It’s one of the best ideas of the modern era: great glasses at great prices, via a terrific interface with a sublime try-and-buy setup—and a meaningful giving-back component too. Today, as we reveal Pop-In@Nordstrom Welcomes Warby Parker, we chat with the geniuses behind this lightbulb moment and the resulting beautification of the spectacles circuit. Please meet our friends Neil Blumenthal and David Gilboa, and get a glimpse of their bright, brainy, bagel-filled lives.
The Thread: Let’s go back in time to 2010, when the two of you were leaving the Wharton School and dreaming big dreams. If those guys could see what Warby Parker is now, what would surprise them or impress them most? What would perhaps make them reconsider reinventing the whole eyewear process, bringing good design in-house and working directly with folks to get decently priced, super-cool prescription and sunglasses into the world?
Blumenthal and Gilboa: Here’s the main thing that would have blown our minds: knowing that in a few short years we’d have 500 employees and every single one would be incredibly smart, friendly and devoted to serving our stakeholders. As a close runner-up, the sheer quantity of bagels we go through in a week at the office would have been almost as shocking.
Warby Parker Banks sunglasses
Pop-In@Nordstrom isn’t Warby Parker’s first collaboration by any stretch. You guys have done some really cool collaborations—enough to make those young grads proud for sure. Can you tell us about one that really stands out as a win-win situation?
One that stands out is what we did with our friend Karlie Kloss. Karlie is an amazing person with a keen sense of design and an entrepreneurial instinct, so we get along great. Along with collaborating on a capsule collection of 1970s-inspired sunglasses, we partnered up to donate to Edible Schoolyard NYC, which helps local public schools build kitchens and gardens, and educates students on how to develop lifelong healthy eating habits. Karlie also popped into the office to deliver Kookies, which made everyone’s day.
Warby Parker’s Venice Beach shop on Abbot Kinney Blvd
For a company with such stakes in the digital realm, you’ve sure done some cool things IRL too. Take us inside one of the coolest historically rooted storefronts (you know, conversationally) and show us around.
Our store on Lexington Avenue in New York features a basement storage area for glasses, and we needed to find a way to get those glasses upstairs quickly and easily. One of our employees suggested installing pneumatic tubes, which used to be a common mail-delivery system in New York City. So we did! Because obsolete technology is underrated. The pneumatic tubes transport glasses and monocles at a brisk clip—24 feet per second—to customers. Each Warby Parker employee is trained in tube use and receives a badge certifying them as a Pneumatic Tube Operator. Which is a nice thing to have on your résumé in 2015.
The Warby Parker Manhattan shop on Lexington Ave
Now. Let’s get personal. Have you taken your summer holiday yet, or is that still cued up? And most importantly, what will you read while you’re enjoying some time off?
First and most important, we’ll be reading Go Set a Watchman so we can be a part of the national conversation. We’re looking forward to swimming in large salty bodies of water, hanging out with family and friends, and eating foods cooked on a grill. We are not looking forward to mosquitoes.
Warby Parker Haskell sunglasses
And while we’re on the topic of the literary life well lived, let’s say you get to have lunch with some of your favorite literary figures. We’re assuming Jack Kerouac would be there, since his journals provided the inspiration for your company’s name, but who else would you invite?
We’d invite Kerouac to bring a sense of adventure, Norman Mailer to stir up trouble and Dorothy Parker to dispense aphorisms and crack jokes about everyone else at the table.
That “literary life well lived” is a big part of what Warby Parker is. What does it mean for you two—and the rest of your crew—to live the good life?
The good life is about spending time with people you love, working at a job that excites you and occasionally hurts your brain, eating a well-made bagel (can’t be too fluffy, can’t be too sweet), exploring the great outdoors and keeping your phone adequately charged. Warby Parker employees are some of the smartest and most eccentric people we know. Whenever a new employee starts, that person goes before the entire company and tells everyone their name, hometown and a fun fact. The “fun fact archive” is top secret, but one of our employees was a backup dancer for Beyoncé, one of them has webbed feet and another won a shootout against Larry Bird. And that’s barely scratching the surface.
And finally, let’s talk four-eyed style icons. I’m going with Hunter S. Thompson in those amber lenses. And you?
Hunter S. Thompson is a strong choice. It takes an idiosyncratic constitution to pull off amber lenses as daywear. Three off the top of our heads: Buddy Holly, Michael Caine, Andy Warhol. And, of course, Theodore Roosevelt rocked a pince-nez the way Fonzie rocked a leather jacket. (Flawlessly.)
Shop: Pop-In@Nordstrom Welcomes Warby Parker
—Laura Cassidy
via The Thread Fashion Blog http://ift.tt/1Dy3dxA
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