How about something still optical, but just for fun? What colors are you tinting lenses these days besides the standard grey and brown shades? Anybody tinting unusual custom colors or multiple gradients?
How about something still optical, but just for fun? What colors are you tinting lenses these days besides the standard grey and brown shades? Anybody tinting unusual custom colors or multiple gradients?
Karlen, This is a good subject you started, but you might be disapointed with the response.......................Originally Posted by Karlen McLean
These days everybody seems to be all out to sell progressives, low fitting centers in small frames, no tint but AR coated in the most expensive variation. All done and supplied by the lab.
Reuters announced yesterday that Colgate is letting 4000 people go and other manufacturers have announced in November that a total of over 100,000 wil be let go.
It looks like a good and major recession is coming and then we will hear that the optical retail will backtrack a bit and be more interested again in doing some work again themselves which they have not done lately and show more interest.
standard solids: Grey, Brown, G-15, Blue, Pink, Yellow.
mixes: Rose, Violet, Custom Black (think black, without that annoying purple cast... ever).
All sorts of gradients... many of which have names like forest, sunset, etc... 'course at least at one store I do an unusual amount of Blue Shadow Blush doubles, which I affectionately call the "Tammy Faye." ;)
What is fashion tint?
Do they have to pay for it?
Or it comes with their free frame and free lenses and fre eye exam?????? :D
Horizontal bi-gradients, yellow centers gradient to dark neutral black at the edges. Think cat eyes.
That sounds interesting. Can you post a picture? Have to admit though that I am really against tints. I do 85% AR and don't like the hassle of the 2 combined. Other wise it is just a light blue or brown fade. Suns are almost always polarized so that is either brown or grey.
Lee Prewitt, ABOM
Independent Sales Representative
AIT Industries
224 W. James St.
Bensenville, IL 60106
Cell : (425) 241-1689
Phone: (800) 729-1959, Ext 137
Direct: (630) 274-6136
Fax: (630) 595-1006
www.aitindustries.com
leep@aitindustries.com
More Than A Patternless Edger Company
Just sold a 40% bright green tint to a 16 year old yesterday.
He said he was always on dope and needed to cover his red eyes.
:drop:
Geez, what's this world coming to when these young punks are admitting to us of their drug use!
:hammer:
...seem's like Optiboarders generate a lot of unique tints! Or, if not, a lot of AR. Either way, hope everyone's getting premium revenues from premium products...
Give it a few months and it will be a legal drug.
Red Eyes, Green Lenses. It's starting to feel like Christmas!
Not doing tints is reducing your income. If you do that amount of AR you passing the buck to the manufacturers who just love you. You also are high priced towards the consumer. Where is the most important factor? Are you giving your customers UV protection?
Nobody wants to have a hassle, but if you do some of the work with your own hands instead of farming it out you will have the difference in your pockets.
We have seen a big drop in the number of tints, do to polarized and mostly do to transition. Fashion tints are not very popular in our area at this time, light tints seem to go in and out of fashion. Tinting use to be a full time job, but time spent at the tint unit has been reduced to about 1/4 of a work day.
Joseph Felker
AllentownOptical.com
Karlen, my stats over the last year average 2 pair out of 350 a month. They mostly have gone the way of the dinosaur.
Happy Holidays!
Bev,
Watch how fast progressive lenses go "the way of the dino" when you stop talking about them.
Our year-to date figures show that we made an extra $23,000+ on in-house tinting. All we do is ask what kind of tint do you want, and it's a quick (and very easy) $20 - $30. We discourage gradients because they are more time consuming, but if they get them, they pay more for them. We don't tint sunglasses because they are usually polarized, and we sell a lot of polys, and they only take light tints. Easy to explain, easy to sell, easy to produce.
Easy...
Johns,
I can out do that amount easily by using premium product. How about a a 70K increase over last year as of Nov and growing. Our patients do not like the standard tints. AR clear are #1 followed by Sunsensors, Transitions.
Same number of jobs but larger average sale.
Specially today when there are new tinting ways that emit no toxic fumes form hot ethylene glycol (Neutralizer) and that tint poly and high index to the darkest shades in just a few minutes with equipment that costs $ 100.00 .
You could now double above extra amount, no wonder the US Navy has gone that route just recently:
We do about 40% tints, mostly gradients. Pink, red, blue, brown and grey.
I think tints match certain demographics. What is your average age patient? Ratio of male to female?
Bev:
Average age is above national average. This is also a very low income area. Most of the work force is involved in agriculture or related.
This is a wholesale lab so I'm sure my customers are also doing tints, I just don't know what type.
Yeah, I have probably done about $60,000 to $80,000 in AR and another $30,000 in transitions this year. Now there are costs involved in those, but they are still nice add-ons.
However, I do a lot of tinting as I do a lot of prescription sunglasses. A lot of times I offer to tint their old lenses at no charge for them. I do not do a lot of fashion tints.
Edit - All the tints that I use are OMS tints ;)
Bev,
I wasn't trying to get into a "spitting" match with anyone. I would certainly hope that you could do the amount I mentioned selling premiums, because I was referring only to the lowly tints. Everyone whose in the game sells premiums, and a lot of them, but if you sell ONLY premiums, you miss a whole bunch of gravy. We sell premium add-ons to folks that buy premium frames, but our motto is "nobody walks". Every medicaid (3% of our business) is offered a tint, and most buy. This doubles our profit on this segment of our business. Ever package sale is offered a tint. This turns an $89 sale in to a $115+ sale. If you can get excited about selling $60,000 in premiums, what's not to get excited about selling another $20-25K in tints, or fitovers, chains or cleaning cloths ? Cleaning cloths aren't premiums either, but we sell a ton of those as well - just because we mention them.
All of our tints in the pots are already paid for, so if we sell $2,000 in tints this month, I won't get a bill from essilor for $1,000 at the end on the month.
Every penny counts, and I'm not to proud to sell ! (Even tints)
Johns, A fair and honest and smart statement. Also "for life" seems to have caught on to vote for service.
While making a new pair of glasses.............
It is so easy to convert the old glasses into sunglasses and make a good additional income doing it. If the lenses had an AR coating on it you strip that in 5 seconds and then add a UV in 2 minutes and tint the lenses in another 60 seconds. In this case you have performed three manual operations for which a lab would charge you....whatever.
Your patient has a pair of usable sunglasses that will not cost him a fortune which he might not even be able to afford these days.
It looks that most Optiboarders are afraid to get their hands dirty and prefer to become an or have become so called re-sellers for the large ccorporations.
One item that has not been touched in this discussion about tinting is also the extra add on of UV absorbers. UV radiation of which we all most affected and exposed to seems to be a dead issue on this forum and nobody seems to touch the subject which also belongs into a tinting discussion.
We also sell a lot of UV. Can't tell you the numbers right now but it is a good percentage.
I've noticed a dramatic change in the sales of UV treatments in my labs, this time last year we were selling 'em like hotcakes, but now, it seems like I haven't had a UV treatment in some time, although, when we do sunglass tints it's not neccesary since our tints have the UV screen included them.
As far as our poor UV treatment sales, maybe it's because we are up in sales of Transitions products, poly lenses and in A/R's, but even on the basic plastics (uncoated AOLite CR39), we rarely see the additon of UV. Tint sales have also dropped off in the past few weeks... maybe it's the "two for..." sales we're running, Lord knows most of the schmucks that bit on that deal in the past rarely add any extras (even though we have a sale on A/R coating running now as well).
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