I see an independent ophthalmologist. He stocks both Luxottica and non-Luxottica frames. Every time, they and I blindly select frames with a bias against Luxottica. Every time, I choose the Luxottica frame. Somehow, that company has cornered the market for decently-built frames for non-hipsters.
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?
Luxottica 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.
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.
Because the US has not believed in anti-trust regulations in some time, especially for snakes who don't hesitate to pay (I don't remember if it was Last Week Tonight or Adam Ruins Everything which played clips of the Luxotica CEO, that bloke talks and behaves exactly as if he'd order a pallet of cement blocks and ask for a discount).
Did Oakley have their retail outlets at that time? Or did that come after the Luxottica purchase?
When I bought my Oakleys last year, most of my research was by browsing in the two Oakley retail stores in my city. Some was from browsing at surfwear stores (as far as I know, Luxottica don't own Rip Curl or City Beach).
A small portion of my shopping research was on my (Luxottica-owned) optometrist's website, but I ended up buying from the Oakley Factory Outlet store.
Interesting. I never heard that. I have been a big Oakley fan for a long time because I felt they did make nice lenses and sold them when I worked at a running store in college.
Competitors have mostly focused on alternative or direct-to-consumer distribution. So instead of picking out frames at your optician's office (where everything is Luxottica), you just get your prescription and then either go online or go to a store that direct-sells non-Luxottica.
Same 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?
My 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
Perhaps 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.
My 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.
Prices aren't determined solely on the supply side.
Patterns that people are willing to pay more for are more expensive because there is more money chasing them, not because they are more expensive to create.
That's probably a component of the right answer, but you'd think that the suppliers of the less valuable patterns would adjust quickly and emulate the more valuable ones.
Quite often they are the same suppliers, even if the branding is different; the reason they produce both is that the “better” patterns aren't universally preferred, they are just what is preferred by people with more money to spend, and the other patterns are preferred to people with less money to spend. And there is considerable money spent making sure that those differences exist and evolve over time; because it drives spending and market segmentation.
Prodesign (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.
I 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)
I'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...
i mean... maybe they got so good at marketing that they have succeeded in incepting the concept of "decently built frames for non hipsters" in your mind to be the stuff they produce?
thats kinda sorta the whole point of marketing a branded commodity product...
Even if so, the point of blinding is that it's not the brand per se, but the actual design. And unless they have intellectual property defending the design, there should be nothing keeping a competitor from copying it.
The problem may be the copying. If what the cheap brands do is copying the expensive brands while trying to subtly change it to avoid getting sued (trade dress/copyright/design patent), the changes are likely to make the design worse in some way.
