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On Yahoo Finance's Big Idea podcast, Warby Parker (WRBY) co-founder and CEO Neil Blumenthal discussed the "bizarre" early days of the glasses company and how its famous home try-on model emerged from some pivotal feedback.

Blumenthal said some glasses were "more expensive than the iPhone" when the company launched in the competitive eyewear space in 2010.

Knowing that the manufacturing process for spectacles was fairly cheap, Blumenthal and his co-founders sought to capitalize on the booming online market and sell eyewear directly to consumers for a fraction of the price.

"I think the best business ideas solve real problems," Blumenthal said (see video above or listen below). "And this was a problem for us that you'd walk into an optical shop, get excited, and walk out feeling like you'd been ripped off. Here, we could design the frames that we loved and sell them at a fraction of the price, at $95 instead of $400, including prescription lenses."

As he built his idea, Blumenthal sought feedback from his business school classmates, asking what they thought of the model. His classmates were supportive, but Blumenthal sensed they were holding back.

"We would push them a little bit harder and be like, 'Hey, ... would you actually buy them online?' And they were like, 'Uh, maybe. But I really like to try them on first,'" Blumenthal recalled.

"That feedback was so valuable because it inspired us to go back to the drawing board, and we came up with this idea of a home try-on, where we would ship people five pairs of glasses," he continued. "They have five days to try it on at home. If at that point there was a pair they loved, we would put in the prescription lenses and send it to them."A customer tries on a pair of eyeglasses frames outside a Warby Parker store on Nov. 28, 2020, in Vancouver, Canada. (Andrew Chin/Getty Images)·Andrew Chin via Getty Images

That model was ultimately what set Warby Parker apart from its competitors. Even Blumenthal and his co-founders didn't expect it to take off as well as it did, which led to some hiccups early on and a pivot to offering showrooms down the line.

Not long after launching, orders poured in, and the company ran out of frames for customers to try on at home. This led to a panicked pause while they waited for customers to return the frames so the company could ship them to other prospective customers.

"We suspended our home try-on program because all the glasses were out with customers," Blumenthal said. "We had to wait for them to come back. People started calling up and saying, 'Hey, I want to try on your glasses, they're not available for home try-on.' And so we said, 'Well, if you want, you can come to my apartment.'"

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This bizarre experience (that ultimately netted them some consistent conversions) was what ultimately led the co-founders to pivot from their original online-only model and search for a showroom space to offer more in-person try-ons.

Warby Parker's first showroom space, which was a part of its office, proved successful, leading the co-founders to try other pop-up events and eventually open stores. Today, Warby Parker has 287 locations and plans to open 45 new stores this year, including some smaller shop-in-shops inside Target (TGT) stores.

In the first quarter, Warby Parker reported its first quarterly profit since going public in 2021 and grew earnings 11.9% year over year.

Blumenthal noted the company still has that home try-on model today. "If we didn't have that in the early days, we would not have been as successful as we've been," he said.

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