Now let's look at this integrated customer experience online, offline from the perspective of digitally native vertical brands. My favorite one of all of these started by Wharton MBAs is Warby Parker. Warby Parker identified the fact that when they started that eyeglasses was a very big market and most of eyeglasses were being sold in physical retail. If they could sell these eyeglasses online, they could have an opportunity to sell at a better price and go direct online. Now, one of the things was when you went in to traditional eyewear shopping store to buy glasses, which at the time Warby started, about 90 percent or 99 percent of glasses were sold in physical stores, the process was very much about trying on the glasses. Typically, what would happen is you would see all these different glasses all around the room and you'd be overwhelmed by all the choice. Some sales associate would help you pick out a few glasses, bring you over to a desk, and you would try on all of those glasses that he or she picked out for you. One of them would just seem perfect and that would be the one you bought. The problem was taking this physical experience, this customer experience in a physical store and translating it to online was tricky, which is why it hadn't really been done before. What I want to emphasize is there's a lot of things that Warby did that was wonderful, but one of the things they did and is relevant here in the section that I'm talking about is they figured out a way to digitize that customer experience. What they did is they had their free at home try-on policy. What that meant was you could go online, pick out five different frames and they would send you those frames for five days for 100 percent free. You could try on all those frames at home. They were taking what happened in the store and putting it into a digital environment. That was a very successful program. It was even more successful than they had first anticipated, because what happened was people would try on these different frames, they'd take pictures of themselves, put it up on social media and ask their friends to vote on it, or they'd get these frames delivered to their office and they try all these different frames out in front of their fellow workers and ask for their votes on which one was better or worse. It became a very fun experience and for Warby, a great marketing program because each person who had tried on these glasses exposed the Warby Parker concept to a lot of their friends. It helped with growth for Warby Parker. That was not necessarily the chief motivation initially, but Warby definitely seized on that opportunity over time. Warby also did terrific public relations campaigns to build up their brand. This is an example, right before New York Fashion Week a number of years ago, what Warby did was take over the public library and have all their friends sit in the public library with these blue books that had on top of the names of their frames. Warby has always used education learning book type of frame for their stores and for their whole marketing approach. Their brand is based on literary figures and their eyeglass names are based on these literary figures. All of these reporters were in New York the day before for New York Fashion Week, and they had nothing to do during that day. Warby invited them to the New York Public Library and they put on this thing where all at once, all their friends were sitting around the library and they raised up this book with the light blue color of Warby Parker. Each one of them had the name of a frame on and they had all these reporters there taking note of this event. It really helped build identity for the Warby brand. Then that just took off and they just got a lot of coverage by all these fashion magazines and fashion media that, as I said, were in town for New York Fashion Week and their brand just blew up. The idea of really building a very trendy, cool brand in a way that people were talking about it in a very positive way, they also had when you bought a pair of glasses, they'd give another pair of glasses to people in need; they had a social mission. They figured out how to digitize the customer experience. All of that really built to a very successful Warby Parker online presence. The next thing they did, and this is very interesting, is they started opening up their own physical stores. I'm using Warby as an example here, but this is very common for digitally native vertical brands. They build up a very strong brand online. They build up an online strong presence and then they start opening up stores. Now, eyeglass stores were typically showrooms and showrooms mean you don't have the inventory. The reason eyeglass stores are showrooms is because you have to go back and put the prescription inside the glass so you can't really stock the glasses in store anyway. Eyeglass stores were always showrooms. When Warby opened up their physical stores, they opened up a showroom also. But this does generalize to other digitally native vertical brands. What will happen is they will have their online presence with a huge assortment and then they'll open up physical stores as showrooms so people can try on different sizes or touch and feel the product and then go back online and order the product they want. This is an example of really integrating the very robust online experience that Warby had developed and that other digitally native vertical brands had developed and then opening up physical stores to add in the physical climate the extra dimensions that you couldn't get online. What Warby found out when they opened their first showroom, and this is a picture of one that was opened in Soho, their first store, was that by opening up stores, this did not cannibalize online sales but actually increased sales in the showrooms in the physical showrooms as well as online. Putting out new stores built up the whole pie, made everything better. This was the experience of a lot of digitally native vertical brands so that they would open up physical stores to supplement their digital experience. That whole universe of omnichannel shopping grew the brand much faster. Warby continued to open stores. I think they're up now to 120 different stores. In each one of their stores they would build uniquely to the structure that they were moving into so they would feature some of the architectural structure and build their store into that. But they typically always had this book learning education focus to their store. You can see in this store there's books lining below the glasses. That was very much part of the theme. This one looks like a schoolhouse that they built a very innovative design. Here's another example of a Warby store that's featuring their color, their brand, and really making the in-store customer experience a very fun experience to try on these glasses. Again, the big takeaway of this is that combining the physical store with the online experience, it doesn't replace it, it supplements it; makes the whole business better and grows the business over both online and offline interactions. This started again, a lot of the things that happened during COVID and were accelerated during COVID were things that had started before COVID and Warby is another example of a retailer that understood the importance of technology. What Warby was starting to do before COVID hit was develop eye exams that you could take on your phone with some of the new technology that was built into phones. But during COVID they really accelerated the use of augmented reality. There was an example where you could try on these glasses on your phone and it really looked like you were wearing it. The technology was super good and you could try on all of these different frames. Here's an example where the idea started online but then they figured out a way to make the try-on process for real by the home try-on process. Then they go into physical stores and they combine the physical store experience with the online experience. Then during COVID, they really ramp up their use of augmented reality. It's really this integrated notion of online, offline and a very creative use of augmented reality and technology to really up the customer experience for the customer. A lot of that is what drives customers interest in this brand and in this product. Another example of one is Allbirds, which was also started by a Wharton MBA. Allbirds very successful, digitally native vertical brand; they made shoes. But really what they were focusing on is to make things better and use materials that made the world a better place. They were really looking for reducing carbon footprint and doing things that were contributing to sustainability and to make products with better materials so that you were really producing things that were not detrimental to the environment. They started with shoes. They've moved into apparel. But during COVID, they opened 20 new stores and they only had a couple of stores before the COVID started. Then again, here is a brand that started online, but they saw the benefit of having a physical presence or a showroom presence. In some cases, they had some inventory in these stores. In some stores, it was a showroom where you could go back and order online. The reason this was important was because they wanted to have their store serve as a hub for this broader omnichannel experience, to serve as a hub to create a sense of community for its customers. That is a function of integrating seamlessly between the physical experience of the store and the online experience. I'm just showing you two examples, which were both started by Wharton MBAs, Warby Parker and Allbirds. But there are many other digitally native vertical brands started online and then integrated by making their customer experience physical also, but they make all of it an omnichannel experience.
