INSIGHTS Finally…Some Insights Shared to Optical By Warby Parker’s Neil Blumenthal By Marge Axelrad Monday, April 20, 2015 12:01 AM I looked it up. According to Dictionary.com, a “lightning rod” is “a person or thing that attracts and absorbs powerful and especially negative or hostile feelings, opinions, etc., thereby diverting such feelings from other targets.” It cites examples, such as “the press secretary is often a lightning rod for the President.” Or, “Packer’s blunt style made him a lightning rod for debate.” The theme of our Vision Monday Global Leadership Summit this year was “Connectivity” and our roster of speakers emphasized the trend and implications for business, for social interaction and our personal lives of The Internet of Things (or, ‘IoT’ as many call it). The pervasiveness of technology is here. When it came to retail and the delivery of vision care, we reasoned, wouldn’t it make sense to invite one of the retailers/e-tailers who had, over the past four years, changed the eyewear conversation among many consumers? Who had garnered enough media coverage (in the general and tech press) to set some kind of PR record and who, was, due to media comments about “greedy middlemen” in the industry, a kind of lightning rod within the eyewear business? At the same time, we thought, this company had found a way to draw attention to the eyewear category in many new high profile ways—via “old school”-meets-tech-world marketing whimsy, including school bus tours and clever annual reports, for unique “library” and print book themes attached to an online eyewear website and, now, a carefully planned expansion of touch-and-feel brick-and-mortar stores. It had forged connectivity to Millennials and other consumers in ways that others had not. To our delight, after years of asking, Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker, agreed to come to our Summit, to speak to the kinds of thinking and strategizing that had guided the company’s growth, answer questions about the future and share some insight—in front of a vision care and eyewear retail audience for the very first time. We hope you check out his comments, along with the insights of other speakers, in our coverage this month. And, rather than instinctively turning away from the lightning rod, we hope you share our view that remaining open to how they view the future is an important competitive guidepost for your own company’s strategic thinking. maxelrad@jobson.com