NEW YORK—As Warby Parker Inc. (NYSE: WRBY) disclosed during the release of its third quarter financial results results last week, the company has now opened its second Rx ophthalmic laboratory in Las Vegas, Nev., to better serve customers in the Western part of the U.S. Dave Gilboa, co-founder and co-CEO of the company, told VMAIL, "Our Las Vegas Lab soft-opened in early September and will allow us to more efficiently serve our West Coast customers resulting in a higher Net Promoter Score and faster turnaround time."

The 69,000 square foot facility is anticipated to predominantly take care of orders placed west of Texas and the company said it plans to support over 130 new jobs within its first two years of operation.

Warby Parker's first Rx laboratory opened in Sloatsburg, N.Y. in 2016 and expanded to its current 52,000 square foot size and a team of 120 one and a half years later. Employees at the lab are part of the customer experience and supply chain teams at Warby, who are overseen by Stephanie Hart, SVP operations.
 
Neil Blumenthal, co-founder and co-CEO, told VMAIL, "We’re excited that a portion of our Las Vegas facility will be dedicated to our Customer Experience (CX) team, which is committed to providing remarkable customer experiences to customers interacting with us digitally. Most of our customer experience team members are located in Nashville, and some in New York; opening a third CX office will also allow us to better serve customers across multiple time zones."

Warby Parker allocates orders across their lab network based on a number of factors like geography, workload, product type, and inventory. If customers are ordering from the West Coast, whether in-store or online, their order may come from the new lab in Las Vegas. Warby Parker, which sells eyeglasses and contact lenses online and via 150 stores in the U.S. and Canada, declined to provide exact details but the company has said that it currently processes more than half of the glasses that they ship out to customers through their own two optical labs.

Gilboa said, "In addition to our two in-house optical labs, we are also excited to continue working with our network of third-party labs. Opening this second in-house optical lab in Las Vegas will allow us to more efficiently scale our supply chain operations across the board and further vertically integrate as Warby Parker continues to grow."

Severe drought and concurrent water restrictions in the Las Vegas Valley are being taken into account at the new lab. Warby has implemented low-flow faucets and toilets, as well as edging machines that reuse water from the air conditioning system, to minimize the lab’s water usage (something done in the Sloatsburg lab as well).
 
In Warby Parker's S-1 filing with the SEC, the company is defined as a public benefit corporation and "has been designated a Certified B Corp and elected to have our social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency assessed against the proprietary criteria established by B Lab, an independent nonprofit organization. In order to be designated as a Certified B Corporation, we are required to take a comprehensive and objective assessment of our positive impact on society and the environment." This is reported yearly in Warby Parker's Impact report, posted on the company's site here.

The inside environment of the Las Vegas Warby Parker lab features the company's signature blue colors, from cerulean- and cobalt-tinted glass panels to a custom-designed reception desk in navy and white marble. The facility also features original artwork, including several murals created just for the lab by Las Vegas-based artist Pretty Done. 

Warby Parker released its third fiscal quarter results last Friday, as VMAIL reported.