LENS TIPS

Putting Luxe in the Lens

Here’s how some ECPs use a little artistry and creativity to serve up special lenses for their high-end patients

creating eyewear that allows your patients to wear a customized look can go far beyond an artful frame. In fact, sometimes no frame is needed at all. Armed with a modern edger or a wholesale lab that can handle special design work, the sky is the limit regarding lens art. Try some custom shapes, lens tattooing, or etching a design or the patient’s initials into the lens. What about edge coloring, bevels, cut-outs, or even gemstones countersunk into the temporal side of the lens? It’s all possible with a good edger (or lab), and some creativity.

Best of all, turning lenses into works of art can create a business niche that will keep on giving—in many ways.

SELLING THE LOOK

Until you are known in your area for creating one-of-kind lenses to match your luxury and funky frames, it’s a safe bet that your patients have no idea that their lenses can be fabulous, too. Patient education is a big part of the sales process. And those who do it best do it by showing, not telling.

ON DISPLAY. Samples of eyewear with gradient tints, cool lens shapes, bevels, and embedded gemstones should be out on display to whet the imagination.

“Whenever someone is looking at rimless eyewear, I bring over one of the unique shapes I’ve done to demonstrate that, really, anything is possible,” says Charlie Blankenship, ABOC, of Spectacle Shoppe, with four locations in Minnesota. “You can see the light bulb go on in their head as they realize they are not just stuck with what they see on the board. That often gets their wheels turning.”

FRAME IT. But don’t just limit creative lenses to your drill-mount customers. Tracy Mast, ABOC, of Smoke Vision Care, with three locations in Michigan, replaces the demo lenses in several full-frame styles on the board with plano lenses that sport funky bevels or other lens treatments to show what can be done within the frame, too.

One of the main reasons for Smoke Vision Care’s success in luxury lenses is the practice’s support of luxurious customer service. “We’re not supposed to give our patients a cookie-cutter experience,” Mast says. “It’s not just about the sale. It’s about a luxury experience.”

Photo courtesy of Central Eyeworks

“We try to give our customers a one-of-a-kind pair of eyewear,” agrees Tommy Libert, ABOC, owner of Central Eyeworks in Phoenix. “And it starts with a one-of-a-kind experience.”

And there are very simple ways of doing that. Have staff stand up and greet each customer who comes through the door. Address them by name. And make sure they know the possibilities that exist within the dispensary, and that they can have eyewear designed just for them.

THE PRICE IS RIGHT

The profitability of these customization techniques can range anywhere from $20 or $30 for an edge paint to much, much more for a custom-designed shape, tint, and jewels. But, be careful to price the add-ons with reason, based on lab costs or time spent in the in-house finishing lab.

“You’re not going to get rich off a few lens add-ons,” Mast says, but what you’re going to get is much more important to a profitable business.

“I don’t go crazy with up charging,” Libert says. “Because people are going to stop my customers and ask them where they got their beautiful eyewear. My number-one business builder is word of mouth.”

— Susan Tarrant