Glasses are too expensive, so these M’sians started a biz that sells them for RM49+
- ID
- 41057
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 29 Oct 2026, 8:00 PM
- Fetched
- 30 Oct 2026, 1:06 PM
- Provider
- Vulcan Post
- Category
- malaysia-startup
- Original URL
- https://vulcanpost.com/914181/100glasses-affordable-online-optical-shop-malaysia-founder-interview/
- Source URL
- https://vulcanpost.com/feed/
Summary
- Score
- 3.0
- Created
- 30 Oct 2026, 1:07 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- saas_founders
What happened
100glasses is a new Malaysian online optical store selling prescription glasses from RM49, with frames made in Johor. Founders Jordan Kee and Mike met earlier this year on a nine-day silent Vipassana meditation course and paired Kee's startup experience (three startups, including an international crypto firm) with Mike's background as director of three physical optical stores in Johor Bahru. The pitch is that cutting physical retail fixed costs (rent, staff, commissions) lets them price below conventional optical shops, targeting B40 and M40 eyewear buyers, with US online eyewear seller Zenni Optical cited as the original inspiration.
Why it matters
The RM49 price point is the whole story: it sets a local reference price for prescription eyewear and only works if frame plus lens plus shipping plus re-makes still clears a margin, which the article never breaks out. If you're building vertical D2C in Malaysia, treat this as a positioning claim rather than proof — the piece is tagged sponsored, discloses no order volume, no lens-sourcing detail, and no unit economics, and the writer's own case required astigmatism and anti-blue-light lens add-ons that are the usual margin killers for cheap online eyewear.
Discussion angle
At RM49, what has to be true about lens cost, re-make rates for astigmatism and anti-blue-light add-ons, and returns handling for the online-only model to survive — and would you trust a sponsored startup profile with no disclosed order numbers?