Not to give anything away, but if you attend the annual “what did we see at NRF’s Big Show this year? ” webinar that we’re hosting next week, one of the themes you’ll hear quite a bit about is the push for focus back into the store. We’ve been squawking for quite some time about the store’s need to be a little bit more exciting in order to stay relevant in the modern digital world; on this year’s show floor, we finally saw quite a few examples of it in practice.

However, one of the absolute coolest things about this year’s show was that I got to attend a few sessions. That hasn’t happened in years, and I wanted to make the time count. So the first one I attended was a retailer I’d heard lots of rumblings about, but about which I knew very little.

If you don’t know Warby Parker, here’s a brief overview. A few years back, four bespectacled guys got together and decided they could make quality eyeglasses for a fraction of the cost of the designer brands. Presenter David Gilboa wasn’t shy about it; he and his Co-CEO partners (all Wharton guys) were tired of paying $600 for a pair of frames, lenses, and some upsold anti-reflective lens coating, and wanted to turn the prescription eyeglasses model upside down. In his words, “We wanted to disrupt an industry that lacked innovation. “

They did what most enterprising people who want to sell something do these days – they opened up a webstore. With a combination of fashionable designs, low prices ($95), and some really cool social interest stuff (WP has a buy a pair/give a pair program designed to help those less fortunate in places like Guatemala), it was a near-instantaneous hit: online. And if that was the end of the story, it would have been a worthwhile session to attend.

But here’s where it really gets interesting. A couple of years into their success, Gilboa and his partner Neil befriended Mickey Drexler, CEO of J Crew. He tried to convince them that their best interests lay in stores, a notion which they rejected at first. After months of lunch meetings, with David and Neil arguing that the goal of the modern retail model was to take costs out of the equation (not introduce new ones), Drexler’s knowledge of trends across both the digital and physical worlds had an impact: WP decided to give it a whirl. Because they knew the store would be a loss leader – “a marketing write-off ” and nothing more – they went for broke. They chose a spot in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world (lower Manhattan), and spared no expense creating an environment they (and hopefully their customers) would enjoy, with markedly less of an emphasis on products and more on experience: high ceilings, imported terrazzo ($$$) tile floors, a custom-made eye exam display replicating the scheduling board at the Philadelphia train station, reading corners, plants – the whole thing was meant to channel the mashed-up vibe of old-world train station-meets-great reading room. In Gilboa’s words, “Tourists don’t take photos in front of Best Buy… we wanted people to be blown away. “

And to make it even more enjoyable, the products they do have on display are out in the open (compared to traditional eyeglass stores where everything is in protective display cases). Gilboa knew they’d have higher shrink, but thought it would be worth it. He wanted to make the process of picking out glasses fun – whatever it took.

What’s amazing is that the loss leader turned out to be tremendous profit center. Thousands of customer visit the Manhattan store each day (the wait for an exam has whittled down from a month to a few hours), and because they’re so pleasantly surprised by the experience (and price), the average consumer buys more than one pair. Not to mention that because the price point is so much lower than what customers have become conditioned to, it is much easier for consumers to rationalize eyeglasses as a fashion accessory now – a pair for work, a pair for home, nights out, etc… Very few people had this luxury before. As a result, sales per square foot are 20-40% higher than Lululemon’s: “We’re on par with Tiffany’s sales per square foot now. “

In recent months, the company has opened stores in several other major US cities, including my hometown of Boston. I went down last weekend to check it out, and the place was just plain impressive. The staff was the most knowledgeable I’ve encountered anywhere in a long time (REI included). I picked out three pairs.

For years now, we’ve heard a lot of people talking about trying to make their stores “like the Apple store; ” In that same time, we’ve come up with a lot of reasons why that’s just not feasible for most retailers (number of SKUs, average product price, percentage of privately sourced goods sold, store associate sophistication, etc). And given, Warby Parker had a slight advantage in the fact that its stores/selling process could be designed from square one (with no need to overhaul existing structures/processes). However, if the story reaffirms anything at all, it’s that the store isn’t going anywhere, that it’s ripe for innovation, and that you don’t need to be selling high end electronics to reimagine some ways to make your customers’ experience more engaging.