NYLP: Welcome to the New York Launch Pod, the New York Press Club award-winning podcast, highlighting the most interesting new startups, businesses, and openings in the New York City area. I’m your host and New York attorney Hal Coopersmith and in this episode we speak to Heidi Hertel and Gabriel Schlumberger, co-founders of Fitz. And Fitz makes custom eyeglasses for kids and adults alike through their revolutionary technology which, get this, combines 3D printing and face scanning technology, the Face ID found in your iPhone.
Gabriel: My son is perhaps unusual in this case. I think we’ve gone through about 10 pairs of glasses in the last four years. And ultimately kids can learn to be pretty responsible with their glasses, but it does impede them from being kids. So we wanted things that are really play ready and it is not just for kids, but for anybody.
NYLP: In this episode we dive into how this incredible technology works, why kids and parents alike love their new frames, and a whole lot more. But before we go to the interview, if you haven’t already, remember to sign up for our monthly newsletter for unique content and insights and please subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast listening app. And if you want to purchase a pair of Fitz frames yourself go to fitzframes.com and use code FITZ-NYLAUNCH for 20% off. So, with that, let’s go to the interview!
NYLP: So glasses have been around for a long time, but you are doing something different. What are you doing?
Heidi: We are 3D printing glasses for kids using an app that we’ve developed that uses facial mapping to take measurements and create custom glasses for kids.
NYLP: So there is a lot to unpack there. 3D printing glasses for kids using an app. Let’s start with 3D printing. People may have an idea about what 3D printing is, or they may not have any idea what 3D printing is. What is 3D printing and how are you using it?
Gabriel: So, I think people’s notion of 3D printing is sort of a thing that spits out plastic in a hobbyist or maker space. That’s not quite what we’re doing. We’re actually using additive manufacturing which is really a subset of 3D printing to make a finished consumer good. So, these glasses are sort of indistinguishable from glasses you would buy that would be conventionally manufactured. The big advantage being that each frame is custom fit to the individual’s face. But these are certainly very expensive and fairly substantial machines. And they print a product that the layer height is at about a 10th of a micron or it’s about 10 microns. And so it comes out feeling very legitimate, it doesn’t have the layer lines or the flaws you would expect in 3D printing.
NYLP: Indistinguishable from what’s out there on the market. What is additive manufacturing?
Gabriel: So additive manufacturing is really taking the tools of 3D printing. Most manufacturing is subtractive or it’s injection molded. So for plastics especially, you build a very expensive, complex metal mold and then you shoot hot plastic into it. That’s the way that a lot of consumer goods are made. It doesn’t really make sense unless you’re going to be doing 10,000 units of something because it’s expensive to cut the mold, it’s expensive to set up the line. And certainly if each individual pair is going to be different, it doesn’t make sense to do it that way. Most glasses are made either through injection molding or through cutting acetate. In our case, because we wanted to have each pair of frames individually fitted perfectly to the individual face, there really wasn’t any other choice other than doing it with 3D printing, we looked at all the various different technologies that were out there that were just coming to maturity and finally settled on selective laser centering, which is a laser to melt a very thin layer of plastic and then build up over time. It takes about 12 hours to make a batch of glasses. And the net result is something that is actually a very real finished consumer good. It has actually better mechanical properties than conventional manufacturing.
NYLP: So we talked about 3D printing and customization and another element to your story is an app. How does that work? Because now we’re talking about customizing eyeglasses based off of an iPhone or a smartphone app.
Heidi: Well, we all know that kids use any excuse they can to get their hands on a phone. So, we’re really excited to let parents give them the opportunity to do that. And we’ve designed an experience that’s supposed to last five minutes. Our customers have been taking even less time than that. And basically what you do is you download the app, you use our virtual try on to check out all of our styles and colors. We’ve got eight colors and six styles, and then you do your measuring. So we use facial mapping through the iPhone camera to take the thousands of measurements of your face and you then enter your prescription or you can send it to us later and you check out through Apple Pay and we deliver the glasses to you in about a week. That’s the goal.
NYLP: So facial mapping through the iPhone, you’re able to generate glasses through that? That’s something that’s possible?
Gabriel: It really was a convergence of technology. I think that this is a company you couldn’t have created three, four years ago. But now everybody has a fairly powerful camera in their pocket. And so we’re able to take the underlying technology, use it in a way that hasn’t really been done before. And then it allows us to get sub-millimeter resolution, which particularly for kids is pretty important to be able to measure the nuance of their face. And then we’re able to match that in our back end fitting system. We’re actually using some tools out of computer animation that actually manipulates the frames in such a way that still preserves the aesthetic integrity but custom fits the glasses to the kid’s face.
NYLP: So this is a company that you couldn’t have founded three to four years ago. How did you come up with this idea based off of what was out there in the market? iPhone camera, eyeglasses, 3D printing. How did you connect those dots?
Gabriel: Heidi really has been living this problem for multiple years. And Heidi actually started the company a long, long time ago trying to find a better solution to really solve glasses. And it’s not just a question of better product and better glasses, it’s the whole experience. We’re really trying to solve the whole experience of getting and keeping glasses on your kid’s face. And she had a notion that the technology would eventually catch up. And it almost has.
NYLP: It almost has?
Heidi: Yeah, I mean, well, it was important to me to make the product in the United States, and everyone I talked to said, you’ll never be able to do that. It’s going to be too expensive. Especially with the varieties that I wanted to offer for families. I wanted to make sure that this was a company that did something different and to me it just kept coming back to fit. If the glasses don’t fit correctly, the kids aren’t going to wear them. So that’s really where the solution, the 3D printing, came from was it was the only way we could do this economically in the sizes and varieties that we really needed to.
NYLP: You were saying that you had a problem with the glasses purchasing experience and we know that Luxottica controls a large percentage in the market and then Warby Parker stepped in to make the experience better. What was missing from the experience from Luxottica, from Warby Parker that you were struggling with?
Heidi: Well first it was a convenience factor. Usually when you buy glasses, you have to do it right when you leave the doctor’s office, when your child’s eyes are still dilated and they’re miserable and you may be also, or you need to go all over town to different stores because glasses are sold at stores really for adults mostly. So when you go into a store 90 to 95% of what you find there is going to be for adults. And then there’s a couple small little side shelves for kids. And so we really wanted to solve for that first of all, just making it easier to buy glasses. And then we wanted to solve for the choice issue. Most glasses come in two sizes and that means you’re basically choosing between a small and a large. So the same glasses, that’re supposed to fit a three year old, are supposed to fit a seven year old, and then ages eight and up is the other size. So that’s something that nobody else has really solved for in the kids market yet as well.
NYLP: And Warby Parker wasn’t doing direct to consumer for kids?
Heidi: Correct.
Gabriel: I think that there were two things in the market that really drive it. One that kids are a smaller market, smaller volume. Even though about 25% of kids actually need some sort of vision correction and 100% of kids probably need a pair of sunglasses. But my son, we found out he needed glasses. I didn’t grow up wearing glasses and we got glasses. They didn’t fit all that well. They were really expensive. He didn’t like wearing them and he said that they gave him a headache. And over the course of the first year, we, I think got four different pairs of glasses because he’s a kid and he would break them or lose them or inconveniently grow. And so it’s really the experience of you’re not just buying one pair of glasses, you’re buying multiple pairs of glasses over time. That really is, it’s hard on kids. It’s hard on parents. There was a sort of tragic thing where my son, when he was in kindergarten, he told his teacher that he could no longer go on the monkey bars because he wore glasses and he was afraid that he was going to break them. And one of the big things we’re really striving for with the company is to make glasses a little bit less precious and no kid should feel impeded from being a kid because they happen to wear glasses.
Heidi: And with my kids, they really identify strongly with their glasses. So when they draw themselves, they draw themselves with their exact pair of glasses, same color, same shape. And we found over and over again that when something happens to them, like Gabe said, there was no replacement, you couldn’t get them anymore. They were discontinued. So it was really important to me to also develop a process where you could always get the glasses that you want, no matter what.
NYLP: You’ve found this hole in the marketplace glasses for kids, you come up with this idea of marrying the technology of an app to 3D printing. What was it like developing styles for glasses because that had been done and particularly as you customize them, how does that work?
Heidi: So that was something I was really excited to work on. So we have a couple of advisers. One of them is David Gonzales who was at Fred Segal Eyes for a long time. He’s been fitting people for about 20 years. So he really helped us define the styles that we were looking for to bring the collection together and to refine them, to make them flattering for little faces. So we did a lot. We spent a lot of time, we want people to see the faces behind the frames, not just bulky glasses. So in order to do that, we softened, you know, aspects of glasses that can really block the face. So we made certain angles softer. We lightened up the bridge a little bit and we made them so that you can actually see the person behind the frame.
Gabriel: The amazing thing also is that with our system, you can fit any style to any face. So in a lot of ways you’re confined, especially because kids have more difference in face morphology. But it’s true with adults too. You’re really confined to the types of styles that fit your face more so than the types of styles that you actually think look best or you would want to wear. And so the thing that we noticed is that people are freed up to get the kind of glasses they want. My son wanted a sort of a higher sort of a wayfarer style. His face just doesn’t fit that way. And so he always ended up with sort of Harry Potter like glasses. And after we ran his measurements, I thought, first of all, there’s some errors in the measurement system. It turns out no, he just needs about 17 degrees of pantoscopic tilt, which is the tilt on the front of the glasses. Our system actually can accommodate that. You can’t buy a pair of glasses with more than about five or six degrees of pantoscopic tilt. And so he ends up getting to wear the style of frame that he wants and that he could not wear in conventional manufactured glasses.
Heidi: And we also wanted to get away from the traditional definition of what frame fits your face. So instead of this idea that you’ve got around face, you wear this frame, you got a square face, you wear this one, we throw you right into the virtual try on so that you try everything out. And then maybe you fall in love with a frame you might not have otherwise.
NYLP: You talk about how they’re designed for children and meeting children’s needs. But what element in addition to customization for a face, do children actually need?
Heidi: Durability is really important in children’s glasses. My kids have gone through so many glasses, we’ve broken them several times and we really wanted to solve for that, especially with the hinge. So when kids glasses break, they often break there. And so we’ve developed a snap fit hinge, which basically means that there’s no screws, there’s no extra parts, there’s no metal pieces. And if something happens, if the kid gets hit with a ball or they fall down or a younger sibling snatches the frames from off their face the arm or the temple just pops off and you’re able to put it right back in and the kid can just keep on going.
NYLP: And how often are kids breaking their glasses? I have to imagine a lot.
Heidi: How many would you say kids go through a year?
Gabriel: 30, 40. My son is perhaps unusual in this case. I think we’ve gone through about 10 pairs of glasses in the last four years. And ultimately kids can learn to be pretty responsible with their glasses, but it does impede them from being kids. So we wanted things that are really play ready and it is not just for kids, but for anybody. If you’re on vacation, you break your glasses, best case scenario, you’re taping them up. Worst case scenario…
Heidi: Ruined your vacation.
Gabriel: You’ve ruined your vacation.
Heidi: Yeah, we’ve used crazy glue, tape, safety pins when we’re really in a pinch. So, we are really hoping that as Gabe said, this is a method that will really prevent breakages and the material itself is actually more durable than standard acetate as well. It’s more flexible. It heats easier and it’s just an overall better material.
NYLP: And how does this hinge work if it’s so revolutionary that no one’s thought of this?
Heidi: So it’s all 3D printed in, it’s a ball and socket hinge that just fits together.
Speaker 3: Like a shoulder? Like my shoulder? I remember from anatomy is a ball and socket.
Gabriel: It makes less noise than my shoulder does. It’s especially designed so that it actually locks in when the glasses are on the face and then pops off a little bit more easily or pops in and out a little bit more easily at a 45 degree angle. And then locks in when they’re closed as well. It’s something you could really only do with 3D printing. You couldn’t injection mold something like this.
NYLP: Well, I was going to get to the virtual try on because I played around with it a little bit. How does that work for someone who hasn’t seen the app? What’s that experience like?
Gabriel: Again, to the point of we are trying to solve glasses overall and we’re trying to make the whole experience easy, fun and fast. So you take your app, you download the app and the first thing you do is you can try on our different styles. So with a front facing camera, it actually overlays the glasses on your face. You can try all of our six different styles and eight different colors. You can try them in sunglasses, you can try them in clear glasses. And then once you’ve picked that and you press your add to cart button, you go through a measurement process, it takes about 30 seconds and then you go through checkout. And so from the whole thing, you know, we’ve had people do it in under two minutes. On average it takes about three and a half minutes. But the interesting thing is that since we’ve launched, we’ve seen, we’ve had over 60,000 try on experiences thus far. So people keep going back even after they’ve ordered the glasses, they’ll keep coming back trying on different styles of glasses and it’s kind of a neat and fun experience.
NYLP: And you talked about making glasses less precious. How much are you pricing your glasses for?
Heidi: We are starting them at $95 for the lens and the frame. And we’re also really excited about our membership plan, which basically covers you for glasses for the year. And with that it’s $185 starting at and you get two pairs of glasses and then throughout the year you have unlimited frames. All you pay for after that is the shipping and the lenses.
NYLP: And you’re able to do the flexible spending, HSA.
Heidi: Yes.
NYLP: So Gabe talked about how easy it is to purchase glasses through the app, how you want to cater it to children, which is great. And children want to wear glasses. But something that comes to my mind is do we want children to be able to buy a $95 item at the press of a button, even if they’re having fun. And maybe there’s a gamification element to it you want to have children engage with, but at the same time there’s real money involved. And so you want both of those things, but it seems like a fine line to walk.
Gabriel: So to actually check out, you need a parent’s pass code or a parent’s face. So we made it abundantly clear that you actually can’t, the kids themselves can’t finalize the purchase. But honestly that was also one of the reasons we started the membership program was because kids inevitably are going to lose, break or just are gonna need another pair of glasses or their prescription is going to change. The other interesting thing about having kids in through our Beta program, you actually see that their faces do grow. We’ve taken measurements of Heidi’s kids and my kids over the course of about a year and it’s amazing how quickly they grow and how differently they grow. Like their bridge might expand earlier than their temples or their face width. And so it really does, they don’t necessarily grow uniformly. But you really need glasses when you need glasses.
Heidi: And we’ve also seen how their taste changes, right? And their preferences. So it’s really nice that you no longer have to choose with our program, your school picture glasses, you know, you can change it up throughout the year and you can even change the temples with the faces so that you’ve got different contrast in colors.
NYLP: So you’re in the glasses selling business and you have a subscription plan which you talked about, but one of the things that you alluded to is that children’s faces change over time, which is probably something that no one has ever thought about and has the data that you have access to, how often will children need to change their glasses in addition to just changing styles for fun?
Gabriel: Even if parents haven’t thought about it, they’ve experienced it. And for the most part, people end up buying oversized glasses that eventually the kid grows into and then by the time they get rid of the glasses, they are way too small for them. And so, the American Society of Pediatric Ophthalmologists suggests that you should be refitted to your glasses every six months or so. For us it’s super convenient. You can just take your measurements, you can actually hold up the phone in front of your glasses to see if they’re actually fitting correctly and because it’s easy and because it’s at a reasonable economic price, especially if you have our membership, there’s no impediment to getting a new pair of glasses. And so you should always have glasses that actually fit you really, really well.
NYLP: So it also seems like you’re a fast moving company. You married the technology between Face ID and 3D printing shortly after the iPhone X came out for Face ID, which was 2017. But not all phones that are out in the market have Face ID. Do you kind of have the struggle that you may be a little bit too early in the market or that your timing’s right? I find it so interesting that you’re so early in the market, but also it could be maybe too early.
Heidi: I think we’re taking advantage of this moment. You know, where the two technologies can be married together and we’re really excited to get in front of families. I’m popping up all over the place, whether it’s on the sidewalks of my neighborhood or you know, partnerships like today’s with Sag Mercantile. I think we’re at the right place at the right time and we’re working on different variations of the app and we’re going to get there shortly. But I think we’re really excited to be where we are and to share the technology. And I think families that we’ve talked to are super excited and want to be a part of it.
NYLP: Well, I want to press you on that a little bit because I love Fitz. I love the concept behind it, but I don’t have a Face ID phone at this point and I eventually will get one soon. But I don’t have one. And I think that a lot of people may not have the most advanced camera at this point. And certainly as you look to expand, there’s a somewhat limited market. How are you able to overcome the obstacle if someone doesn’t have the most modern iPhone at this point?
Gabriel: In two ways. First of all, all of the new phones that, so it’s basically anything that has been introduced since 2017, actually has a Face Id so it’s coming much more downmarket. The iPhone XR also has one, so it’s coming in at a much lower price point. Presumably the iPhone that will be coming out in a few weeks will also have one. We have developed it so that it actually works on, on prior models. We were really just concerned about the accuracy, for adults you can get away with, you know, about two to three millimeter accuracy for kids you really need that submillimeter accuracy. But we’re constantly pressing the ways to bring it to phones that don’t have a depth camera to bring it to Android. We really just, were so concerned with fit and it’s such a big value proposition for us that we didn’t want to do a three quarters solution for anything else, but it’s definitely been a focus of our continued development efforts. And the other way is that we’re actually having a series of popups. What your listeners probably can’t tell is that we’re actually at our first pop up, which is at Sag Mercantile in Sag Harbor and it’s been a great experience. We have phones and iPads set up so that people can come in and test the app, they can order glasses, they can see the glasses in real life. So we have an extensive, we have lots of plans around doing extended pop ups. So, you know, hopefully coming to your town soon. But also we’re going to be doing some pilot programs both with doctors and retailers as well so that we can basically set up anywhere that you can put an iPad. So there will hopefully be lots of ways that people can get measured even if they don’t happen to have an iPhone 10 themselves. The other nice thing is the app actually does work on non-depth camera phones. And so you can measure on a friend’s phone, you can take your measurements and create a profile and then just log in and buy glasses on your phone.
NYLP: This is a new technology for 3D printing and there are some additional players out there as I kind of looked at the marketplace. But the eye wear industry as we kind of said at the beginning has one extremely dominant player. Warby Parker obviously came onto the scene, but Luxottica could probably say, hey, this is a great idea to do 3D printing and we didn’t really think about the Face ID. At the snap of their fingers, maybe they decide to get in in this marketplace. Does that concern you at all with one big giant like that in the market?
Heidi: I can assure you they cannot get into this market at the snap of a fingers. This took us over a year to develop our app and it’s quite complex. Gabe, can talk a little bit more about the expertise that it required. But we, you know, spent a lot of time measuring hundreds of kids measuring over and over printing glasses, trying them on reprinting glasses with the same kids, trying them on again. So it’s a really difficult process I think to replicate. And we’ve got some patents applications in place to protect those as well.
Gabriel: When I first came on board and I’ve come out of, I have a pretty big history of doing digital products. I’ve done a few hundred apps, some connected toy app experiences. This is far and away the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I think when I first came on board full time, I believe I said it would take about three months to develop and then another month and a half to launch. That was about 20 months ago. And it really is the combinatorial complexity of all of these things. The measurement piece was complex in its own right. The 3D printing piece is complex in its own right because 3D printing up to this point has really predominantly been used for either prototyping or really exotic manufacturing. It’s very rare to find it in a consumer finished good. And so developing the whole pipeline that actually results in the finished good. But as Heidi said, the thing that we didn’t really realize this, it just takes a long time to really get the fitting, having the measurements on one side and being able to make glasses, there’s a huge gulf in between there of actually fitting those glasses onto people’s faces because the physical product never quite manifests exactly how you expect it to. And it really did take thousands of pairs of glasses. We have worn out our welcome with I’m sure pretty much every kid we know, because we would measure their face, print pair of glasses, adjust things in the back end, test them out and measure them with calipers, take lots of photos, remeasure, reprint, remeasure and lather, rinse, repeat for months. And it really did take thousands of pairs of glasses on hundreds of faces in order to really refine it to a place that we are very confident that we can now actually deliver great products no matter where you are.
NYLP: Well, I want to learn more about that big gulf between facial mapping and the actual product. And obviously you go to kids and kids are not known for their patience, but what was, what was an additional challenge aside from that in terms of you have this mapping and Gabe you had this impression that you thought it would be relatively straightforward to do and then what was that challenge in terms of just coming out with a product?
Gabriel: The technical challenges are the ones that you know about going in, you know, that it’s going to be challenging to get measurements without some sort of marker. It’s gonna be challenging to get accuracy, particularly around certain areas of the face that are even more important, particularly around the bridge. Those are the known challenges. The unknown challenges really were the user experience. So how our mom’s gonna react to how are kids going to react to the user flow that you have. So it was a lot of refining the kid mom phone interface and changing the user experience to really get it good. And then the back end of resizing and refitting glasses, glasses lose their aesthetic integrity pretty quickly and go from really good looking to terribly hideously ugly if you manipulate them in too many different ways or in the wrong way. And so a lot of it was actually defining the firing order of the different animation rigs that we’re using and deforming them in the right way so that they actually preserve their aesthetic integrity but are refitted for somebody’s face.
NYLP: And all these challenges you think will prevent someone from coming in and doing and solving the way that you’ve solved that gulf.
Gabriel: It was our biggest concern that it would be easy for another competitor to come in. I think that there’s certainly technical challenges. There are user challenges and there’s a lot of just a lot of work that actually would go into this. I think that moreover to the point of we’re not necessarily trying to make the best app or make the best glasses, we’re trying to solve glasses that I think that a lot of that comes down to trust and it comes down to authenticity. And well we didn’t necessarily set out for this. Heidi is a mom of two kids in glasses. I’m a dad of one kid in glasses. We know, we know parents, we know the challenges that they’re facing. And I think that we didn’t really expect once we launched our marketing and social efforts, just the resonance that the people really have latched onto the fact that you know, we’re speaking from a place of knowledge and a shared experience. And I think that the feedback has been amazing and incredibly enthusiastic. And it really, it’s nice to know the validation that other people are suffering the same challenges that we have been in. We built it sort of to solve our own problem. But it really has been solving a problem that is out there in the market for everybody.
NYLP: And you talked a lot about children’s glasses. Can adults wear them as well or will they look like goofy children’s glasses on adults?
Heidi: We will let you in on the secret that the system works for adults just as well. And actually we aged up in terms of the styles that we picked because we wanted sophisticated styles that were classic and that suited any face. So they work very well for adults too.
Gabriel: In fact, one of the things that we’ve seen over the last few weeks since we’ve been live is that we see people’s measurements and we’re guessing that, you know, a significant double digit percentage of our orders have actually been coming from adults not just from kids.
Heidi: We’ve had a lot of questions from adults saying do you make them for adults my head is too small or my ears are really misaligned. And guess what? Pretty much everybody has a weirdly shaped something on their face. So we’re really excited to offer the product to everyone who wants it.
NYLP: Parents are able to wear them, they’re able to twin with their children. And it seems like super, super fun. What else should people know about glasses? You talked about how children should maybe be reevaluated for glasses every six months. Every child should wear sunglasses. Anything else for eye health that Fitz is looking to solve.
Heidi: We are also teaching people about blue light and the hazards that studies are saying are coming from that. So we are selling blue light computer glasses as well for kids who use screens.
NYLP: Every kid uses a screen.
Heidi: Seems like it these days.
NYLP: So eye health, very important. It seems like you are doing a lot for children and for adults. That is a great note to wrap things up on. How do people find out more about you and Fitz?
Gabriel: So you can go to our website fitzframes.com or you can go search for us on all of the various different social channels that you might imagine. Or you can go download our app in the app store, just search for Fitz Frames or if your listeners would like, we are offering a discount code. So in checkout all you have to do is put in FITZ-NYLAUNCH all caps, no spaces and we will give them a discount code as well.
NYLP: Well I think our listeners will certainly want that. Gabe and Heidi, thank you for stepping onto the New York launch Pod and sharing your time with us.
Heidi: Thank you.
NYLP: And if you want to learn more about the New York launch Pod, you could visit nylaunchpod.com for transcripts of every episode including this one. And follow us on social media @nylaunchpod. And Gabe and Heidi, are you super fans of the show?
Heidi and Gabe: I am, absolutely.
Heidi: If you’re a super fan like Gabe and Heidi, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It is greatly appreciated and does help people discover the show.
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