ROUNZ (CEOs Kim Myung-sup and Kim Se-min), the real-time virtual fitting eyewear store, announced on the 16th that the number of opticians partnered with it has roughly doubled since the end of last year.
ROUNZ partner opticians grew from around 220 in November last year to around 440 as of May this year, a sharp rise in about six months. That is the largest scale even when compared against the number of franchise outlets of Korea's eyewear chains.
ROUNZ is innovating how glasses are bought using artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) technology. Its in-house virtual fitting technology lets customers try on frames that suit them virtually online and buy them, and also directs them to an optician where they can have prescription lenses fitted.
In Korea's eyewear market, regulations under the Medical Service Technologists Act mean that even when frames are bought online, prescription lenses must be fitted at an optician. Customers cannot buy frames and lenses together online and have to make the inconvenient trip to an optician afterwards.
ROUNZ set out to solve that inconvenience through partnerships with existing opticians. Specifically, through the ROUNZ app and website it offers the range of features and benefits needed to build an O2O (online to offline) omnichannel with offline opticians — ▲virtual fitting, ▲delivery to a nearby optician and ▲trying on at an optician — bringing ROUNZ customers into partner opticians. It has also run the 'Blue Circle Campaign', a shared-growth program for opticians that gives ROUNZ customers extra benefits when they have products delivered to a partner optician, since 2021.
ROUNZ plans to grow its partner opticians to 1,000 by next year. To that end it has recently strengthened its partnership policy while rapidly expanding its business model from online B2C into B2B aimed at opticians.
Since February it has begun selling its own brand of prescription lenses to partner opticians at reasonable prices and quality. Where it previously sold only frames, it has expanded its offering to prescription lenses. Results came quickly: within three months of launch it had completed lens purchase agreements with around 170 opticians.
ROUNZ's recently launched private brand (PB) eyewear products include the prescription lens line 'ROUNZ Standard' and the frame line 'ROUNZ Basic'. ROUNZ said demand is growing quickly as the PB frames and prescription lenses create synergy.
From this month in particular, opticians trading with ROUNZ will receive the 'ROUNZ Mirror' — the culmination of ROUNZ's technology and know-how — free of charge according to partner tier. Through the ROUNZ Mirror, opticians can give customers the experience of actually wearing glasses, using virtual fitting even for products not on display in the store, and can provide the price, details and purchase reviews of the glasses tried on and recommend glasses suited to the customer's face shape, all without an optometrist or sales assistant on hand.
ROUNZ CEO Kim Myung-sup said: "ROUNZ is innovating the eyewear market as a whole with a service that satisfies both opticians and customers," adding, "For that innovation to continue, growing together with existing opticians matters more than anything, and to that end ROUNZ will keep focusing on expanding cooperation with opticians." He continued: "I am sincerely grateful to the partners who have been with ROUNZ so far, and we will keep proposing varied ways for opticians to grow their customer base through ROUNZ."
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