Hy-Vee Bringing Pair Eyewear Kiosks to Select Locations
Hy-Vee Inc. has teamed with online retailer Pair Eyewear to roll out in-store Pair Eyewear kiosks at select Hy-Vee stores across the company’s eight-state Midwestern footprint. The first of these kiosk will be at the new Grimes, Iowa, Hy-Vee, which officially opens on Sept. 14.
The Pair Eyewear kiosks will provide a hybrid shopping experience for Hy-Vee shoppers, enabling them to try eyewear frames on in stores and place prescription and nonprescription orders online through the in-store kiosk. Hy-Vee is the first U.S. retailer to give customers the ability to try on and shop Pair Eyewear products in physical stores.
Products will ship directly to the customer’s home within five to seven business days via standard free shipping. Pair Eyewear also offers a 30-day free return or exchange policy. In Pair Eyewear shipments, customers will receive instructions on how to adjust their glasses for the best fit.
New York-based Pair Eyewear offers high-quality, affordable and personalized eyewear for adults and children, including optical glasses, sunglasses and blue-light glasses, available in both prescription and non-prescription form. As well as the brand’s “base frames,” customers can also choose from a wide assortment of “top frames” that attach to the base magnetically, letting wearers to change their style easily. The e-retailer offers a growing selection of more than 1,000 customizable top-frame designs, among them partnerships with Harry Potter, Marvel, The NHL and MLB. Base frames start at $60, including prescription lenses, and top frames start at $25 each.
Hy-Vee customers will be able to try on Pair Eyewear’s most popular base frames in person and browse the brand’s huge collection of top frames through the kiosk’s digital component. For every pair of glasses purchased, Pair Eyewear donates a percentage of sales to the Eyelliance, which works to provide vision care to schoolchildren around the world.
“The introduction of Pair Eyewear to our Hy-Vee customers brings variety and value to their shopping experience through this hybrid model,” noted Hy-Vee Chairman, CEO and President Randy Edeker. “By combining our in-store format with Pair’s e-commerce platform, we are able to build a unique and convenient experience for our customers.”
Customers can buy prescription Pair Eyewear using a health savings account (HSA) or flexible spending account (FSA). Shoppers with an out-of-network benefit can submit a receipt to the covering insurance company to be reimbursed.
“We are incredibly excited to partner with Hy-Vee in launching Pair Eyewear’s first physical retail outpost as we continue to reimagine the way people shop for glasses,” said Pair Eyewear Co-CEO and co-founder Sophia Edelstein. “We look forward to introducing our innovative, customizable products to Hy-Vee customers in a fun and interactive setting, encouraging Hy-Vee customers to personalize and wear their Pair Eyewear as an empowering form of self-expression.”
Hy-Vee plans to open more than a dozen in-store Pair Eyewear kiosks across its market area over the next year.
This past April, BJ’s Wholesale Club launched an online shopping experience for BJ’s Optical customers, allowing them to purchase sunglasses and prescription eyewear on Optical.BJs.com.
Employee-owned Hy-Vee has a team of 86,000 employees and operates more than 280 retail stores across eight Midwestern states, with sales of $11 billion annually. The West Des Moines, Iowa-based company is No. 34 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2021 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. Westborough, Mass.-based BJ's, an operator of membership warehouse clubs in the eastern United States with more than 220 clubs and 151 BJ's Gas locations in 17 states, is No. 27 on The PG 100.
