China’s $3 Glasses Just Killed a $165 Billion American Monopoly

UNITED STATES Have you ever wondered why a pair of glasses that costs $5 to $8 to manufacture ends up selling for $250 or more? The answer lies with EssilorLuxottica, a $165 billion empire that quietly spent 60 years buying up nearly every piece of the global eyewear industry. Founded by Leonardo Del Vecchio, an orphan from Milan who started out stamping metal hinges in a small workshop in Agordo, Italy, the company grew into the most complete monopoly in consumer goods. Luxottica acquired brands like Ray-Ban for $640 million and Oakley for $2.1 billion, purchased retail chains including LensCrafters and Sunglass Hut, signed licensing deals with Prada, Chanel, Versace, Burberry, and dozens of other fashion houses, merged with lens giant Essilor in 2018, and even owns EyeMed Vision Care, the second-largest vision insurance provider in the United States with 43 million members. But right now, a city in eastern China called Danyang is breaking that monopoly from the inside. With fewer than 1 million residents, Danyang produces over 400 million spectacle lenses per year—50% of every lens manufactured on Earth—along with more than 100 million pairs of frames annually. More than 1,600 eyewear companies operate there, employing over 50,000 workers and generating approximately $2.8 billion in yearly revenue. The lenses coming out of Danyang feature multi-layer optical coatings, blue light filtration, UV protection, and precision grinding that independent lab tests confirm match or exceed the performance of premium brands at 10 to 20 times the cost. Online eyewear companies like Zenni Optical, founded in 2003 and now with over 50 million pairs sold, offer complete prescription glasses starting at $6.95. Warby Parker, launched in 2010 with $95 frames, went public in 2021 at a valuation exceeding $6 billion. Online eyewear sales in the United States have risen from under 3% in 2015 to more than 15% in 2025, and 4.4 billion people worldwide who need corrective lenses are finally starting to ask the question EssilorLuxottica never wanted anyone to ask: why does this cost so much?