The Future of Innovation in Eyewear: Key Insights for Gaining a Competitive Advantage
Your business must have an edge to gain a foothold in your chosen industry. That’s why market research is so important. Our post emphasises the importance of taking a closer look at your competitors. Gathering information on the strengths and weaknesses of their products and services can help you pinpoint gaps that your own brand can fill, so you can potentially draw customers away from them—and toward you. Your findings will form a vital foundation for strategic, growth-oriented business decisions, like innovating your offerings, marketing them, and ensuring they provide experiences that exceed customer expectations. Yet, though these insights are undoubtedly invaluable, they can be difficult to come by in crowded and fiercely competitive markets. So the future of innovation in eyewear:
That may be the case if you sell eyeglasses and sunglasses. A Grand View Research market report notes that the eyewear industry is worth over $183.36 billion. More than 20 market leaders, including Zeiss and the Bausch + Lomb Corporation, contribute the majority of its value, with countless independent companies vying for the attention they receive. Effectively gathering competitive intelligence in this industry can thus help you focus your attention on the key innovations driving it forward. You can upgrade your products to gain a competitive advantage by assessing what they lack. Here are a few to get you started:
Smart glasses
Smart glasses are a product that the industry has long been trying to achieve. Thanks to modern technologies, many companies have improved on the likes of the discontinued Google Glass, resulting in more appealing wearables that comprise one of the most significant recent innovations in eyewear.
Today, Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are the undisputed leaders of this emerging industry segment. With Meta’s technological input, these successfully exhibit functionality through features like hands-free communication, media capture, social media integration, and AI assistant capabilities. Combined with the wearability and additional form factor provided by popular Ray-Ban frames like the Wayfarer and Headliner, the smart glasses also appeal to a wider audience of consumers who wish to leverage them for everyday use. That effectively differentiates the model from competitors like Vuzix, primarily designed for industrial applications. Its release thus helped pave the way for the wider adoption of smart glasses and is credited with driving the overall growth of the eyewear industry. Read more: Look at the Order in Which You Do Things: A Market Analysis Perspective.
Despite these advances, however, there’s still plenty of room for competition. Businesses wishing to expand their offerings in this direction can focus on perfecting a few key features consumers are looking for in future releases, including fully functional augmented reality (AR) displays superimposed on eyewear lenses and remote health monitoring capabilities. Timing your entry into this market segment can also make a difference, as many consumers feel smart glasses are currently too expensive. Launching a cheaper alternative can thus be more feasible once more companies enter the smart glasses space.
3D printing
Personalisation is something consumers often look for. That’s evident in the widespread use of algorithms that provide tailored product recommendations in e-commerce. And the increasing popularity of made-to-order offerings for makeup and furniture. In the eyewear industry, customisation is often limited to giving customers options to choose from different colourways, adding lens technologies like photochromic and blue light-blocking features, and engraving frames with select designs. Now that 3D printing technology is becoming more sophisticated, many eyewear companies now find it feasible to offer them the opportunity to design their own glasses and sunglasses from the ground up.
This particular innovation uses special algorithms and techniques like 3D modelling and laser sintering to analyse a customer’s face and produce eyewear that provides a unique, custom fit. These same technologies allow companies to integrate creative input from customers themselves, facilitating wider experimentation in eyewear design. That said, even though 3D-printed eyewear has been available since at least 2010, it’s growing in popularity to the point that boutique brands no longer offer it. Read more: Who Are My Competitors? A Strategic Take on Market Analysis.
Adidas sunglasses
With the release of the limited edition 3D-printed sunglasses from adidas, it’s clear that even companies with a larger market share find this innovation profitable enough to offer themselves. These sunglasses are specifically designed to suit individual athletes, boasting non-slip contact points like nose pads and flexible nylon for additional comfort. The release was only comprised of 150 models exclusively available to the brand’s Creative Club members, highlighting Adidas’ dedication to offering them with the main goal of giving customers more customisation options.
Eyewear companies opting to release similar 3D-printed products can gain a competitive advantage here by improving their potential for personalisation. Leveraging more advanced emerging technologies like machine learning, for example, can improve how effectively algorithms can create custom fits. Meanwhile, adopting the likes of AR can help customers see how their custom designs look in real-time, helping them further tweak their orders and improving their overall satisfaction and experience with a brand.
Sustainable frames
It’s no secret that popular consumer demand is leaning toward more sustainable products and services. Key insights from McKinsey tell us that American consumers are concerned about the environmental impacts of what they buy. This results in sales for offerings with claims of ethical sourcing and responsible production, outpacing sales for those without those claims. As such, it’s no surprise that many brands have begun releasing eco-friendly eyewear collections in the past few years.
As seen in the recent launch of the Walmart-owned eyewear brand Karün, companies chiefly make glasses and sunglasses more sustainable by using innovative materials for their frames. That includes recycled metal and plastic, but it also involves replacing traditional eyewear materials with substitutes made from renewable sources. For example, many brands now offer frames made of bio-acetate. Unlike its traditional acetate counterpart, this material is often derived from wood pulp instead of petroleum. Read more: What is an Enablement Strategy in the Context of Market Analysis?
However, McKinsey also notes that consumers are no longer willing to pay a premium for sustainable products without good reason. As such, competitive intelligence implies that brands looking to break into the market for eco-friendly eyewear need to focus on lowering their price points for these products. Though recycling is currently the favoured method for producing these products, the processes are more expensive. Mixing acetate and bio-acetate also makes it harder to recycle the resulting eyewear. Efforts like perfecting the formulas for purely bio-based frames can thus make these products cheaper to produce and sell. At the same time, consumers may be more motivated to buy pricier sustainable frames if they’re accompanied by more visible environmental initiatives.
For example, you can implement a tracking system that they can use to see where materials come from and how they were harvested, transported, and manufactured into glasses and sunglasses.
Written by: James D. Rogers
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