EXCLUSIVE: Warby Parker retail and experience chief talks store expansion
Warby Parker has reached a brick-and-mortar milestone.
The eyewear brand opened its 300th retail store on July 5 with a new location at the Brookfield Place mixed-use shopping center and office building in lower Manhattan, not far from where the company opened its first store more than a decade ago. The new store in the “high-visibility” location offers Warby Parker’s full range of optical and sun products, including the latest summer 2025 collection, third-party contact lenses, and in-store eye exams.
In an interview with Chain Store Age, Sandy Gilsenan, Warby Parker’s chief retail and customer experience officer, spoke about how the brand has evolved its store model and where it plans to expand next.
Starting as a digitally-native brand, how has Warby Parker been able to succeed in the competitive world of physical retail?
We launched online in 2010 with a mission to make designer-quality eyewear affordable and accessible. After launch, we quickly realized that customers were equally as interested in experiencing the brand in person as they were online. With this insight, we opened our first office and showroom, which gave us the confidence to open pop-up shops, and then our first permanent retail store in SoHo in 2013. We’ve seen success in maintaining a customer-first mindset and have designed our stores and shopping experiences to meet our customers where and how they want to shop.
Are there any future openings Warby Parker has planned for this year outside of store #300? If so, where?
We’re on track to open 45 new stores in 2025, with Brookfield Place marking our 300th location across new and existing markets in the United States and Canada. This year, we will also introduce our first wave of Warby Parker at Target shop-in-shops set to initially debut in Willowbrook, Ill.; Bloomington, Minn.; Brick, N.J., Columbus, Ohio; and Exton, Pa.
In terms of market selection, how does the brand choose where to open new stores?
Warby Parker continues to enter new and existing markets where we see high online penetration, whether that's malls, streetfronts, or lifestyle, hybrid and grocery-anchored centers, with an unwavering focus on meeting our customers where they are. Importantly, every store is built with its community in mind, from offerings to design, ensuring each location feels rooted in its market while delivering consistent Warby Parker service and aesthetic.
How has Warby Parker's store format changed since its physical debut? How have consumer trends influenced these changes?
Since opening our first store in 2013, we’ve evolved our store format to continue to meet customer needs. Early experiments, including pop‑ups and a mobile school bus showroom, helped us learn what customers valued most in physical retail. This led to our signature store format – a library-inspired interior with open-frame shelving, cozy seating, full-length mirrors, and community-driven artwork.
As customer needs have changed, so have our stores. Today, nearly all locations also offer comprehensive eye exams and a full suite of vision care services. We’ve incorporated digital tools like Virtual Try‑On and Virtual Vision Test into the in-store journey via our point of sale, which we call Point of Everything. This allows us to support both speed and personalization – for example, we can quickly share information between Customer Experience and Retail teams like what frames a customer favorites on the website, what types of glasses they like, and so on.
[READ MORE: Warby Parker personalizes frame recommendations with AI]
In response to rising consumer demand for both convenience and experience, we continue to make each store feel fun, tech-forward, and distinctively Warby Parker.
