Eyewear brand focuses on giving back
Westport business owner puts a philanthropic twist on BOGO concept
Eyeglasses.com founder Mark Agnew said he wants to change the meaning of buyonegetone.
“When you look at those (promotions), raising the awareness for it is important, and it’s really good, but most of the time it’s being used as a marketing device because the actual thing that’s being given away is of pretty low value,” said the Westport resident, who recently launched Pi Wear brand, a charitable effort he said he hopes will help people who need corrective vision surgery. Agnew recently partnered with Californiabased Sankara Eye Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on eliminating curable blindness in India, to bring Pi Wear to life. The nonprofit funds and performs approximately 160,000 free eye surgeries conducted in nine hospitals throughout India each year, according to a press release.
For each customer who buys a pair of Pi Wear glasses or sunglasses, which cost about $75, Eyeglasses.com will pay for cataract surgery for someone through Sankara.
The organization provides cataract surgery in rural India at a cost of $30 per surgery. The same surgery in can range between $3,600 and $6,000 an eye in the United States, according to industry experts.
“At $30 an eye, I began to think ‘what if I can create an eyewear line with a buy one and donate one formula, but the donation is much more significant,’” Agnew said. “I want to change the conversation around that and get the consumers thinking about the quality of social giveback and not just the existence of a social giveback.”
To date, Agnew said, Eyeglasses.com has funded more than 700 surgeries through the sale of Pi Wear eyeglasses and sunglasses.
According to Agnew, the genesis of his initiative is rooted in his own experience with blindness.
At 26 years old, Agnew was mugged. He was hit with a stick
and left permanently blind in one eye.
Now 58, Agnew said the experience ultimately sparked a career shift that led him to start Eyeglasses.com in 2000. The online shop for eyeglasses, prescription lenses and sunglasses was designed to make purchasing eye
glasses easier and less costly.
“At the time, it did have a major impact on my life, but that impact continued to evolve and develop,” he said. “It’s not something that happened immediately, but it’s more of a life path that is continuously developing, and it’s kind of built up to this.”