Travis Rush, Sightbox founder.
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PORTLAND, Ore.—The startup company Sightbox, which offers a membership-based supply service for contact lens wearers, has raised $1.8 million in a seed-round of funding.

In addition, Sightbox said it expects to generate “new business for the more than 50,000 local optometry businesses across the U.S.” via its menu of services, which includes scheduling eye exams for its members.

Travis Rush, a 15-year veteran of the industry and founder of the new company, said he expects Sightbox will provide an “alternative to established vision care plans by bundling eye exams with an annual supply of contact lenses and extending a payment plan to customers that allows them to pay over time,” according to the statement.

“Sightbox not only encourages our members to visit their eye doctor once a year, we actually schedule the appointment for them,” Rush said. “Hopefully, we will be saving a lot of unnecessary eye damage and medical bills in the process. We want to make Sightbox the simplest possible experience for people who wear contacts.”

The Sightbox service currently works like this: for an annual membership fee of $39 per month, Sightbox schedules a members appointment with an ECP, pays the doctor’s office “for the full price of your exam and fitting,” receives the contact lens prescription from the doctor’s office, and then ship’s the member’s lenses in its subscription box throughout the year, according to the Sightbox website. The company said it expects to offer membership enrollment options through employers “alongside other more traditional health and vision benefits,” and that the new funding will assist in this expansion.

Rogue Venture Partners, an Oregon-based venture capital fund, led the recent funding round, and Nashville-based Jumpstart Foundry also participated in the financing, according to the statement. Other participants included Portland Seed Fund, an early-stage venture fund focused on Pacific Northwest companies, and VistaRiver Healthcare Solutions, a comprehensive health care service provider.