At Warby Parker, we are customer-first and channel-agnostic. We aim to meet the customer wherever and whenever they want to shop, whether that’s online, in store, or even at home. Glasses are an incredibly personal accessory; as customers look toward purchasing their next pair, we find that there is significant interplay across online and offline channels—browsing online might lead to a visit in one of our more than 145 stores and end with a purchase via our e-commerce app.
A customer journey that starts in store can end with a purchase online and vice versa, with more than 70% of our customers interacting with our website or mobile app before placing an order. While we allocate resources and set priorities to scale all of our channels, we define channel mix within the context of our business as the channel in which the customer places their order. We define our channel mix as the percentage of sales that are completed between our two channels, which are either: (1) e-commerce, either through our website or mobile app (considered “e-commerce channel”) and (2) in our retail stores (considered “retail channel”). Our e-commerce channel serves to complement our retail footprint and offers additional convenience to our customers, which leads to a significant amount of interplay between the channels in a customer’s journey.
WHY IT MATTERS: 2021 eCommerce shopping holiday continues to move from in-store to on-line shopping with covid-related impacts still apparent: high demand, high prices, inventory shortage and BOPIS curb-side pickups are to be expected.