When it comes to prescription glasses & sunglasses, it is well renowned to be expensive.
One of the most common topics I've heard from my friends and family is "I really need new glasses, but I just can't afford it now". Many other times people say to me that it would be nice to interchange their glasses like their outfits, but they just can't justify paying 400-800€ for them!
I guess at some point, we all assumed glasses always costed this much... as many of these giant glasses companies have monopolized the market making us pay a significant mark up, they seemed to have overly complicated the business when a little industry knowledge takes you a long way. Unfortunately, many of the local optical shops had to follow these prices to sustain themselves too.
Looking back to when I went to a BBQ on a Hot Summer’s Day in Hong Kong, we started talking about sunglasses and how ridiculously expensive it is, Hong Kong’s August summers…trust me you need good sunnies! At the time I was still wearing my faithful sunnies which I had for over 7 years, if only I had a few more to pair with my outfits without hurting my wallet at the same time.
While on this topic, I said why can't we make prescription glasses cheaper?
My good friend, and now business partner agrees strongly too. When we began to think about why glasses are so expensive, we couldn't justify the reasons! So, in the end we thought there were only few reasons why glasses are so costly;
1. Companies over charge a lot to make huge profits
2. Companies have huge cost structures (think of the F1 sponsors)
3. There are way too many middlemen before the product reaches the customer.
We acted on our instincts and began contacting factories ourselves to understand the Optical industry and found that all 3 points mentioned above are the key contributors to overpriced glasses, reading glasses and sunglasses. We knew right away we have a chance to disrupt the optical market, although we knew it's going to be an upstream battle. We are determined to take on the corporations as people deserve better during the pandemic, why do we need to pay 400€ when it should only cost you 50-70€?
We began to build on our business and strategies, finding that we can make a reasonable profit and still give our customers a well-priced product. We also discussed how annoying it is when we do an online purchase but by the end of the transaction, it has tripled in price! And yes this will sound super hypocritical coming from a competitor. How many times have you seen a ‘cheap flight ticket’ that they promote but ends in doubling or tripling their originally targeted price? At Magyia we want to eliminate that trap to our customers.
When the 3 founders began Magyia, we used our own savings to start this company. We work from home, we keep our inventory low and kept our operations lean but well-tailored. Most of our product models are actually close family and friends as we want to portray a brand that everyone can relate to! We knew if we need to keep for you the good prices, we need to tend to everything ourselves. So we source our own factories, we cut our middlemen and your order is delivered directly to your doorstep after our personal inspections.
A little industry secret is that many factories only sell their products through an agent. These agent takes a 100-300% profit and sells to an importer whom they sell to distributors and finally the optical shop who in turns sells it to you. Everyone on the way take a nice profit during this process.
Now you understand why it's usually so expensive… Most importantly, now you understand why we can offer high quality, fashionable eyewear at an affordable price!
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