Marketing and all things related

Gone are the days of spending hundreds of dollars on a new pair of prescription glasses or sunglasses.  Today, a friend of mine turned me onto a website called Zenni Optical (http://zennioptical.com) where you can get complete, quality prescription lenses and frames for as little as $8 with a flat shipping fee of $4.95 no matter how many pairs of glasses you buy.  With bills for glasses for me, my husband and one of my children (who will assuredly break them and lose them many, many times over the course of the next decade), I'm loving this website.

The skeptic in me wonders what the catch could be, but my friend mentioned that consumer advocate, Clark Howard, buys his glasses from Zenni Optical and highly recommends them.  Being from the Atlanta area where Clark Howard's radio show is based, my friend knows a number of other people who have purchased glasses from Zenni Optical also with rave reviews. 

Apparently, all you need to order glasses from the Zenni Optical website is your lens prescription and an accurate measurement of the distance between your left and right pupils.  Sounds great to me.  Let me think...my son's glasses cost $398.  Being two years old, he won't wear his glasses, and I don't want to force him for fear he'll break his ultra-expensive glasses.  Now, I hear I could have gotten a pair of glasses for him for under $20 at Zenni Optical.  That would have been a savings of approximately $380, and I wouldn't feel like I have to treat them like fine china.

Zenni Optical's website says they can give consumers these rock bottom prices because they cut out the middleman and provide only their Zenni brand.  Even with their low prices, they provide a guarantee.  I think as word gets out, Zenni Optical will see a large bump in sales.  For such a low cost, just about anyone could afford to give them a try.  I think their online, low-cost-provider marketing strategy is just what glasses-wearing consumers have been looking for.  I know I'm on board with nothing more than a short email message from a friend.

What do you think of this business strategy?