Take something expensive and only accessible to rich people and make it accessible to everyone else

The eyewear industry was — and largely still is — controlled by Luxottica, which owns Ray-Ban, Oakley, LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, and the EyeMed insurance network. This vertical integration allowed markups of 10–20x on frames that cost $10–$30 to manufacture. Warby Parker's founders identified this in a Wharton classroom, launched with $95 prescription glasses sold direct-to-consumer, and included a home try-on program that eliminated the need for retail. By 2023, the company had over 200 retail locations and reported approximately $600 million in annual revenue. The critical insight wasn't just price — it was that the brand positioned affordable eyewear as a design statement, not a compromise.

Gillette controlled roughly 70% of the U.S. razor market in 2011, sustained by billions in advertising spend and dominance of retail shelf space — the two highest cost layers in the razor value chain. Dollar Shave Club's 2012 launch video cost reportedly $4,500 to produce and generated 12,000 orders in the first 48 hours. The razors were manufactured by Dorco, a Korean OEM, at a fraction of Gillette's cost. By eliminating retail margins and replacing broadcast advertising with viral content, DSC could sell comparable razors for 80% less. Unilever acquired the company in 2016 for a reported $1 billion — a price that valued each of DSC's estimated 3.2 million subscribers at roughly $312.

Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss observed that women wanted to wear designer fashion but couldn't justify the cost for items worn once or twice. Rather than making cheaper dresses — which would have violated the brand equity of designers — they changed the access model entirely. Renting a $2,000 Marchesa gown for $150 gave customers the full luxury experience at a fraction of the cost while preserving the designer's pricing power. The model expanded from one-time rentals to a monthly subscription offering unlimited rotations. At its peak, RTR reportedly had over 130,000 active subscribers. The company went public in 2021, though it has since faced challenges with logistics costs and post-pandemic demand shifts — a reminder that democratization through access models requires relentless operational efficiency.

Elon Musk's 2006 "Secret Master Plan" laid out the democratization strategy explicitly: build an expensive sports car (Roadster, ~$109,000), use those profits to fund a more affordable sedan (Model S, ~$70,000), then use those profits to fund a mass-market car (Model 3, ~$35,000). Each generation expanded the addressable market by an order of magnitude. The Roadster sold roughly 2,500 units; the Model 3 has sold over 2 million. The critical insight was that electric vehicles didn't need to be positioned as eco-compromises — they could be positioned as superior performance machines that happened to be electric. By 2023, Tesla's revenue exceeded $96 billion, and the company had fundamentally shifted the global automotive industry's trajectory toward electrification.