<story><title>Why are glasses so expensive? The industry prefers to keep that blurry (2019)</title><url>https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-why-are-eyeglasses-so-expensive-20190122-story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chasil</author><text>Glasses aren&amp;#x27;t that expensive.&lt;p&gt;I buy them from &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;zennioptical.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;zennioptical.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that I&amp;#x27;d ever pay more than $100 for a frame again.&lt;p&gt;The sunglasses that we buy in a drugstore can be had for paltry sums, why not prescription eyewear?</text></item><item><author>imroot</author><text>I worked on the retail IT side of things at Luxottica.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t even think that you&amp;#x27;ve scratched the surface of just how prevalent Luxottica is:  you&amp;#x27;ve touched the retail side of things, but, you also haven&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;I discovered some ineffective linux and db management that was adding 15-30 minutes of closing time every night -- time where we&amp;#x27;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 &amp;#x27;point of sales&amp;#x27; part of closing wouldn&amp;#x27;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...&lt;p&gt;When my girlfriend&amp;#x27;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 &amp;#x27;ready to go back to work&amp;#x27; after cutting my contract.&lt;p&gt;It was well known that if someone robbed a Sunglass hut, the most expensive item in the store to replace was the iPad...</text></item><item><author>petilon</author><text>Glasses are expensive because there is no competition. One company - Luxottica - owns pretty much everything.&lt;p&gt;You go to LensCrafters and prices seem super expensive, so you go to Pearle Vision and that&amp;#x27;s expensive too, so you go to Target Optical and prices are still high and then you think maybe glasses &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; expensive, since you went to multiple stores and they all have similar prices. What you don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;But wait, it isn&amp;#x27;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].&lt;p&gt;Wait, not done yet. They also own insurance. Luxottica owns the vision insurance company EyeMed. [3]&lt;p&gt;Still not done. Luxottica has merged with Essilor and now own multiple lens brands [4].&lt;p&gt;See 60 Minutes story on Luxottica if you&amp;#x27;re not outraged yet [5].&lt;p&gt;Where are the anti-trust enforcers in this country and other countries, and why are they not doing anything?&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.luxottica.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;retail-brands&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.luxottica.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;retail-brands&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.luxottica.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;eyewear-brands&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.luxottica.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;eyewear-brands&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eyemed.com&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;about-us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eyemed.com&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;about-us&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[4] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.essilorluxottica.com&amp;#x2F;brands&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.essilorluxottica.com&amp;#x2F;brands&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[5] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jasonwatkinspdx</author><text>I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s not so bad.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re especially good for cheap prescription sun glasses. I bought a whole stack of them years ago I&amp;#x27;m still working through. If I go to the river or where ever and something happens to them I&amp;#x27;m out $25 instead of $250.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;d be interesting to use highlighter on the insides of the frame to see what it looked like. But then it wouldn&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;So yeah, eyeglasses are now one of those categories of local businesses where I&amp;#x27;ve learned they&amp;#x27;re basically all scams.&lt;p&gt;Related: it&amp;#x27;s getting hard to find a cleaner that does alterations in house vs mailing them off to a service. Last couple times I&amp;#x27;ve had to do that it turns into a 4 to 6 week long game of &amp;quot;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.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Why is it so many of these simple services increasingly feel like total scams in the US?</text></comment>
<story><title>Why are glasses so expensive? The industry prefers to keep that blurry (2019)</title><url>https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-why-are-eyeglasses-so-expensive-20190122-story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chasil</author><text>Glasses aren&amp;#x27;t that expensive.&lt;p&gt;I buy them from &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;zennioptical.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;zennioptical.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that I&amp;#x27;d ever pay more than $100 for a frame again.&lt;p&gt;The sunglasses that we buy in a drugstore can be had for paltry sums, why not prescription eyewear?</text></item><item><author>imroot</author><text>I worked on the retail IT side of things at Luxottica.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t even think that you&amp;#x27;ve scratched the surface of just how prevalent Luxottica is:  you&amp;#x27;ve touched the retail side of things, but, you also haven&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;I discovered some ineffective linux and db management that was adding 15-30 minutes of closing time every night -- time where we&amp;#x27;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 &amp;#x27;point of sales&amp;#x27; part of closing wouldn&amp;#x27;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...&lt;p&gt;When my girlfriend&amp;#x27;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 &amp;#x27;ready to go back to work&amp;#x27; after cutting my contract.&lt;p&gt;It was well known that if someone robbed a Sunglass hut, the most expensive item in the store to replace was the iPad...</text></item><item><author>petilon</author><text>Glasses are expensive because there is no competition. One company - Luxottica - owns pretty much everything.&lt;p&gt;You go to LensCrafters and prices seem super expensive, so you go to Pearle Vision and that&amp;#x27;s expensive too, so you go to Target Optical and prices are still high and then you think maybe glasses &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; expensive, since you went to multiple stores and they all have similar prices. What you don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;But wait, it isn&amp;#x27;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].&lt;p&gt;Wait, not done yet. They also own insurance. Luxottica owns the vision insurance company EyeMed. [3]&lt;p&gt;Still not done. Luxottica has merged with Essilor and now own multiple lens brands [4].&lt;p&gt;See 60 Minutes story on Luxottica if you&amp;#x27;re not outraged yet [5].&lt;p&gt;Where are the anti-trust enforcers in this country and other countries, and why are they not doing anything?&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.luxottica.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;retail-brands&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.luxottica.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;retail-brands&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.luxottica.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;eyewear-brands&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.luxottica.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;eyewear-brands&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eyemed.com&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;about-us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eyemed.com&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;about-us&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[4] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.essilorluxottica.com&amp;#x2F;brands&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.essilorluxottica.com&amp;#x2F;brands&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[5] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>RajT88</author><text>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&amp;#x2F;3rd the price of low cost normal glasses.&lt;p&gt;And each of those 5 pairs is half as durable.&lt;p&gt;It is a similarly wild situation where eye exams at Walmart can be cheaper than at a regular eye doctor covered by my insurance.</text></comment>