Warby Parker raises $60 million
Exclusive: The fashionable eyeglasses purveyor more than doubles its total investment. — FORTUNE — Warby Parker has raised $60 million in its latest round of venture capital funding, led by its biggest investor, Tiger Global Management.
Context & Ripple Effects
Warby Parker's 2013 close caps a fast escalation: the $37 million round in September 2012 was itself framed against the company's earlier seed history, and February 2013 brought strategic money from J. Crew's chief and American Express — a signal that mainstream retail and finance wanted exposure to the brand. In April 2013 the company opened its first flagship retail store, its first major step from online-only to physical distribution.
The new $60 million round, led by returning backer Tiger Global Management and reported exclusively by Fortune on December 20, 2013, more than doubles Warby Parker's total venture funding to roughly $100 million across rounds. The pickup across TechCrunch, VentureBeat, AllThingsD, Mashable, StrictlyVC and others shows how closely the consumer press was tracking the company as the template for direct-to-consumer brands.
First-order effects
- Warby Parker now has the balance sheet to scale the physical-retail push it started with its April 2013 flagship, converting its online brand equity into store footprints without ceding equity to a strategic partner this time.
- Tiger Global Management leading again — after backing the 2012 round — concentrates ownership with a growth investor betting the eyewear category can support venture-scale returns rather than a quick flip.
Second-order effects
- Rival online-native brands face pressure to match the offline expansion: once a digital-first peer proves storefronts work, investors will ask why their portfolios have no retail strategy.
- Growth-stage firms like Tiger Global gain a playbook for consumer rounds — big checks into vertically integrated brands at pre-unicorn valuations — pulling later-stage capital away from pure software deals toward commerce.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the line between 'e-commerce company' and 'retailer' dissolves structurally: venture-funded brands raise nine-figure rounds to buy physical distribution, forcing legacy eyewear and apparel incumbents to compete against companies whose cost base skips wholesale entirely.
- A sustained flow of growth capital into direct-to-consumer brands points toward a new class of venture-backed retailers large enough to eventually test public markets, reshaping which categories institutional investors treat as venture-addressable.
The trend: Online-native consumer brands are raising progressively larger growth rounds to fund moves into physical retail, with Tiger Global's repeat lead marking growth-stage capital's embrace of vertically integrated commerce.