Name: Why Glasses Are So Expensive
Uploaded: 2021-04-22T06:28:55.000Z
Duration: 12 min 46 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

For the 50 percent of Americans who wear glasses, getting a new pair

For the cost of a single pair, they could pay a month's rent in any

of these one-bedroom apartments, buy a month's worth of food for two

people, or buy a roundtrip flight from New York to Reykjavík, and

still have money to spare. And that's without lenses.

Add the cheapest lenses available and the price jumps by another 200

dollars. Granted, this is the most expensive pair we could find on

the LensCrafters website and we didn't input insurance information.

Still, the average price of glasses in the U.S.

$238 for frames, $113 for lenses, and $201 for an exam.

Insurance can help bring down the cost, but it's still a lot for a

Recently, two former industry executives revealed to a Los Angeles

Times columnist that quality frames could cost as little as $4

A possible explanation could be the consolidated nature of the

According to a 2019 IBISWorld report, the top four companies operating

account for over 60 percent of industry revenue following a decade of

The biggest of them, Luxottica, has 40 percent.

The Italian company is the largest maker of eyewear in the world.

it captures huge shares of both the prescription eyeglasses and

sunglasses retail market, owns several major retailers, has exclusive

manufacturing and licensing deals with tons of designer labels, and

owns EyeMed, one of the largest vision insurance providers.

A Luxottica spokesperson told CNBC that the glasses industry is very

diverse, including several discount retailers like Walmart and

The same IBISWorld report noted that the vast majority of consumers

Still, with such large market shares and diverse holdings, it's worth

And in 2017, Luxottica announced it would get even bigger by merging

with Essilor, a French lenses manufacturer.

The 49 billion dollar deal further consolidated the eyewear industry,

leading some to ask: Will this help consumers or hurt them?

Leonardo Del Vecchio founded Luxottica in Italy in 1961.

The name is a combination of the Italian words for light and optics,

and the company manufactured components and accessories for the

But Del Vecchio soon transformed the company from supplier to

manufacturer. In 1971, Luxottica debuted its first house-made glasses

line. This turned out to be a prescient move.

Starting in the 1980s, glasses slowly transformed from a necessary

medical device to a fashion statement for the face.

Luxottica both drove and capitalized off this trend by partnering

with designer brands to make lines of glasses and sunglasses.

Under these licenses, the fashion houses send inspiration to

Luxottica which designs and manufactures the frames.

The company first partnered with Giorgio Armani in 1988.

Thirty years later, its roster of partnerships sounds like a fashion

Luxottica also purchased several brands outright, like Vogue eyewear,

Ray-Ban, and Oakley, and they moved into retailing, buying

LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, and Cole National, which is the parent

company of Target Optical, Sears Optical, and Pearle Vision.

In total, Luxottica has about 9000 stores worldwide.

Their vision insurance company, EyeMed, has a network of 28,000 eye

health professionals and covers 39 million people.

but Luxottica has a major presence in the UK, New Zealand, Australia,

Latin America, and, of course, its native Italy, as well as

Italy, China, Brazil, and two small plants in Japan and India.

In 2018, Luxottica had net sales of just under nine billion euros.

dollars and an increase of 22 percent since 2013.

To put it simply: if a brand wants to sell glasses, they want to be

And if a store wants to sell popular brands, they'll want to offer

You know Ray-Ban, Chanel, Bulgari and the like.

Some argue that Luxottica's disproportionate size and power stifles

competition, causing the whole industry to stagnate.

The profits in this industry are relatively obscene.

There hasn't been any serious innovation in the industry.

I mean, Google Glass might be the best example, but they're pretty

And so this this industry just sort of sits there and it makes a lot

of money and it is stagnant and extracts the cost of billions of

dollars from American and actually just global consumers.

Some competitors have managed to succeed.

Zenni Optical, an online-only glasses retailer, began in 2003 and

Another company, Warby Parker, began selling glasses starting at $95