Dream Glasses

The left lens fell out of my glasses a few months ago and got lost in the snow somewhere. I’d paid more than $200 just a year ago to replace my eyeglasses lenses, and wasn’t keen on dropping that kind of money again.

After reading some glowing testimonials about buying glasses online, I thought I’d give it a try, as it looks a lot cheaper local glasses stores. After looking into several online glasses retailers I settled on dreamglasses mostly on the basis of web site usability. I couldn’t find any Canadian online opticians.

Dreamglasses allow you to upload your image to see how the glasses will look on you (front view only) calibrated by the distance between your pupils. I ordered 2 pairs with high-n plastic lenses: plastic frame, titanium and frameless for $100 Canadian including delivery anti-reflection and anti-scratch coatings are added free. Total time for doing this was about an hour, mostly spent checking what the eyeglasses look like.

It took about 2 weeks for delivery, and the glasses are perfect for me.

Admittedly I spent roughly the same amount I would have to have my original glasses re-lensed locally, but now I have a work pair, and one backups.

I think the main thing that makes this possible is the standardized nature of optical prescriptions: the form I got from the optometrist was exactly the same as the one for for my prescription on the web sites. When you get your prescrition, make sure you get your PD (Pupillary Distance) if you you’re going to be ordering online. The optometrist asked me why I wanted it then looked annoyed when I said I was buying glasses online: I can guess why after pricing frames and lenses in their shop at $300 when I got the equivalent for $66 online. Also make sure you have the measurements handy for a set of frames that fit as you’ll want to make sure the arms are the right length and the bridge isn’t too narrow, etc.

The eyeglasses profit margins for the local opticians must be incredible: I paid 1/3-1/4 of local prices for these glasses, but I can’t imagine labour costs are a big part of the expense: grinding and coating is done primarily by robots. The difference in price will be partially consumed by the overhead of showrooms and employees, but clearly you can do pretty well with an uploaded picture and flash app now.

I won’t be buying glasses again locally till their prices come down to something more reasonable. I’ll be ordering them for my wife too and telling anyone who is interested how to save some money this way.
I wonder how long this will take to affect local glasses prices? I can imaging a hybrid business model with a fitting room in a mall for frames and glasses made wherever and shipped daily/weekly for to the fitting room for pickup. Also, what other businesses are vulnerable? it would have to be something with a very standardized specification like an optical prescription.