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The lack of good designs for non-Luxottica brand frames is appalling. I use a third party eye glass company to order frames + lenses for < $100 and get good qua
by lighthazard 9y ago
The lack of good designs for non-Luxottica brand frames is appalling. I use a third party eye glass company to order frames + lenses for < $100 and get good quality stuff (but not the best styles). Why are they not able to compete on style and fashion?
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> Why are they not able to compete on style and fashion? I am honestly curious if this is primarily a materials, vendor, distribution, design personnel or intellectual property bottleneck.
- StillBored 9y agoI've purchased ~6-8 pairs of glasses from zenni, primary because I'm really happy that they don't gouge the heck out of me for lenses with high refraction indexes or various coatings. That said, the frames are totally hit or miss, with some of them feeling like they aren't worth the $10-20 or whatever they cost. I find though, its no so much materials as attention to detail. The materials themselves withstand a beating. One of my favorite pairs _rattled_ when I got it because the little plastic nose pieces, and the little plastic piece that fit over the end of the arms was lose. Drop of glue in the ear pieces, and a softer nose piece and they are now my favorite glasses. OTOH, I also owned a half dozen pairs of ray-bans before I switched to zenni, and probably 3/4 of them had finish problems within the first couple years. The coating on the plastic pieces started to disintegrate leaving a sticky residue on one pair, and three pairs with metal frames had the clear varnish like substance start to crack and peel from the metallic finish. Another started to discolor after a couple years. I guess at least rayban has perfected planned obsolescence...
- walterbell 9y agoProdesign (Denmark) and Modo (US+Japan) have stylish good-quality frames that retail for half the price of premium brands like mykita, ic berlin, lindberg. Unclear why they don't have many competitors. Mykita founder split from ic berlin (screwless frames). If you look at their designs, there does seem to be IP/patent avoidance. Both are comparably priced. There are supposedly cheap clones available, maybe they can be found on Alibaba. Edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15431180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15431180 Edit2: ic berlin patent (expired?): https://www.google.com/patents/US5418581 https://www.google.com/patents/US5418581
- jsolson 9y agoI love Prodesign, but yeah they're not exactly competing on price. Also a big fan of Etnia Barcelona -- they're in a similar price bracket (as far as I know they're independent, but I'll admit to not having researched it)
- sowbug 9y agoSame question for men's ties (though it's been a while since I've been in the market for one). Expensive ties have attractive patterns, and cheap ones have horrifying ones. But the pattern is effectively software. Is a nice tie pattern truly that hard to create?
- derefr 9y agoMy hypothesis was always that all the simple, nice tie patterns are "taken" as symbols for various old boys' clubs (Universities et al), leaving only ugly designs "meaningless" enough for general use. The same thing is true, IIRC, of Scottish tartans. All the nice plaid represents some clan or another.
- rtpg 9y agoMy theory is that ugly ties are there to sell the nice (simple) ties. I've had similar experiences with dress shirts as well. Plain nice shirts end up costing more than elaborate designs because that's the one people actually want
- Godel_unicode 9y agoI've noticed this a lot in men's fashion. If you want a well made garment not covered in a giant logo/design, it's going to be more expensive. I always assumed that, when it comes to logo covered clothing, you were getting a subsidized price in return for "repping" e.g. Nike.
- wastedhours 9y agoPerhaps some brands do it that way, but usually in the luxury goods industry (and quite often in fast fashion like Nike) manufacturers will create "accessible" pieces designed specifically with brand poseurs who can't afford the premium products in the portfolio in mind, with a larger logo/unique design to emphasise the acquisition of a brand's product. I can't find the source online, but I remember reading in "The Luxury Strategy" [0] that the cars at the lower end of the Mercedes line-up had badges 2" larger than those on the premium cars (e.g. A vs S Class), and the LV on the lower end Vuitton bags was larger than the higher end ones - specifically so they could be seen more easily to heighten the ego of the owner. [0] Kapferer: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Luxury-Strategy-Break-Marketing-Brands/dp/0749464917 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Luxury-Strategy-Break-Marketing-Bra...
- rgbrenner 9y agoLuxottica offered to buy Oakley, and Oakley refused.. said it was never going to happen. So Luxottica stopped distributing Oakley's products in Sunglass Hut, etc.. which deprived Oakley of the majority of it's revenue, causing their stock to crash. Oakley then accepted a buyout offer from Luxottica. So to answer your question, why are there not better Luxottica competitors.. because when someone produces a good product, they'll become large enough to attract Luxottica's attention... If Luxottica controls the distribution channel.. what options do you have if they want to play hardball? No good ones.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> If Luxottica controls the distribution channel One could have argued similarly for Gillette. Then Dollar Shave Club went direct to consumers. Likewise, I referenced an independent distributor who stocked non-Luxottica frames. Margins in this business are wide enough that economies of scale, alone, are an insufficient explanation.
- rtpg 9y agoGillette doesn't own Walgreens. That's the big difference here.
- 9y ago