All E-Commerce & DTC articles – Page 3
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Article1-800 Contacts puts new vision tech company into orbit
1-800 Contacts, the U.S. direct-to-consumer contact lens company, has announced the creation of a new company focused on providing technologies and services to third parties in the vision sector. The new entity, called Luna Solutions, operates as a separate company held under a common holding company with 1-800 Contacts. The ...
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Opticalia enters e-tail
Opticalia has launched an e-commerce platform. According to a report by Look Vision, the Spanish group seeks through the website to “democratize fashion in the optical market,” in part by providing exclusive online access to such brands as Mango, Pepe Jeans, Pedro del Hierro and Pull&Bear. With the last of ...
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Designer Tom Davies starts selling online
The British eyewear designer Tom Davies has begun selling his eyewear through a web shop called iwearbritain.com. Davies’ designs sell under multiple brands, such as Catch London, for small runs produced in collaboration with artists and influencers, and MD1888, for “heritage” frames. Davies is notable also for his Hollywood work, ...
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Fittingbox launches “diminished reality” technology
Fittingbox, the eyewear virtual try-on specialist, has announced that it would present the second generation of its technology at the next Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January next year. Astutely presented as “diminished reality”, the technology consists in removing the pair of glasses worn by the user ...
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ArticleFast-growing Mykita opens first shop in South America
MYKITA, the upscale independent eyewear brand, announced last month the opening of a new store in Mexico, its first retail location in South America. The opening of the store comes about ten years after MYKITA entered the country. Moritz Krueger, founder, said that Mexico City had come to play an ...
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ArticleWarby Parker sees Q3 sales rise 32%, but remains in the red
Warby Parker, the omnichannel U.S. retailer, booked revenues of $137.4 million in the third quarter, up by 32.0 percent on the year earlier and 45 percent higher than the same period of 2019, but its bottom line remained in the red due to charges associated with its recent public listing ...
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Innovator PortraitSTS develops innovative mobile apps
When the pandemic swept through Europe, Brussels-based eyewear sales manager Alexandra Macsimov decided to find online solutions. Brick-and-mortar showrooms were shuttered, which impacted customers in two main ways. Firstly, they were prevented from nipping into their local stores to try on different frames before buying…
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Eyemart Express launches click-and-collect service
Eyemart Express, a U.S. optical retail group with over 230 stores across the country, has launched a click-and-collect program with same-day delivery for its customers, Vmail reports. The new system, which has been developed in-house by the company’s IT teams, has been implemented in all the group’s stores, with just ...
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Article1-800 Contacts acquires virtual try-on specialist
1-800 Contacts, the U.S. contact lens specialist, has acquired Ditto, a firm also headquartered in the U.S. that provides virtual try-on systems for eyewear brands and eyewear retailers on- and offline, Vision Monday reports. The terms of the deal, which closed on Aug. 27, 2021, remain under seal, but a ...
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ArticleNew investor and strategic focus on Asia for FittingBox
FittingBox, the French-based provider of virtual try on (VTO) systems and other digital solutions, just announced that JINS, the fast-growing Japanese retail chain, had become a shareholder of the company. The investment by JINS allowed earlier financial investors, mainly French venture capital funds Kreaxi and LBO France that have been ...
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News briefs
New designer eyewear e-commerce platform in Asia
Overcome Creative, the Hong-Kong based publisher of the trade publication V Magazine, has launched last month VMAGASTORE, an e-commerce website to connect independent designer eyewear brands and style-savvy Asian customers. Operating a market place business model, the new platform is currently available in Hong Kong, Mainland China and Taiwan but ...
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Carrera goes DTC in the U.S.
Safilo is taking another step towards its digital transformation with the launch of a new e-commerce platform for its house brand Carrera in the U.S. The launch of the dedicated website, us.carreraworld.com, coincides with the 65th anniversary of the brand. The Carrera direct-to-consumer site is already live and offers an ...
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Safilo launches Blenders Eyewear in the UK & Ireland
Safilo Group has announced the launch of its Blenders Eyewear brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland, its first expansion in Europe after the go-live of the brands’ e-commerce platforms in Canada and Australia in the first quarter of 2021. Safilo said that it chose to start in Europe with ...
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Warby Parker’s new app renews prescriptions for $15
Warby Parker, the U.S. omnichannel retailer, has renamed its Prescription Check smartphone application to Virtual Vision Test, adding the options for customers to renew their eyeglasses and contact lenses’ prescriptions for a $15 fee. Virtual Vision Test app users need to be at least 18 years old and upload their ...
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ArticleJimmy Fairly to boost international business under new ownership
The vertically integrated French eyewear brand Jimmy Fairly is changing hands after its founders, Antonin Chartier and Sacha Bostoni, and the investment fund Experienced Capital, their main financial partner since 2017, agreed to sell a majority stake of the company to the HLD investment fund. Experienced Capital will exit the ...
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ArticleHans Anders to start using new AI tool for style recommendations
Hans Anders will start using STYLE PTTRNS, a style recommendation tool for prescription eyewear created by Eindhoven-based startup PTTRNS.ai, on its Dutch e-commerce website starting July 15. The company’s program is presented as a service to assist online and in-store customers in the time-consuming and often challenging selection of their ...
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News briefs
Cione launches new web portal for members
Cione, one of the leading buying groups in Spain and Portugal, is launching a new shopping website for its 900 members. Called MyShop, the online platform is said to offer a simplified purchase process for opticians, with the integration on a single page of the key information for each frame, ...
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Doctolib opens its platform to French opticians
Doctolib, a private company operating an online platform for booking appointments with healthcare professionals, opened its service to opticians in France last month. In an interview with the French trade magazine L’OL MAG, the company said that the Covid-19 crisis boosted the request for online appointments’ bookings with opticians, mentioning ...
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ArticleShift towards omnichannel in U.S. online eyewear purchase
The Vision Council has released the latest edition of its Internet Influence Report, a research conducted in December 2020 among 4,909 U.S. adult consumers and aimed at measuring the role of internet in their recent eyewear purchases. This edition follows previous reports published in 2017 and 2020 that provide a ...
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ArticleFielmann soft-launches lens fitting app
In the year 2020, despite the Covid-19 crisis and related retail restrictions, online sales of prescription eyewear in Germany stagnated at around one percent of total market sales according to the latest statistics from the national opticians’ association (ZVA). Commenting on this somewhat surprising data in Fielmann’s annual report, Marc ...
