🟥 EMPLOYERS: Separate from recruiting, I write investment‑grade recruiting briefs that walk A‑player ecommerce candidates through the real business case for your role – the market, channels, KPIs, tech stack, team, and AI issues – before they ever get on Zoom with you. I research / write it. YOU bless it. YOU own it.

RESULT: Your first‑round conversations are with 6-8 highly informed A-players who already understand where/how they can drive EBITDA. To have me write and send your posting out to this list, text Harry Joiner at (404) 281‑2025. Confidential briefs / application process are no problem. ⬇️ SEE EXAMPLE ⬇️

---

TODAY’S BRIEF: If you’ve worn glasses at any point in the last fifteen years, you’re familiar with Warby Parker. Founded in 2010, Warby Parker essentially invented the DTC eyewear category. They made it possible to buy quality prescription eyeglasses online for $95, and in doing so, they challenged an industry that had been controlled by one company — EssilorLuxottica — for decades.

✅ subscribe

The brick-and-mortar optical retail market alone is worth roughly $21.5 billion in the United States. The online eyewear segment adds another $6.2 billion on top of that. Combined, that’s close to $28 billion — and Warby Parker is one of the only brands that competes credibly in both channels.

Warby Parker just posted $871.9 million in revenue for 2025. That’s 13% year-over-year growth.

And for the first time in the company’s history, they were profitable on a GAAP basis — $1.6 million in net income, with adjusted EBITDA of $95.2 million, an almost 11% margin.

They opened 47 new stores in 2025 and plan to open 50 more in 2026, with a long-term target of 900+ locations. The retail side of the business is a machine: sub-$1 million buildouts, less than 20-month payback, and 35% four-wall margins. Revenue per customer sits at $324 per year.

✅ subscribe

Warby Parker’s digital channel did $241 million in 2025 — roughly 28% of total revenue. But it only grew a measly 3.1%. That same year, retail grew 17.3%. The company that was born online is now growing almost six times faster in its physical stores than on its own website.

Part of that is structural: they sunset the Home Try-On program, which was once the primary ecommerce conversion mechanism. Part of it is strategic: the company has leaned hard into insurance verification, progressive lenses, and in-store eye exams — things that naturally pull customers into retail.

But the real question is this: Can ecommerce grow at a rate that matches the rest of the business? Can someone build the digital front door that feeds 900 stores, converts insurance-covered customers online, and positions the website for what’s coming next?

Because what’s coming next is legitimately category-defining … Warby Parker has announced a partnership with Google and Samsung to build AI-powered smart glasses. This isn’t vaporware — the company is already using AI to generate more than 50% of its engineering code, and leadership has publicly described a “three-act” company narrative …

• Act One was online DTC.
• Act Two was omnichannel plus eye care.
• Act Three is AI-enabled eyewear as a platform. If Act Three is real, the ecommerce channel becomes the primary discovery and purchase path for an entirely new product category.

Warby Parker has proved it can be profitable at scale.

Insurance penetration is at 8% and growing 40% year-over-year — and every point of insurance penetration drops the out-of-pocket cost to the customer, which is pure conversion fuel. Progressive lenses represent just 22% of Rx units versus 40% for the industry — that’s a massive AOV expansion sitting right there, untouched.

✅ subscribe

The contacts business is growing and it’s a consumable: quarterly repurchase versus every two years for frames. And the average active customer base is 2.7 million people with an AOV in the $200-265 range and a CAC of $55-70. The unit economics work.

The person who takes this role will report to the VP of Ecommerce and Digital Product and will own the ecommerce growth roadmap, financial modeling, and cross-functional strategy for a public company that’s at an inflection point.

The technology stack is a custom headless commerce platform — not Shopify, not Magento — which means you’ll be working directly with engineers, not dragging and dropping apps from a marketplace. That’s either exciting or terrifying, depending on your background. You’ll own the growth roadmap and financial modeling for a $241 million ecommerce channel at a company doing $871.9 million in total revenue.

✅ subscribe

Your mission will be to

1. Close the gap between ecommerce growth (3.1%) and the overall business growth rate (13%),
2. Build the ecommerce strategy for high-value segments including progressive lens buyers, insurance-covered customers, and contacts subscribers, and
3. Partner with Product, Engineering, and CRM to translate Warby Parker’s AI and technology investments into measurable ecommerce conversion improvements.

The brand is strong, the economics are healthy, and the company just turned its first annual profit. The opportunity is to accelerate the digital side of a business that’s already winning in retail.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the ecommerce growth roadmap end-to-end, identifying and prioritizing the highest-impact levers to close the gap between digital channel growth (3.1%) and overall company growth (13%), with a clear financial model tying each initiative to contribution margin.
• Build and maintain the ecommerce P&L with full transparency into customer acquisition cost, contribution margin by product category, and CAC-to-LTV ratios across frames, progressive lenses, and contacts — ensuring every growth investment is defended with unit economics, not just ROAS.
• Develop and execute the conversion rate optimization strategy across the custom headless commerce platform, using hypothesis-driven experimentation (A/B and multivariate testing) to improve funnel performance from product discovery through checkout, with particular focus on closing the mobile-to-desktop conversion gap.
• Lead the ecommerce strategy for progressive lens adoption, insurance-covered customers, and contacts subscriptions — three underpenetrated segments where AOV expansion, frequency shift, and CAC reduction converge to produce outsized lifetime value gains.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to define ecommerce requirements within the custom tech stack, advocating for site speed, virtual try-on improvements, and dynamic merchandising features in engineering sprint planning while operating without a plug-and-play app ecosystem.
• Own the cross-functional relationship with CRM and Lifecycle Marketing to build ecommerce-specific email flows, post-purchase sequences, and retention programs — especially subscription auto-replenishment and contacts reorder triggers that convert one-time frame buyers into recurring customers.
• Develop the financial models and scenario analyses that inform ecommerce investment decisions, including spend allocation by channel, promotional cadence optimization, and insurance verification funnel economics.
• Architect the measurement framework for online-to-offline attribution, ensuring the ecommerce site is properly credited for driving in-store traffic and vice versa, and that omnichannel customer journeys are visible in reporting.
• Monitor competitive dynamics in both the online eyewear market ($6.2B) and the brick-and-mortar optical retail market ($21.5B), tracking EssilorLuxottica’s digital moves, emerging DTC competitors, and shifts in consumer insurance utilization that affect online purchase behavior.
• Prepare ecommerce performance reporting and strategic recommendations for senior leadership, translating data into a narrative that connects digital channel performance to the company’s broader growth story — including the AI glasses product roadmap and its implications for ecommerce.
• Evaluate and recommend technology, tools, and platform enhancements that improve ecommerce performance, working within the constraints of a custom headless architecture and balancing build-versus-integrate decisions.
• Lead the demand forecasting and inventory alignment process for the ecommerce channel, coordinating with merchandising and supply chain to prevent stockouts on high-velocity SKUs and reduce overstock on underperforming products.

✅ subscribe

Qualifications

Education & Certification

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Finance, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience in ecommerce strategy and growth.

Functional Competencies — Skills, Knowledge & Experience

• 5+ years of experience in ecommerce strategy, digital growth, or DTC operations, with demonstrated ownership of a growth roadmap and P&L accountability for a channel doing $50M+ in annual revenue.
• Deep proficiency in financial modeling for ecommerce — contribution margin analysis, CAC/LTV modeling, promotional P&L impact, and scenario planning. You think in unit economics, not vanity metrics.
• Hands-on experience with conversion rate optimization at the practitioner level: funnel diagnostics using GA4, heatmaps, session recordings, and hypothesis-driven A/B testing — not just reviewing agency decks.
• Strong working knowledge of CRM and lifecycle marketing platforms (Klaviyo, Braze, Iterable, or equivalent), with experience building retention flows, subscription programs, and post-purchase cross-sell sequences.
• Experience working with custom or headless commerce platforms (not just Shopify/Magento). Comfort partnering directly with engineers, writing product requirements, and navigating sprint prioritization.
• Demonstrated ability to build and present ecommerce strategy to senior leadership — clear, data-backed narratives that connect channel performance to company-level financial outcomes.
• Experience with omnichannel retail environments where online-to-offline attribution, store-driven digital demand, and channel conflict are real strategic considerations.
• Proficiency with analytics and attribution tools including Google Analytics 4, Looker, Tableau, or similar BI platforms. Familiarity with incrementality testing and media mix modeling is a strong plus.
• Fluency with AI-powered ecommerce tools and applications — not just awareness, but demonstrated use of AI for personalization, demand forecasting, dynamic merchandising, or workflow automation that produced measurable business results. (Nice-to-have but increasingly non-negotiable.)
• Experience in eyewear, optical, health & wellness, or regulated product categories is a plus but not required. What matters is that you’ve operated at the intersection of ecommerce strategy and financial rigor.

Leadership & Management / Behavioral Competencies

• Proven ability to influence cross-functionally without direct authority — you’ll partner with Product, Engineering, CRM, Merchandising, and Finance, and your ideas only matter if you can get other teams to act on them.
• Strong project management discipline with the ability to manage multiple concurrent initiatives, prioritize ruthlessly, and maintain a weekly experimentation cadence without letting long-term strategic work slip.
• Clear, concise communication style with senior leadership — you can translate complex ecommerce data into executive-ready narratives without jargon or hedging.
• Collaborative orientation with an ownership mentality: you seek input broadly, make decisions with data, and take full accountability for outcomes.

✅ subscribe

Personal Characteristics

• Intellectually curious — you dig into the “why” behind the numbers, not just the “what.”
• Self-directed and proactive — you don’t wait for someone to tell you where the problems are; you find them, size them, and bring solutions.
• High integrity and transparency — you report the real numbers, flag risks early, and never optimize a presentation at the expense of the truth.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and a custom technology environment — you thrive when the playbook doesn’t exist yet and you have to write it.
• Financially literate — you can hold your own in a conversation with the CFO about margin, CAC payback, and investment return.
• Resilient under public-company scrutiny — you understand that every initiative will be evaluated through a Wall Street lens, and you build your cases accordingly.
• Energized by the intersection of commerce and technology — the AI glasses roadmap genuinely excites you, not because it’s trendy, but because you see the ecommerce implications.

🟥 JOB SEARCH GOT YOU STUCK? Book an hour with VP/CMO ecommerce recruiter, Harry Joiner, who prepared this analysis. Includes a 3-month membership to NEXTgig™

JUST FOR FUN: HERE ARE FIVE PURELY HYPOTHETICAL AI-RELATED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR THIS ROLE …

1. “You’re building a quarterly ecommerce growth forecast on a custom headless commerce platform. Walk me through which parts of that workflow you’d delegate to an AI agent today, which parts you’d keep for yourself, and — most importantly — what specific artifacts you’d expect to see at each handoff point so you know the agent’s output is trustworthy before you build on it.”
2. “Tell me about a time in the last six months when an AI agent produced ecommerce analysis that looked correct but was subtly wrong — and how you caught it. What was the specific failure mode, and how did it change how you use that agent on similar tasks going forward?”
3. “Warby Parker’s ecommerce grew 3.1% last year while retail grew 17.3%. If you had an AI agent that could run conversion funnel analysis, generate A/B test hypotheses, and draft financial scenarios — but you only had 8 hours a day of your own attention — how would you allocate your review time across those different agent output streams? What gets deep review, what gets a spot-check, and what do you trust without looking?”
4. “Based on what you know about how AI capabilities have evolved over the last 12 months, what ecommerce tasks that are currently human-led do you think will move to agent-led within the next 6 months? And given that forecast, what skill are you investing in right now to stay ahead of that shift?”
5. “Imagine you’re leading a Team of Five on this ecommerce team. You have two developing operators, one engineer who knows the custom platform deeply, and one CRM specialist. An AI model update just shipped that significantly improves the agent’s ability to generate financial scenarios from raw data. Walk me through what you’d change — about the team’s workflows, about who owns what, and about where you’d move the human-agent handoff points.”

---

🟥 EMPLOYERS: Separate from recruiting, I write investment‑grade recruiting briefs that walk A‑player ecommerce candidates through the real business case for your role – the market, channels, KPIs, tech stack, team, and AI issues – before they ever get on Zoom with you. I research / write it. YOU bless it. YOU own it.

RESULT: Your first‑round conversations are with 6-8 highly informed A-players who already understand where/how they can drive EBITDA. To have me write and send your posting out to this list, text Harry Joiner at (404) 281‑2025. Confidential briefs / application process are no problem.