Introduction
Eyewear serves important functional needs like vision correction as well as aesthetic purposes of complementing style and looks. However, prescription glasses and sunglasses often come with premium pricing, making them unaffordable for large consumer segments in India and other developing markets. Indian eyewear retailer Lenskart aims to transform this scenario with its innovative tech-led omnichannel strategy combined with vertical integration in manufacturing. This is bringing high-quality, fashionable eyewear within reach for more people across economic strata.
Lenskart’s Grand Omnichannel Retail Presence
Omnichannel retail utilizes the advantage of both online and offline retail channels in an integrated manner. This provides customers with a smooth experience as they browse, try, select, and buy eyewear products. Lenskart has tapped into diverse retail avenues through stores, e-commerce, and partnerships.
Rapid Physical Retail Expansion for Deeper Market Penetration
Lenskart has over 750+ offline stores already operational across 150+ cities/towns in India as part of its rapid expansion strategy. The target is to have over 1,000 brick-and-mortar retail stores spread across the country by 2025. These offline retail touchpoints make the process of eyewear purchasing more accessible, transparent, and convenient for consumers across metros, tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
The stores showcase a wide variety of prescription glasses and sunglasses frames catering to diverse needs like reading vision, anti-glare, blue light cut and more. Consumers can browse in-store catalogs, virtually try out frames for fit and looks and directly purchase lenses with prescriptions filled. Highly trained optometrists also conduct comprehensive eye exams and recommend suitable lens enhancements like photochromatic, polarized as per customer eyecare and style needs.
This ever-growing expansive offline presence delivers multiple advantages:
- Immerses consumers in first-hand eyewear buying experience with personalized service
- Builds trust by assisting consumers make informed lens and frame selections
- Enables seamless integration with online purchases, fast delivery and returns/exchanges
- Provides Lenskart valuable consumer data around preferences to enhance personalization
Empowering E-Commerce Platform
Alongside its offline retail expansion, Lenskart is heavily investing in building integrated technologies to deliver consumers superior omnichannel experiences.
The Lenskart website and mobile app serve as a 24/7 virtual eyewear platform allowing customers to conveniently shop prescription glasses and sunglasses online from anywhere in India.
Salient features of the e-commerce channels include:
- Try at Home facility – Consumers can trial 5 frames for free delivered to their doorstep before purchasing
- Prescription Upload – Scan and upload old prescriptions when ordering lenses
- Frame Virtual Trial: 3D virtual try-on with face shape analysis to check best-fitting frames
- Blue Light Usage Test – Assess daily screen usage to advise suitable computer lenses
- Automated Prescription Calculator – Accurately matches old Rx data into new prescriptions
- User-friendly lens enhancement selections – Add beneficial treatments like anti-glare, UV cut, and polarizing with a single click
- Lenskart POS- The Point of Sales gives a provision to employees that they can check the inventory in stock with the current retail outlet or nearby which help their employee to update accurate delivery time to customers.
- Locating nearby store – When some search on Google Lenskart near me, it shows the store in the closed proximity so that customer can check and visit the nearby store.
- Free eye testing – The offers like Free eye testing to check the exact number for your glasses also drive some traffic to their retail outlets.
This personalized eyewear e-commerce experience is enabled by Lenskart’s investment into integrated technologies (AI, AR, Facial Mapping) that bridge online and offline user journeys. For instance, the ETO edge lab software auto syncs lens profile measurement data like pupillary distance captured in-store for online purchases.
Omnichannel tech integration provides consumers the flexibility to switch between channels and streamlines internal fulfillment for Lenskart. This is fueling faster delivery commitments even for prescription lenses.
Innovative Retail Partnerships Expand Distribution
Beyond its owned online and offline channels, Lenskart has forged over 20 strategic retail partnerships with e-commerce majors like Flipkart, and Myntra as well as national optical chains, hospital chains and pharmacy store networks. Such tie-ups effectively expand Lenskart’s omnichannel distribution footprint to tier 2, and 3 cities leveraging partner infrastructure. This plugs distribution gaps in underserved geographies.
For instance, Lenskart’s collaboration with Essilor provides its lenses at the partner’s 200+ stores. Similarly, Flipkart will host Lenskart’s AR virtual try-on as an integrated eyewear experience on its platform. Myntra also offers select Lenskart frames on its online fashion portal. Lenskart products are also available on online platforms like Amazon and PayTM.
Such partnerships offer partners access to Lenskart’s portfolio of contemporary designs and technological expertise in vision care. In turn Lenskart benefits from embedded presence within high-traffic marketplaces. This exposure helps convert more first-time eyewear buyers into repeat omnichannel customers over time through superior product quality and after-sales support.
Strategic Vertical Integration Makes Quality Eyewear Affordable
The omnichannel distribution expansion strategy is well complemented by Lenskart’s early investments into building integrated manufacturing capabilities.
Setting up its own state-of-the-art factories for lens and frame manufacture has enabled tighter control over quality parameters while optimizing supply chains and inventory for faster market responsiveness. But more importantly, the backward integration unlocks significant cost advantages that make the final prescription eyewear drastically affordable.
Automated Technology Enables High Volume Quality Lens Manufacturing
Lenskart has invested heavily over the last decade into lens manufacturing infrastructure. Its factories boast advanced equipment and automated technology comparable to the best globally. This delivers mass production capabilities while still maintaining strict quality control adherence – a key driver for affordability.
Some salient aspects of Lenskart’s lens manufacturing might:
- High-capacity production plants spread across North and South India near key metro hubs
- Total installed capacity of over 20 million high-quality lenses per year currently
- Significantly low manufacturing defect rate of just 0.03%
- The high degree of automation ensures speed, precision, consistency & energy optimization
- Stringent quality testing protocols during and post-production
- Capability to produce a wide range of high-performance lenses – Single Vision, Progressive, Office, Polarized, Transition, Chromatic, Anti Reflective, and more across a customized Rx power range
Such scale of investments into lens manufacturing plants provides Lenskart control over a key cost-intensive eyewear component, helping compress end-consumer prices.
Inhouse Frame Production Brings Design Agility at Lower Cost
Eyewear frames constitute 50% value of prescription glasses. Lenskart brings the same vertical integration philosophy to fashion more affordable frames leveraging intelligent manufacturing.
The company has set up several factories with advanced technology to develop frames in contemporary styles using eco-friendly materials like acetate, TR90, and stainless steel. This expands style diversity across price points.
Full control over conceptualizing and production also allows faster refresh of designs inspired by the latest global trends. This brings more variety mirroring consumer taste.
Automation allows the production of over 1000+ frame designs every year – from classic aviators, and cat eye to modern geometric patterns across the choice of colors. Integrating frame manufacturing helps shrink the new design introduction cycle from months to weeks – accelerating style launches to retain consumer interest.
The agile frame production is aligned with lean manufacturing practices using sustainable materials, minimizing waste generation in the ecosystem while protecting margins.
Solving Non-Adoption by Lowering Barriers
Despite a massive addressable consumer base of over 600 million people in India, penetration of vision correction eyewear remains dismally low at just 25%. Significant socio-economic barriers around lack of accessibility, affordability, and awareness have hindered market growth so far.
Lenskart’s experiential omnichannel retail strategy clubbed with scale manufacturing is tackling these adoption barriers with good success so far. Some noteworthy impact dimensions:
Making Eyewear Experience Aspirational Yet Accessible
The offline stores allow first-hand experience for consumers to discover the stylish and beneficial value of upgrading eyewear even without immediate need. The e-commerce platform opens up newer geographies while retail partnerships enhance distribution footprint.
Competitive Pricing Drives Affordability
Vertical integration helps compress manufacturing and supply chain costs. Lenskart leverages resulting economies of scale to make prescription lenses up to 40% cheaper and frames nearly 60% lower than offline optics – propelling aspiration conversion and word-of-mouth.
Lenskart offers various schemes to customer at reasonable price or free of cost sometimes. Gold membership and 1+1 Schemes are popular among customers.
Increasing Awareness Through Education
Lens and frame selection involve nuanced technical understanding. Lenskart’s qualified optometrists play a crucial role in simplifying choices for customers during eye tests. The blog also offers useful eyecare information driving smarter consumer decisions.
These efforts are helping educate more people on identifying eye health issues and solutions catalyzing market expansion.
Conclusion
Lenskart’s well-executed omnichannel strategy interwoven with integrated manufacturing capabilities provides eyewear consumers with more flexibility and personalization. This has already established Lenskart as the leading eyewear retailer in India.
The brand has reached 10 million customers so far, but more impactfully, brought vision correction solutions within accessible range for more Indians. Its successful technological blueprint combines global best practices with Indian value.
