Does Warby Parker Need Actual Stores?

A possible answer, or at least the beginning of one, may be that these companies actually see physical stores as a necessary, maybe even unavoidable, growth area.

The more digital our lives become, the more weight such increasingly small slivers of corporeality acquire. This formula holds even when the digital has more reach, more value, and, in the most literal sense, more purchase. This may be why many of the companies that have set up physical shops have doubled down on their status as lifestyle brands since beginning their expansion campaigns.

So long as they’re opened in a selective, limited way, the physical stores themselves offer a similar prestige by association to the companies that operate them.