 This is StartupStoreFund. The eyes are the second most complex order in the money, beaten only by the brain. Thus, it's no surprise that eye care, specifically daily contact lenses, are expensive. In this, Waldo recognizes an opportunity to disrupt the eye care industry. Waldo helps consumers refocus, by one, saving the money by removing added distribution costs, and two, adding B12 to reduce dryness by up to 30%. In short, this means consumers get great contacts without paying over-the-top prices. Listen in as we talk with Ashley, the founder of Waldo, about how a little white lie led her to starting Waldo, why it's important to talk with your customers like you're sitting around a dinner table, and how they've partnered with Walmart to become the first exclusive retailer to offer Waldo. And before you ask us where's Waldo, I think it's better if we just roll the episode. Welcome to the podcast on today's show, talking to Ashley from Waldo. Thanks for joining. Thanks for having me. Welcome. Yeah, welcome. For people who don't know, what does your company do? So we are a eye care company, and our goal is to make high quality eye care products more accessible and more affordable. What made you wanna first start the company? What was the thing that you were like, is it a problem in the market, or is it too expensive, or was it personal to you? So personal to me, I've been wearing contacts since I was 11, and when I moved to the US, I was really frustrated by all the friction associated with buying contact lenses and the high prices. When did you move here? 2016. Okay. And my mom is also blind in one eye. And so I think I've always had a real obsession with vision, I'd say. So in parallel to like the pricing and the friction of purchasing, I also thought that there should be a more optimistic experience and narrative around eye care and vision, because sight is just such an unbelievable gift. And so the combination of those two things led to Moldow. And what was your first step? Like what was the thing you, so you started with the focus of how do we make contact lenses specifically more affordable? Was that the first thing? And not even like how do we make the more affordable like for people? It was like, hold on, can I get cheaper lenses for myself? And I wanted to wear daily lenses because I was really struggling with, I had bi-weekly lenses and monthly lenses. So you've got the solution and yeah, exactly. And I was kind of getting like an eye infection once every couple of months. It's not fun. I remember in 2010 I was in Boston and I was at a pool and next to me was like an optometrist. Yeah. And so we just started talking. I was like, yeah, I use contacts because I was like in the pool. So I wanted to go get another one. And she's like, do you use dailies or monthlies? And I was like, oh, I'm using monthlies. She's like, most people like me would never say this to you. She's like, get dailies immediately. And I was like, yeah, but those are like way more expensive at the time. Like I was like barely new to the real world. So I was like, so I asked her, why though? I was like, why do you say that? And she's like, just think about how even the cleanest of hands, right? At the beginning of the day, end of the day and then you're adding solution. But even that case is like festering all sorts of stuff. And so by day like 20, she's like, how long do they usually last you before you're home? And I was like, yeah, probably like two weeks. Maybe three if I'm lucky. She goes, right, but you have another 10 days with those on average. And she's like, it's disgusting. She's like, stop doing it. She's like, so instead of getting dailies, if it's too expensive, just swap them out every two weeks. And I was like, oh, this is a problem though. And I started thinking like, how many people can actually afford this? Because it's a lot of money. And so when I went online to get my bi-weekly contact lenses and I wanted to buy dailies, you're looking at like $700 for an annual supply, which actually for a product that you wear every single day, like puts it into this luxury price point. And nothing about the experience feels luxurious or even easy. And so that was the trigger. I can't even imagine what your first step was here, but like, what do you start learning about the contact lens industry that what do you start figuring out? So I was actually in Boston at the time. Beautiful place. I was studying, yeah, great place. And I just started like researching who are the top manufacturers. And then I set up a- Of contact lenses. Yeah, of contact lenses. And then I set up a like many website and email address. And I just started to reach out to them one by one and be like, hey, I'm doing a university project. Okay. Was any of this true? Was it like for a class maybe? Well, semi-true, like I was doing an entrepreneurship course at the time. But a contact lens project was not one of my projects. So kind of half-true. And then I asked them to send me their pricing. And then when I started to look at actually how much they cost to produce and understand more about like quality and regulation, I felt really ripped off as a consumer. And- It was egregious. Yeah, that was when, you know, I basically like ran the numbers and figured out that if maybe I could do this sort of broader than just for myself, very quickly came to the conclusion that I would have to because the minimum order quantities and the regulation and stuff is like pretty intense and onerous. And yeah, essentially then I realized that maybe it would be possible to sell, you know, high quality contact lenses akin to the best biggest pharmaceutical brands for like 30% cheaper. And in parallel, give the customer an experience that actually makes them want to engage with eye care and makes them think about eye health. Okay, so then in my head, this is how it works. So in my head, I go, okay, how many companies make contact lenses? And in my head, it's probably two. I don't know if that's true. Yeah, so three have 88% market share. Okay, and then I think about the behemoths that you were finding giving you information. In alcohol, these people work like lobbyists. And so they basically will have like non-competes or you can't, is it a little easier in the contact lens space where they're thinking like, no one's going to come along and do this. So we haven't infiltrated. I think it's that. Okay, so then you come in and then you go, okay, what's my first step? Did you raise capital from the jump with like a pitch deck? Or were you like, let me go try to buy, I don't know, a minimum quantity of like 2000s? Yeah, so that you can't do. Like minimum order quantities are like in the hundreds of thousands. Oh, wow, yeah. So I had to raise capital, which if it was any other business, I probably would have gone for bootstrapping it. Sure. But the barriers to entry were actually, the MLQ is, okay. And so I did actually put together like a presentation for my lecture, my entrepreneurship lecture at the time. And- You were studying? No, I was studying a master's in finance. Okay. An entrepreneurship. But pretty late on, I'd actually, I'd already worked like seven years in consulting and then decided to take a year out. Like managing consulting? Yeah. Oh, for who? Accenture. Okay, yeah. And before that I was in brand management and moved to the States to study. You've seen a lot. I mean, yeah, you've been exposed. That's awesome, yeah. And then I sent the sort of business plan or a couple of slides that I put together to him and he wrote back within the hour and he was like, let's go for breakfast tomorrow. And he came with notes and he was like, what are you planning on doing after you finished studying? And I was like, well, probably go back into consulting, I'm not sure. And he was like, I think you've got to do this. And that was like a really nice little push. Yeah, the price point you settled on that you wanted to knock off 30%, had you considered other price points before? Because I know like price is often an indicator of quality. And with the eyeglass market being what it was, people are used to a certain amount of dollars that they invest. And I'm curious like if you had any kind of market research to dictate, okay, 30% is still in the consumer's mind going to indicate a nice mix of value and quality. I didn't start with the 30%, I started with like what can we feasibly do and how much of a discount can that be? And then from a brand point of view, we were just very focused on making sure that every touch point a consumer had felt and looked like quality and also made sure that like from a messaging standpoint, we were talking a lot about FDA approval, customer reviews, like all those other validation indicators. But also we didn't sell onto distributors and then into... Right, you're going direct. Yeah, we went direct. So you kind of own the channel. Yeah, exactly. Which makes your costs lower by default. Yeah. And was it challenging for you to like, I don't even know how you would enter a market like this. You just show up one day? Or is it, right? I mean in somewhere, right? It's like, yeah. You get to a point where first of August... This is so crazy. Yeah. You launch your website. Because it's not like you can go like, you know, into a grocery store and hand out samples. Are you calling 1-800-CONTACTS? So you're like, will you guys carry me? Or no? No. No, right? No, so we've only just diversified channels. So like Walmart is our first retail partnership. What does that mean? So you'll have a little space there? Or how will it operate? Yeah, so basically we'll be available in all Walmart vision centers. So that's north of 3,000 optical stores. And on Walmartcontacts.com. When you made that partnership, were you a little bit worried about how that major brand look? Cause aligning with a lower cost option, or maybe that's the point of the brand. It can be difficult to make that decision. I mean, when I met the team at Walmart and they spoke to us about what their goals are for vision, you know, Walmart's got two values. It's like make life better and cheaper basically. And those are so aligned with what we want to do at Waldo. Like quality and product innovation has always been step one for us. But then step two has always been, okay, how do we create value here for the consumer? And we've run such a lean ship in order to do that. And so when Walmart spoke about what their plans were for what they're calling vision 2.0, it was just so aligned with us. And you're blue already? And you're blue already. There's the whole Waldo, Walmart. So it just felt like a fit. I wasn't too worried about aligning with a value player because actually their user experience is also great. I mean, when you walk into Walmart Store or a Walmart Vision Center, it's a really great experience. So how much do they cost versus the regular one? So is it a year for 700 bucks? Is that the number? Yeah, so Waldo will cost you about 400 bucks for the year. Wow, for dailies? Yeah, for dailies. The Walmart Vision 2.0, is that just their terminology for their entire company or is that specific to their vision stores? Yeah, so it's specific to their vision stores and they're investing a lot in revamping their vision centers. So to make those vision centers a destination for consumers. I feel like Walmart as a whole, we've had a lot of companies on here that are now in Walmarts. And the ideology that they're behind now, I feel like is very different than they were 10 years ago at least with the products that they're shelving are they're trying to get into a healthier space, a higher-end space like not the Walmart of all where it's just like cheap packaged goods from China or whatever. So it's interesting that they are doing a top to bottom approach on that with their vision centers and everything. Do you know if there are other avenues that they're looking to explore with their eyewear and stuff like that? Like you're doing contacts, but are they also asking you for more like glasses and everything like that? Yeah, so I mean we will start with our contact lenses and then our eyedrops will be available in Walmart soon. But they're very focused on building out the healthcare pillar of their business. So I think everything that you're talking about now is like falls under that healthcare vision that they have and vision 2.0 though is specifically like the revamping of their vision centers. And so I think they're looking at new brands within a variety of product mixes and also technologies because I think healthcare in general has been pretty slow to adopt new technologies. And so that's a focus for us like outside of our partnership with Walmart, but also how can we use technology to make eye care more accessible to people? How do you do it? What do you do? So we acquired a company last year called Posito. It is started by Darius Meshvegi, who's now a partner to me. So we acquired that team last year and they've been building optical technology that sits on a mobile phone. And so our goal with that is actually to empower the optometrist to be able to give a broader spectrum of eye care monitoring and diagnosis using a mobile phone because one of the challenges in the industry is each device or piece of equipment is like $15,000 plus and just deals with one condition. And so this friction in the industry doesn't just exist for consumers, it exists for optometrists too. I mean, it's expensive for them to have their footprint buy all of the equipment and compete with the likes of 1-800 contacts on price. So they're getting squeezed too and we feel that if we can make technology available with the same sort of characteristics as the lenses, so make it accessible and more affordable, bring their costs down. But not get rid of them yet. No, I don't want to get rid of them. I guess because they're for edge cases, right? They're for if something goes wrong. No, I think that they should always be a part of the equation and this is one of the problems, right? Is I think you've got companies that are online and then you've got big offline players and everybody thinks that the two cannot be together. And you see it that way, you see it that they can. You can make both easy. That's fascinating. And my goal with Waldo is to bridge that gap. Is this an app that people can download off of the app store where it might be like a paid plan but you can scan your eye and just kind of like, how your Apple Watch can take your blood pressure and you can send that to your doctor as part of your overall checkup. Is that the overall concept behind this? It is, but that first point of contact is the optometrist and not the consumer. Is the user the optometrist too? Okay, cool. So it's not a consumer facing per se. No, we'll build, we'll probably build that so that your doctor and you have access to the same information. But for now, that's not what we're gonna do. We wanna empower the optometrist to build relationships with their patients and consumers. That's smart. And the online players that have this approach of we just wanna cut out the doctor and cut out any middleman, I don't agree with that. So this is something that just happened. I was just back home for my brother-in-law's wedding and my sister-in-law, she needed contacts for the wedding and so she was in this position where she's running out and so she has an expired prescription though and so she goes on 1-800 contacts whereas what she ordered and in it, she's taking an eye exam from the app and I had never seen this in my, I posted this on my Instagram, people were like, that's been around forever. I had never seen it personally and so this is the first time I'm doing it. So the phone is a certain distance away, the phone tells her how far to stand away, really interesting and then shows her letters, she reads them and that's that. And I was like, what? And then sure enough, they were like, okay, nothing's changed with your prescription here and they sent her the contacts and she was okay for the wedding. But that was crazy to me, frankly. And that's a brand, I don't know how long this has been around but that was interesting and I was like, oh, they're really trying to do away with the repeat visit and then I was like, why would you go to optometry? That's why I was saying edge cases just to make sure your eye's okay or for infections or to catch certain things that you couldn't catch via an app. Such a big part of it is switching between one and two and having no discernible difference. That's funny. But it was interesting, I had never seen that before. How did you come up with a name? Cause like, obviously when you Google Waldo is the striped man comes up and so yeah, what's the origin behind that? You couldn't see Waldo, I don't know. Couldn't find Waldo. Well, most people can't by the way. He's a hard guy to find. That actually wasn't the premise. The working name at the time was Prism, which I hated but I wanted a name that conveyed like seeing the world because I think vision is about seeing the world and we were talking about photography a little earlier and so I wanted that kind of brand identity for the company and I was actually advertised to buy Walden University and I loved the way that the name sounded cause I thought it sounded like world but I thought that it should be shorter and so Walden to Waldo and then check the trademark and actually the where's Waldo trademark or the Waldo trademark that DreamWorks owned had lapsed but they also only owned the trademark like within their category, right? So you can't own. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So I just loved it and registered Waldo. In terms of like adding B12, do you find just the solution that you put in to be an avenue of innovation? Are there more interesting things that, you know, you're an expert now in this game and so what are the things that you find traditional companies are missing or are barely scratching the surface when it comes to innovation of any kind? So I think one of the things in the contact lens industry is you've got like the big players like J&J in contact lenses and then you've got Alcon who's the biggest player in iDrops and these really big companies sell into distributors and then into consumers but that customer feedback loop is really long. Like they don't know, whereas with us we're sort of speaking to our customers all the time directly and so that feedback loop for us is really tight. You know, one of the biggest sort of fastest growing pain points for people is dry eye. So the more time people are spending on screens particularly from a younger age. I mean, you know, just the other day I got into a plane and there's like three year old sitting with iPads right in front of their eyes. So dry eye is going to become a much bigger concern and so we are focused on how can we sort of address those, the biggest eye care concerns with products in our range. Like iDrops and contact lenses and make them really easy to understand for consumers because I think a lot of the innovations in the industry it's like, there's just a lot of jargon and so customers don't really know why they should use a certain lens or not. So we're trying to say, look, it makes a lot of sense. It's like screen time, living in urban cities, your eyes are getting dry, vitamin B12 is an important component of mitigating dry eye. We put that in the lens. We just want to talk to our customers like you would around the dinner table and make it easy to understand. Can dry eye turn into something a lot more serious? Yeah. Like what does it become if left untreated or if it gets bad? There's not really like a treatment for dry eye. Like a once, here's a course of antibiotics and it's done. But there's obviously like more advanced medical treatments where you'll go once every six weeks to have a treatment to try and like soothe the effects. But that's why prevention is so important. Like making sure that you are getting your eyes checked at your eye doctor and using products that are hygienic and making sure that you're investing in eye health the same way that you are your skin or your teeth. Or your teeth, exactly. What other things are you working on besides so we have the B12? Yeah. So we've got the vitamin lenses that we've just launched. We're working on a... We got these. Yeah, we've got blue light filter glasses. We're working on expanding our range of eye drops and contact lenses. So we've got another unique and really exciting contact lens in the mix that we'll be launching early next year. Does it connect to your iPhone? Basically, I'll give it to you to know where you are at all times. And supplements will look at launching a range of... Like vitamins? Yeah. Oh, interesting. How does that tie in? If you suffer from dry eye, like obviously depending on the severity, but you should take supplements for your eyes. What is the eye supplement mark? I've never even heard of this market. What is it? So it's just vitamins with vitamins that essentially support your eye health. So vitamin B12 is one of them, fish oil, like the ingredients are basically all just around supporting your eye health. And you do actually see a difference. Carrots, are they as good as everyone has always said they are for eyesight? It's a bit busted. Yeah. Yeah, it's an important vitamin. But you've got to eat like a ton of carrots, I think for... You're not going to the carrot business, are you? Right, no, hard no. Not yet. Well, it's interesting like the vitamins because my grandmother has macular degeneration. And so she has to get very painful shots in her eyeball once a month. And yeah, by now she's used to it, but even then like just hearing about it, it makes your cringe a little bit intense up. And I see that I want to do everything I possibly can to avoid that and maintain good eye health. And just in general, like it's nice to be able to see, but to avoid a shot in your eye just sounds like something best avoided. Exactly. When you launch your products, does your deal with Walmart mean you can only be sold there or it does? Yeah. Okay, so for people to find you, you've got to go to Walmart or you go to your website. Yeah, exactly. We've also got partnerships with independent doctors around the US. And so those will still remain in place, but Walmart is our exclusive retailer partnership. And they paid you for that, I imagine. Yeah. What are the details? The target approach you, were you like in between both or was it just like Walmart had the right... No, we were speaking to... Or even at Lenscrafter. I mean, there's so many eye stores to me that all over nationwide that need some sort of like rejuvenation. We weren't planning on going into retail this year. We were looking at it actually for next year. And so we're just starting to have initial conversations. And then when I met the Walmart team, told them about Waldo, and they were telling me about Walmart Vision 2.0. I said to Tabitha, he runs the division. I was like, hearing you talk about your ideas for Walmart Vision 2.0 is like listening to me pitch Waldo. Like our goals for vision are so aligned. And sort of out of that came this partnership. It was a pretty quick turnaround. Like I think the first time we met them was only like four months ago. Oh, wow. That's amazing. It's good pairing. We've run at speed this thing. How do you guys think about like social media and just getting your... Like what is your marketing? And branding type of strategy? So we'll do quite a big back to school push. Our goal is to drive consumers into Walmart optical centers and get their eyes checked and bring eye care to the forefront really. So we'll be doing a big back to school push and a couple of like urban areas focused around college campuses in particular. Cause the nature of our demographic is slightly younger. Who is it? Generally consumers between the ages of 18 and 34. So like Millennial, Gen Z as well. We do quite a lot on TikTok now as well. Which is fun. Wow. Are you on TikTok? You personally? Are you doing some crazy stuff? No, no. I don't do any crazy stuff myself. Lexi, check the TikTok. The Waldo TikTok. Yeah, check the Waldo one. You're not going to find much on mine. So because of the partnership, is there also like some sort of cross collaboration or do they keep doing it? Yeah, so we're building out like what those campaigns will look like together. But we will definitely take the lead on like the social and like TikTok in particular. Like I don't think we'll matter too much of that just yet. That is so funny. Yeah. A management consultant talking about TikTok. This is good stuff. I mean, those two things usually don't really... So what is the value you've seen from TikTok? Just because we have this conversation a lot on the podcast and my philosophy, especially with this impending recession is like the virality of a video couldn't allow you to acquire a customer at a clip that is free in a lot of ways. Or even if you're paying someone to, let's call it five grand a month, whatever it might be. That is nothing compared to a customer acquisition cost of like doing a Facebook ad or Instagram ad that people know as an ad that in your head you could target but the virality is going to go way better for you. But this is like, people don't understand what I'm saying. I sound like I'm Gary Vee or some like super, you know, social media wizard. And it's not that it's like with the recession people have to get more efficient. And the new algorithms allow you, you as like not a Kardashian, you as a creator at any scale to kind of level the playing field. I'm glad you agree, but I'm just curious to hear like what was the first push to move into TikTok? Honestly, just we want to be where our customers are and the reality is that our customers are there. And I also think there's a shift in what information customers want before making their purchasing decisions. Like that's changing over time. So I think definitely what we're seeing is there's mistrust in these big pharmaceutical companies that do not have direct communication channels with their customer. So one of our core brand values is to be human centered. And so I always want people to feel like they can get in touch with somebody at Waldo in a couple of seconds, whether that's TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. But you can't be human centric and you can't say that you have a tight feedback loop with your customers if you're not on the channels that they are. When did that like go off for you? Like what, maybe I'm just Jaded Riesling because of the conversation we've had over the last like three days, but a lot of people don't get it. And I think it's like pretty straightforward. I'm just trying to maybe get from you, what was the one thing you uncovered? So that way the next time I'm having this conversation, I can share the story of what you uncovered. Yeah, so I think, you know, initially it was personally. Initially I was like, even when I was starting to look at manufacturing products and stuff, I was like, hold on. For me as a consumer, what would it take to put another brand of contact lenses in my eye? Like how can we build trust? And obviously like the FDA is a regulation body that builds trust and that's like a stamp of approval. But even what you were just saying about when you decided to do Lasik, your research was from your peers. So that like top down from company to consumer through a company narrative, just like doesn't really. That's true. The only thing that came from the company was the doctor had did LeBron James's eyes and I thought, wow. That's cool. It's good enough for LeBron. It's good enough for LeBron. It's good enough for me. But that was it. And frankly, I don't even know that that really mattered. You know, it's like, so your whole thing is exists where the peers exist. And then those, let's call them those signals or those nodes, enough of them will cross collaborate equal customer at some point. Absolutely. And I just think it's important to be a brand that people feel is close enough to them. Like they can get hold of you. You know, I mean, if you, you can get hold of me. Like I've had customers like slide into my DMs. Like I've had this problem or I love this or whatever. Like we are, we're there. I don't know how you would start to sort of reach out to the CEO of like J&J. Right. AccuView or whatever, but. Yeah. I think that's the thing. So I think at a high level, what you're touching on is like, this is why I actually love social media because it is the ultimate leveling of the playing field. And I think the big brands are upset because they're not creating the trends. They're just trying to keep up with them. But they're so far behind that it allows the creators to kind of really win for a little while. And they can continue to do that just by being on, being part of culture, I guess is the way I look at it. Yeah. And we definitely don't have it figured out like. You're playing the game. But you're playing the game. Yeah. You're trying to figure it out. Yeah. Exactly. What else can we expect from you guys in 2022, 2023? Waldo becomes Walmart. What happens? No, no, no, no. We'll still be Waldo, but hopefully just with much bigger access. Like I think the access that Walmart gives us is something that's very difficult to build and very expensive to build digitally and on your own. So yeah, scale, but more of the same. We're not going to lose our core values. And I think that that's why Walmart was excited about a partnership because those values are like what we stand for. And there isn't another brand in the space that stands for what we do and is the way that we are. And so we just want to stay true to that and get bigger so that we can do more. Do you do prescription sunglasses? No, we don't. Can you? We could, like we could. And I know that it seems that they're like so, the product categories are so sort of aligned, but actually like the frames business and the contact lens or medical device, businesses are pretty separate. And I think there's a lot of great companies doing really cool things, you know, like I think Warby does a great job. And that's just not our core business. We might expand into that, but it's not where I think the largest opportunity is for us. It just annoys me that the insurance companies don't see prescription sunglasses as part of your overall insurance package. And it's like, you know, they're just as valuable as regular prescription lenses. Totally. Personal gripe I have. Yeah. That makes sense actually. But I can get why the insurance companies are slow to adopt that philosophy. Well look, thanks for coming on the podcast. You're really making your story. So nice to meet you. I'm gonna use these eyedrops. Literally. Thank you, Ash. Thanks so much. Hey you. Yeah, you listening. Thank you so much for making it to the end of the episode. If you just can't get enough, check out our subscription on Apple Podcasts. For only $4.99 a month, you can listen to the full length, uncut, unedited podcast episodes. We're giving out life-changing advice for less than the price of your morning coffee. What a deal. Make sure to follow us on Instagram, subscribe on YouTube, and we cannot wait to see you next week for another great episode. Cheers.