Crafting your own eyewear brand: Maximizing sales opportunities

Edward Choy, partner at Sho Eyeworks, and Diana Canto-Sims, OD, discussed the strategic importance of offering a curated selection of eyewear frame styles and sizes in optometric practices, with the goal of closely aligning product offerings with patient demographics. Canto-Sims opened by emphasizing the practical challenges faced in sourcing frames that appropriately fit patients with wide faces, such as the need for larger frame sizes like 56 or even up to 59/60, which are rare in the market. They critiqued terminology used by some companies that label larger frames with pejorative terms and highlighted the impact of such language and selection shortcomings on patient experience. The conversation also addressed analogous difficulties faced by women seeking petite frames, underscoring the importance of carrying both ends of the size spectrum to enhance patient satisfaction and increase the likelihood of multiple purchases per visit, which in turn bolsters the practice’s “capture rate.”

Choy, representing a supplier, explained how their collection is designed to enable practices to curate frames for their specific patient bases while maximizing quality and profitability. By offering both insurance and cash options, practices can accommodate diverse patient financial frameworks, and Choy highlighted the reality of insufficient vision plan reimbursements faced by many practices. The benefit of launching private label selections was discussed at length. This approach not only protects profit margins through substantial markups—sometimes between four to eight times wholesale cost—but also allows practices to control quality and brand identity. Case studies were cited, detailing successful practices that created multiple private-label collections, segmented by demographic, achieving higher sales and profitability by minimizing overhead associated with maintaining a vast assortment of outside brands.

Customer testimonials were referenced, reinforcing the consistent strengths of quality and value in private label offerings. The session concluded with a call to action for practice owners to consult with Choy and Sho for personalized assistance in developing proprietary frame collections, and an invitation to stay engaged with further discussions on private labeling to discover ideal partners and strategies for practice growth.