Industry facilitates practitioners’ involvement in growing online eyeglass market

More and more Americans are making purchases online, and that trend is now starting to infiltrate eye wear purchasing.

Survey results recently released from the Vision Council indicate that 24.1% of contact lens purchasers used the Internet to some extent when shopping. For plano sunglasses buyers that number drops to 12.6%, for prescription eyeglass purchasers it is 11.1%, and for over-the-counter readers it is 5.5%.

When it comes to eye wear buyers who not only shop on the Internet but also directly make their purchases on the Internet, the survey results show that the numbers dramatically decrease. Fifteen percent of recent buyers actually purchased their contact lenses online, 3.6% purchased plano sunglasses, 2.8% purchased prescription eyeglasses and 1.9% purchased OTC readers.

However, these small percentages translate into big money. Coastal Contacts, an Internet-based company that sells eyeglasses and contact lenses directly to the consumer, recently announced eyeglass purchases of $1.6 million in a single week.

AOA project team

Organized optometry recognizes the potential impact of this trend. One year ago the American Optometric Association announced its intentions to evaluate online eye wear purchasing.

Beth A. Kneib, OD, associate director of quality improvement for the AOA, told Primary Care Optometry News that the AOA’s Safety and Compliance of Eyewear Sold Online project team would release its findings this March or April.

VSP launches online portal

VSP Global, which encompasses VSP Vision Care, Marchon Eyewear, Eyefinity/Officemate and VSP Labs, recently announced a live beta test of its online optical retail store, Eyeconic.com, among 8,600 small California VSP Vision Care clients. According to a VSP press release, the beta test will enable 473,000 VSP members to use Eyeconic.com to purchase contacts, sun wear and prescription eye wear.

Dave Plevyak

Dave Plevyak, vice president of business development for Eyefinity/OfficeMate, explained how the site will work.

“Patients get an exam from the doctor and then go to the website and enter their prescription,” he said in an interview with PCON. “We validate the prescription with the doctor who wrote it, fill it, ship the product to the customer and then send the doctor a professional support fee. We want independent eye care providers to have an option for their patients who are going to order their glasses online.”

Mr. Plevyak said VSP has always been committed to independent eye care providers. “It’s definitely an emerging market,” he said. “The choices were to do nothing and allow other companies to take patients and sales away from independent eye care providers or enter the space with a competitive site to support them.”

VSP discussed the concept with various doctor groups. “A small group seems opposed to any kind of online purchasing,” he said. “Another small group is excited about it, the early adopter group, and a lot of them are concerned about patients shopping online and getting poor quality products. When we proposed our solution, we got positive feedback.

“I think most patients will continue to buy their first pair from the doctor, but there’s a large opportunity for plano sunglasses or second-pair purchases that they may go online for,” Mr. Plevyak added.

Essilor grows online opticals

Howard B. Purcell

Essilor got involved in online eye wear purchasing last fall. During a panel discussion at Vision Expo West on the topic, Howard B. Purcell, OD, FAAO, vice president of customer development for Essilor of America, announced the launch of MyOnlineOptical.com. The new Essilor service helps eye care practitioners (ECPs) set up their own e-commerce site or allows them to link their existing practice website to MyOnlineOptical.

“You can create an online model as a viable professional extension of your practice,” Dr. Purcell said at the conference. “Patients may come into your practice to look for frames and not find something they like. Give them a card with your website address and tell them you have a wider selection there. There’s no reason for them to go anywhere else.”

Dr. Purcell listed the advantages of using MyOnlineOptical: around-the-clock service, more than 100,000 frames, no-cost inventory expansion, individualized price setting, Essilor as the service provider and operating expense savings.

In December, Essilor announced in a press release that more than 600 online optical stores have been built through MyOnlineOptical for independent ECPs.

FramesDirect and Essilor

Dhavid Cooper

Dhavid Cooper, OD, chief executive officer of FramesDirect.com, launched his Internet ordering service in 1996 with a business partner after selling five optometry practices in Houston and teaching optics at the University of Houston College of Optometry.

“We started with sunglasses, then frames,” he said at the Vision Expo West symposium. “Then we evaluated single vision lenses, then progressives. Everything we experiment with is being made available through Essilor’s online program.”

Dr. Cooper said a mathematical formula was developed for use with progressive lenses. “We wondered if we could place the progressive multifocal height in the right place if we had a good monocular PD and all the measurements of the frame,” he said. “We ran a test that worked out well, so we started experimenting on the Web. Today, we do this with a very good success rate.”

Trying on frames virtually

Another panel participant, Hal Wilson, president and co-founder of CyberImaging, said his technology allows patients to virtually try on frames offered over the Internet.

“Our online product, CyberEyes VTO (virtual try-on), is a tool kit, not a turn-key site,” he said during the Vision Expo West symposium. “This allows you to set up your own collections catalogue, pricing rules and lens offerings.”

He said patients can upload images at home, but an in-office module is also available. “You can drive existing patients to your own website,” he said. “Your best online patient will be an existing patient.”

Mr. Wilson noted that many practices have the same price for eyeglasses online as in their office. “There’s this notion that Internet equals price discounting,” he said, “but it doesn’t have to be that way. Don’t forget about convenience and selection. You can’t be open 24/7 and you can’t offer 20,000 frames in your office.”

How one practitioner got involved

Kim Castleberry

Kim Castleberry, OD, chief executive officer of Plano Eye Associates in Plano, Texas, has taken a proactive approach.

“Plano, Texas, is a tech-savvy area with high Internet usage, and perhaps it is affecting my practice earlier than some other areas of the nation,” he told PCON in an interview. “More than a year ago I chose to deploy an online optical in my practice.

“Wal-Mart is beta testing their online optical in a store just a few steps from my office,” he continued. “Their new computer workstations show patients how they can place their next order online. Patients leave with log-in IDs and a password. If they do a national release, patients can make their next purchase of contacts or eyeglasses with one click. This would be a formidable threat to the rest of us.”

Dr. Castleberry said his office’s use of MyOnlineOptical will allow them to compete. “I have implemented this technology at zero cost and overhead,” he said. “We are doing about $1,000 a month in net income to the practice in online sales, most of it contact lenses. We have sold less than a dozen pair of glasses at this point, all of them prescription sunglasses with name brand frames and lenses.”

Questions about quality, lost sales

A number of attendees at the Vision Expo West symposium expressed concerns regarding the advent of online eye wear purchasing, including “cheapening” the role of the licensed optician.

“We have a licensed optician behind every order,” Mr. Wilson responded.

“We cannot stop this from happening,” Dr. Purcell added. “We need to find the best way to make it work,” he said. “Only 10% to 15% of people will ultimately make a purchase online.”

One attendee suggested that opticians charge for adjustments for glasses purchased elsewhere.

“I manage a large group of opticians, and this came up,” symposium moderator Edward DeGennaro, MEd, ABOM, said. “We would call it fee-for-service. Most of you mark up your eyeglasses but discount your service. Optometry went through this 15 years ago when contact lenses were sold online, and they realized they had to segregate themselves from the products. Cost of materials is separate from fitting fees. You’ll compete a lot better that way.”

“The key point is we have to meet the needs of our patients,” Dr. Purcell said. “Every quarter second someone Googles ‘eyeglasses.’ Nearly everyone here has bought something online. This doesn’t have to diminish our professionalism.”

In a follow-up interview, Dr. Cooper told PCON he is concerned for ECPs who disregard the warning signs and take no action. “Internet eye wear is not a concept, as it was in 1996. It is a reality,” he said. “As a profession, we need to be extremely proactive in making sure we lead and define this medium, or we’ll get left behind and have it defined for us. I predict that within 5 to 10 years, the purchasing of eye wear online will become so easy, improved, sophisticated and mobile that ECPs who aren’t riding the trend now will never catch up.

“There are several great avenues for ECPs to become involved in online eye wear,” he added. “Just pick one.” – Nancy Hemphill, ELS

• The American Optometric Association can be reached at (800) 365-2219; www.aoa.org.
• Kim Castleberry, OD, chief executive officer of Plano Eye Associates, can be reached at kimcastleberry@me.com; www.PlanoEye.com.
• Dhavid Cooper, OD, chief executive officer of FramesDirect.com, can be reached at dcooper@framesdirect.com.
• Dave Plevyak, is vice president of business development for VSP Global. VSP can be reached at www.vsp.com.
• Howard B. Purcell, OD, vice president of customer development for Essilor of America, can be reached at (214) 496-4981; hpurcell@essilorusa.com.
• The Vision Council can be reached at (703) 548-4560; www.thevisioncouncil.org.
• Hal Wilson, president and co-founder of CyberImaging, can be reached at (919) 872-5179, ext. 14; hwilson@cyber-imaging.com.