoo.com/ and have never had any issues.

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.

> 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?

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.

The tint and UV coatings come in a bottle and can be applied? Can that be done at home?

It was concentrated liquid that was mixed with water and heated. If you can get your hands on it, yeah, it can be done at home.

Edit: We used BPI(?) dyes and UV. Make sure you don't have anything other than scratch coating. A/R, Mirror, etc. will likely craze in the heat.

Terrific, thank you.

It's almost as if monopolies are bad. I also thought they were illegal. Why hasn't Luxottica been broken up by antitrust laws?