VisionSpring, an international social enterprise, was founded in 2001 with a mission to broaden access to affordable eyewear everywhere. We establish market access to eyeglasses and vision correction for people living in poverty so that they may enhance their livelihoods, learning, and quality of li… read morefe. To date, VisionSpring has sold nearly three million pairs of glasses to low income consumers living in emerging and frontier markets, and is working to reach 10 million pairs by the symbolic year 2020.
As a social enterprise, social change motivates us first. Our focus on sales and revenue targets serves and advances our mission objective – to correct refractive error with eyeglasses so that low income consumers may experience improved functioning, productivity and income earning potential on a sustained basis.
We are working to transform the systemic dysfunction of the optical market which has failed to deliver a 700 year old technology to 644 million consumers who earn less than $4 a day.
We serve low income consumers not as beneficiaries but as customers. Our customers expect a high quality, affordable product and are willing to spend limited discretionary income for the immediate and tangible benefits of vision correction.
By selling glasses we awaken new demand and seed a viable market. By selling new eyeglasses we are able to serve four times as many people per dollar input than the next alternative of donating recycled ones . To efficiently scale, we must deliver each new unit with less cost.
Organizationally, we are a hybrid. We are a registered 501(c)3 non-profit and a Private Limited Company (PLC). We earn revenue and supplement it with contributed income. We hire change makers and pay bonuses and commissions. We run our business on both sales metrics and social impact measures. We exploit a range of organizational forms and practices to get the job done.