Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, July 9th. Today on Forbes, how these French founders

built a Warby Parker competitor that's even more affordable. The three founders of Easy Peasy,

a French eyewear company founded in 2010, are staring at a decades-old photo of themselves on an

iPad in an office in New York.

Now in their late 30s, Xavier Aguera, Charles Brun, and Quentin Coturier are 17 years old in the

image, taken six years before the lifelong friends launched the brand that now brings in nearly

$60 million in annual revenue. Founded in Paris in 2010 as C Concept, the

affordable luxury brand, also known as Mastige, was launched a few months after and an ocean away from

Warby Parker, but the companies have distinctly different visions. Both sell premium readers,

sunglasses, and blue-light glasses for less to sheet customers

who don't want to spend a fortune to see and be seen.

EasyPeezy's prices range from about $50 to $75, while Warby Parker starts at $95 and goes

up.

But Warby Parker famously launched with a direct-to-consumer strategy, while C-C-Concept opted

for a brick-and-mortar approach. Both brands understood their customer. American consumers

wanted the convenience of trying on glasses at home, while the French valued the in-store

experience. Warby Parker has obviously been the more successful of the two.

Its revenue last year was $770 million, but the brand has never expanded beyond the United States and Canada.

EasyPeezy saw itself more in the mold of Swatch, the inexpensive Swiss watch company founded in the early 1980s,

that is now ubiquitous and includes such luxury

brands as Omega, Breguet, and Blanc Pan.

But that was not the dream when the three friends met as teenagers in Lyon, France.

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