Oh My Glasses, a company specializing in online eyeglass sales, has entered the market and is experiencing sales growth. We spoke with CEO Tadayasu Kiyokawa about the secret to their success selling prescription eyeglasses, a product often considered difficult to sell online.

--Your online shopping site has grown rapidly since launching in 2011. While there are websites selling eyeglasses as general merchandise, there hasn't been a site like yours that sells prescription eyeglasses. Why hasn't this been possible until now?

The eyeglasses market is not small at 400 billion yen, but it's still smaller than the apparel market. However, even with that, it takes time and effort to determine prescriptions and adjust the lenses when selling eyeglasses, especially online. Furthermore, even major e-commerce companies like Rakuten and Amazon have established online sales systems, but they need to customize them to sell items like eyeglasses. Given the market size and costs, this has made it difficult for major players to enter the market. Conversely, this means there's plenty of room for ventures to enter the market.

So, is there no movement toward online sales within the eyewear industry? Well, the eyewear industry is very slow to adopt ICT, and no one has even considered it. What's more, it's something of an innovation dilemma. That's why we, with our knowledge of the Internet, thought there would be an opportunity if we entered the market and created our own system.

—I see. But isn't just a well-designed system not enough to attract customers?

That's exactly where I felt the power of the Internet. Eyeglasses are a long-tail product. Rather than something selling like hotcakes, various items sell piecemeal from a wide variety. On the other hand, there are many small, individually run stores. This means, simply put, it's difficult to see consumer trends, or to stock the right products on the small shelves. In some stores, second-generation owners still manage inventory by hand, and no one knows what stock they have. However, with e-commerce, you always have access to a variety of data, such as what's selling and what types of people are buying what. Furthermore, this data can now be used in product development.

--Did you feel uncomfortable with the industry structure that places a burden on manufacturers?

I felt there was a bias. The eyewear industry is structured in such a way that retailers have a strong influence, placing a burden on manufacturers. As a result, some manufacturers go bankrupt during recessions. However, this doesn't happen for retailers because of their high profit margins. Manufacturers and craftsmen, feeling that profit margins are getting worse and worse when they operate under retailer control, are starting their own house brands and trying to find new paths. However, sales don't increase that easily, and they don't know what's selling, and they don't have information about end users. In the end, they end up thinking that they can just make various models and increase production of the ones that sell.
But with e-commerce, data is properly accumulated, consumer feedback reaches craftsmen, and they can create better products. I'm proud to say that we've created such a cycle.

—Another thing is that buying eyeglasses online often requires face-to-face interactions, such as eye exams and fittings, which can seem like a high hurdle. What do you think about that?

Indeed, there was a period of trial and error at the beginning. But I think we're now at a time when we're redefining the traditional way of buying eyeglasses. It should be possible to choose your glasses online and then, when you have time, go to a nearby shop to have the correct lenses fitted. With our affiliated stores now numbering 1,130, the practice of carefully selecting your glasses at home and then having them adjusted at an affiliated store is gradually becoming more common. We want to redefine the traditional way of buying eyeglasses and the nature of stores. Perhaps in the future, customers will be able to select products using an iPad in stores, which would eliminate inventory risk for stores.

And I think that redefining the sales method in this way will also improve eyeglass manufacturing. That's because current eyeglasses are made with the assumption that they will be sold in retail stores. To go even deeper, in the eyewear industry, eye exams and frame adjustments are the raison d'être of retailers, and they have a strong influence. Therefore, manufacturers tend to create products that are easy to adjust based on the characteristics of the retailers they do business with. So, for retailers that can't do adjustments, they create products that don't need adjustments. In this industry, when people talk about "customers," they're referring to retailers, and I was surprised to see how few people focus on the end user. --That won't produce anything that sells. Yes. So if you want to develop better products, you have to do it the way Oh My Glasses does. Create products that users want, create a lineup, and properly communicate that to the makers. If the makers receive feedback and make improvements, the products will improve. Also, the eyeglass production process is based on a division of labor, and there are many inefficient aspects. This is why prices are high, but from our perspective, we feel that prices can be lowered by streamlining the process. So we're going to get involved in areas where we think we can make things more efficient, and even get involved in product development.

--So, for manufacturers, has this been the first time they've been told to go that far?

I don't think so. Buying is usually done based on intuition, like, "This looks good, this is cool," but we don't do that. We base production decisions on sales data. That's rare in the fashion industry, isn't it? I think a lot of people in the fashion industry talk based on intuition. I think that's important, but we also believe that we shouldn't compete on that basis.

Continued on 2/2. Scheduled to be uploaded at 8:00 PM today, August 2nd.