It’s one thing to start a business as an entrepreneur and survive the first year. It’s an even bigger badge of success to have launched your online business as a mobile-only enterprise and then thrive and grow despite the COVID-19 crisis.
Meet Fitz Frames, a unique, fashionable, family eyewear maker and online seller that’s navigated the typical startup challenges by being smart, focused, mobile-first, and quick to adapt to new opportunities.
Based in Santa Monica, Fitz Frames founder Heidi Hertel looked at the state of the retail eyewear industry and decided to launch the company entirely online and mobile-first in 2016. After several years of product research and design, mobile software development, 3-D production modeling, and beta-testing, the company’s first 3-D printed eyeglasses finally hit the market from their Youngstown, Ohio production facility in July 2019.
Nearly a year later, the result is a revolution in fitting and buying eyeglasses for all ages, including prescription glasses with exceptional quality and frames at lower cost despite intense competition.
A market ripe for disruption
According to Grand View Research, the global eyewear market was valued at $138.7 billion in 2019 and is predicted to grow at 8.1% annually from 2020 to 2027. Statista estimates the 2019 US glasses market alone at $21.12 billion.
An estimated 20 million US children wear prescription glasses and one in 20 preschool-aged kids needs glasses. Who knows how many glasses are broken, repaired, or replaced every year as well?
While Hertel had never worn glasses, she was surprised to find her own two young children needed prescription glasses. When she looked at what was available, children’s glasses were based on two standard sizes for kids aged 4 to 12 and they usually didn’t fit kids properly. They also weren’t very fashionable.
“I’ve read a lot and heard from doctors, teachers, and parents who have said that kids can be misdiagnosed with all types of things, like behavioral or learning disorders, just because they can’t see. But buying glasses for kids had so many challenges. The frustration I felt inspired me to launch my own company, Fitz Frames, to help solve for issues like fit, high prices, and the concern that they might break easily,” she said in a recent interview with People magazine.
Based on their own families’ challenging experience, Hertel and co-CEO Gabriel Schlumberger realized there was a big market for children’s prescription eyewear that eliminated the problems and hassles of finding, fitting, and buying glasses for kids.
Custom frames right from your smartphone
There’s no denying that Fitz Frames are fun, fashionable, and fit for every family member when you browse the many styles and colors of eyewear available on the company’s website.
The fun is reflected in the names of the designer frames which include Ten-Four, Yessiree, Roger Wilco, Okie Dokie, Certainly, and Right On.
Download the app. Point your iPhone and your face and click to get precise measurements. Choose a colorful, stylish frame from dozens of fashionable designs. Add your prescription and order online. It’s deceptively simple on the surface yet extremely complex operationally behind the friendly website and easy online user experience.
What’s unique compared to other bigger competitors is how the custom frames are fitted, ordered, paid for, 3-D printed and delivered using a simple mobile platform on an iPhone.
The Fitz Frames app uses the iPhone TrueDepth camera with advanced facial mapping to measure over 1,000 points on each face for a custom fit for every age. The app also gives users a virtual try-on experience using augmented reality and letting shoppers preview different frames from home.
Fitz Frames are produced with snap-fit hinges, enabling the arm to securely snap into place. This design eliminates the risk of loose screws and offers a solution to broken glasses. Online orders are automatically put into production at Fitz Frames Ohio plant where they are carefully specified, scheduled, and placed into the 3-D laser printing production line.
The biggest surprise is when the glasses arrive, carefully and creatively boxed including a kid’s name and an animal spirit on the frame for easy identification. There’s also an annual optional subscription plan for free replacements for those kids who damage or break their glasses often or simply want to change colors and styles every year.
What’s not to like about funky, fashionable prescription, blue light filtering, or sunglass lenses and frames priced at $95, including free delivery?
Mobile business model meets online shopping head on
Fitz Frames’ business model is 100% mobile from start to finish – transforming a previously stressful shopping challenge into one that’s fun, easy, and convenient for consumers, including kids.
“When you are a mobile-only business, it’s really important to be as responsive to customers as possible and to make them feel that they are receiving the personal attention they would at a brick and mortar location,” Hertel says. “At Fitz, we have tried to reduce response times for messages received by email, Facebook, and Instagram (including on weekends), where we hear from customers most.”
The coming-of-age of additive manufacturing technology more commonly known as 3-D printing, and mobile app software advances enabled a business model that couldn’t have been possible even two years earlier.
Hertel says one of the big challenges is making customers comfortable with buying glasses in an entirely new way than in the past. “While online glasses have been available for several years, ours is the first of its kind to take facial measurements from people of all ages and print a customized frame for each face, down to the millimeter.”
“It’s not easy to express the quality, unique lightweight feel, and extra comfort our product provides as it has been built specifically for each face. It’s been important for us to have a very flexible “happiness policy” so customers have peace of mind that they may return the product for any reason,” she says.
Same goes for the online shopping and payments experience which are built to make purchases as simple, fast, and secure as possible.
COVID-19 crisis creates opportunity
While many retailers suffered immediate, and sometimes deadly impact from the coronavirus crisis, Hertel saw this as an opportunity rather than a problem.
Hertel’s mobile-only and e-commerce strategy meant Fitz Frames was more than ready to maintain sales and operations, even growing despite the terrible impact of the coronavirus on many bricks and mortar and online retailers earlier this year.
This business model also allowed the company to pivot quickly, adding production of a new protective eyewear line designed for COVID-19 in record time. “We were able to offer Fitz Protect to doctors and nurses only ten days after we began development on the design. We have delivered nearly 1,000 pairs to healthcare workers and will do all we can to dispense as many as possible to those remaining on our waitlist,” Hertel says proudly.
Fitz Protect is designed specifically to meet the needs of frontline medical personnel with an enhanced line of defense against COVID-19 infection. Available in prescription and non-prescription models, this custom-fitted 3D printed eyewear hugs the contours of the wearer’s face and provides enhanced droplet protection in clinical settings. The Fitz app makes it simple and fast for healthcare professionals to order their made-to-measure pair of Fitz Protect glasses in under four minutes.
The company’s even gone the extra mile with a GoFundMe campaign to provide free vision care protective eyewear for healthcare professionals from donations. Sometimes, just by doing good companies benefit as the new eyewear line has generated growing sales from medical professionals and healthcare organizations who seem like the idea of high-quality, inexpensive frames providing extra protection with more fashionable flair in hot pink, navy blue, and white frames.
“We pivoted our business and fast-tracked a product that became suddenly in great need – prescription protective eyewear for doctors and nurses who simply couldn’t find it anywhere else. We acted quickly to develop a design and make it available to healthcare workers as soon as we could to help protect them while treating patients with Covid-19,” Hertel says. “The key lessons we have learned are to find ways to increase communication with your customers and be creative where you can to meet new needs, even when that means straying from your core business.”
Mobile matters
Mobile-first is clearly making a difference to this eyewear innovator. Even during the darkest days of the coronavirus crisis, the company has been able to move quickly, increase its online reach, and grow sales. New product ideas are on the horizon and production can scale as quickly as needed by market demand.
“We have been glad to help families who are sheltering in place and prefer to shop for glasses from home. We’ve seen recent sales growth and have increased our manufacturing capacity to maintain satisfactory delivery times” Hertel adds.
Work from home has also been a factor. “We’ve been surprised at the number of non-prescription orders we’ve received, largely due to the demand for blue light glasses given so many of us are working on screen devices at all hours.”
Fitz Frames is an excellent example of an innovative company designed by an entrepreneur to meet the needs of consumers from its fashionable eyewear products and easy online shopping experience to a simple, secure mobile ordering and payments system.
Visuals courtesy of Fitz Frames
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