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How Badly Are We Being Ripped Off On Eyewear? Former Industry Execs Tell All (latimes.com)
LA Times reports: Charles Dahan knows from firsthand experience how badly people get ripped off when buying eyeglasses. He was once one of the leading suppliers of frames to LensCrafters, before the company was purchased by optical behemoth Luxottica. He also built machines that improved the lens-manufacturing process. In other words, Dahan, 70, knows the eyewear business from start to finish. And he doesn't like what's happened. "There is no competition in the industry, not anymore," he told me. "Luxottica bought everyone. They set whatever prices they please."
Both Butler and Dahan (former executives with LensCrafters) acknowledged what most consumers have long suspected: that the prices we pay for eyewear in no way reflect the actual cost of making frames and lenses. When he was in the business, in the 1980s and '90s, Dahan said it cost him between $10 and $16 to manufacture a pair of quality plastic or metal frames. Lenses, he said, might cost about $5 a pair to produce. With fancy coatings, that could boost the price all the way to $15.
He said LensCrafters would turn around and charge $99 for completed glasses that cost $20 or $30 to make -- and this was well below what many independent opticians charged. Nowadays, he said, those same glasses at LensCrafters might cost hundreds of dollars. Butler said he recently visited factories in China where many glasses for the U.S. market are manufactured. Improved technology has made prices even lower than what Dahan recalled. "You can get amazingly good frames, with a Warby Parker level of quality, for $4 to $8," Butler said. "For $15, you can get designer-quality frames, like what you'd get from Prada."
Both Butler and Dahan (former executives with LensCrafters) acknowledged what most consumers have long suspected: that the prices we pay for eyewear in no way reflect the actual cost of making frames and lenses. When he was in the business, in the 1980s and '90s, Dahan said it cost him between $10 and $16 to manufacture a pair of quality plastic or metal frames. Lenses, he said, might cost about $5 a pair to produce. With fancy coatings, that could boost the price all the way to $15.
He said LensCrafters would turn around and charge $99 for completed glasses that cost $20 or $30 to make -- and this was well below what many independent opticians charged. Nowadays, he said, those same glasses at LensCrafters might cost hundreds of dollars. Butler said he recently visited factories in China where many glasses for the U.S. market are manufactured. Improved technology has made prices even lower than what Dahan recalled. "You can get amazingly good frames, with a Warby Parker level of quality, for $4 to $8," Butler said. "For $15, you can get designer-quality frames, like what you'd get from Prada."
no, the "invisible hand of capitalism" is the online sites that have glasses for $25
Always some commie/socialist crawls out of the mildew to spew nonsense at any article talking about high prices...
but the reality is capitalism has already provided solution
Nazism is National Socialism; it was and is a "left wing" phenomenon, not "right wing".
In every society, the "right" wing is the group of people who are trying to preserve what they've already got, while the "left" wing is the group of people who are trying to overthrow the existing institutions in favor of some Utopian society inhabited by some New Man.
In Europe, right wing were/are the people who wanted/want to protect the monarchy (such as the Kaiser of Germany); in Britain, this mean protecting a monarchy restricted by parliamentary representation.
In the United States, the right wing are the people who want to protect the idea of a small, explicitly limited government designed around a separation of powers, whose role is just to protect the rights of each individual, chief among which are the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (i.e., the pursuit of self-interest).
The problem is not the right wing; the problem is the left wing, especially when the left wing adopts socialism, which has been tried both in its supranational form (Communism) and its national form (Fascism, the key example being Nazism).