Eyewear retailer Warby Parker opening first Pittsburgh store in East Liberty
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Another nationwide retailer has picked East Liberty for its first Pittsburgh post.
Warby Parker — the vintage-inspired eyewear company that started online in 2010 -— will open soon at 6014 Penn Ave. It’s next door to the men’s clothing store Bonobos, another e-commerceturned-brick-and-mortar concept that opened here in June.
It’s the brainchild of Neil Blumenthal, Andrew Hunt, David Gilboa and Jeffrey Raider -— four Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania students at the time. One of them lost his glasses on a backpacking trip and couldn’t afford to replace them, so he spent the first semester of graduate school squinting and straining to see. This prompted them to find a way to make and sell designer eyewear at more student-friendly price points.
On average, frames start at $95. The name comes from two characters mentioned in a journal by Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac.
Warby Parker now operates 50plus locations across the country, plus two in Canada.
In Pittsburgh, the store is designed to look like “an optical library,” complete with light-oak shelves lined with eyeglasses and sunglasses, rich brass detailing and a marble “reference desk.” Among the colorful book displays are titles by independent publishers and Warby Parker’s own publication with Hachette Books, “50 Ways to Lose Your Glasses.” Illustrator Anna Wray of the United Kingdom brightened the space with a library-themed mural in the store and on the building’s exterior above the entrance.
The East Liberty store will be stocked with exclusive, limited-edition Downing in English oak sunglasses with flash mirrored Pacific blue frames. Customers check out on tablets using a “Point Of Everything” (or P.O.E. -— a nod to macabre and mystery master Edgar Allan Poe) purchasing system. Prescription glasses are shipped within days, and nonprescription frames can be taken home on the spot. For those who need more time, associates (which Warby Parker calls “advisors”) can send shoppers a digital overview of frames they liked, along with