Shamir (Genesis) lens cross-branding?

[drk]

Here's a question, if Darryl feels like answering it:

Just how would a company go about "knocking off" another design, anyway? I think its a practical impossiblity.

What do you do, press a semifinished blank into a pile of soft putty, then harden it, and voila, and imprint to make a mold from? I think it's a little more exact than that!

Not only that, but can you picture a company laboriously analyzing a lens design to produce a knock-off? With the amount of brain power and technical ability it would take to do that, you could design your own.

I think it's a silly proposition.

[Johns]

Not only that, but can you picture a company laboriously analyzing a lens design to produce a knock-off? With the amount of brain power and technical ability it would take to do that, you could design your own.

I think it's a silly proposition.

In this day and age, with all the technology available, why couldn't be copied ? Sure, it's tougher than just using soft putty, but there's a lot of $$ at stake here.

[xiaowei]

Joachim , would you have rather have paid much higher price, for a bigger branded product , with lessor visual comfort , just to have the satisfaction of having some unique markings ?

I can guess , the optician did not even try and sell you this product as a Shamir lens, in the first place.
And yes Mika is a lens supplier sourcing a lot of their lenses from Swisslens , Hongkong .

You guess right, what I ordered was kind of a "noname" resp. "generic" brand intermediate quality PAL lens with multicoating. Only after checking the markings and being happy with the result I asked him what brand of glasses they are he told me he bought them from Nika.

I paid approx. $300 for the pair incl. frame and are very happy with the result, as these glasses were initially intended as a 2nd pair "to experiment a bit" with a bumped up add for more near work, which I now like very much and wear the new ones almost all the time.

The last time when I got my Zeiss Individuals I was a little bit disppointed with the result, they were good but did not give me the "WOW" effect I expected compared to my very first pair which was also a inexpensive generic brand, so this time I did not want to shell out another $1000-$1200 (approx. current price here in Germany) for a new pair of Individuals with mostly only a slightly higher add!

(What seems often to be forgotten that the claimed enlarged view areas with any kind of individuals mostly
apply for patients with high cylinders, prisms and unsual frames, which is not my case. Rodenstock even has a nice paper on that - unfortunately only in german it seems -

http://www.optikum.at/modules.php?na...rticle&sid=496

that shows - if you read the graphs carefully - that a cheaper PAL optimized for the "as worn position" can perform almost as good as their individual "Impression" glass, IF your Rx does not deviate too much from the "average" Rx and probably nearest base curve)

On the other side, the Zeiss hard AR coating is definitely much better (less residual reflection) and much easier to clean (but I also had glass no plastics in the old pair), but I can live with what I already get from the cheaper Genesis. (I do not know what brand of greenish coating there is)

Yes, I know that Nika actually does not make most of their lenses, but orders them from China, but seems to have very strict tolerances and quality control. On my last trip to Shanghai I even had planned to go to a local optician there to give it a try, but had not enough free time!

Xiaowei (Joachim)

[xiaowei]

You need to do a little more homework before making such wild and unfounded claims in a public forum. Carl Zeiss Vision and Essilor, currently the two largest lens manufacturers in the world, design their own progressive lens molds. Further, these two companies have been designing progressive lenses and establishing IP in the progressive lens field long before Shamir ever released their first progressive. While Shamir may be an OEM mold supplier for smaller lens companies, who may find it more economical to outsource design work rather than investing in their own lens design groups, this certainly isn't true of the "large corporations."

I also do not want to claim that Shamir is "behind" the "large cooperations", however there seems to be at least some cooperation!

Shamir recently released a new brand of cheaper "individual" progressives sold only (in the moment it seems) in France and Spain called LeCinq

http://www.shamir.co.il/news.asp#142

(I assume it´s basically their Autograph)

What I find interesting is that both French and Spanish websites claim that the new lens is made by Shamir AND Zeiss!

http://afflelou-cherbourg.bienvoir.n...cle-38271.html

"fabriqué par les laboratoires Carl Zeiss Vision et Shamir Optical Industry Ltd."

and

http://www.portalesmedicos.com/notic...os_0604022.htm

"Le Cinq se fabrica exclusivamente en Europa para Alain Afflelou por los laboratorios Carl Zeiss Vision y Shamir Optical Industry Ltd., en Francia, Alemania, Portugal e Italia."

Xiaowei

[Darryl Meister]

What I find interesting is that both French and Spanish websites claim that the new lens is made by Shamir AND Zeiss!

Several retailers, both here and abroad, offer a "branded" progressive lens that may actually comprise multiple lens designs from different manufacturers, depending upon the lens material, hard coating type, prescription range, sunlens type, etcetera. Shamir is not involved with Carl Zeiss Vision lens design at Afflelou or anywhere else. You will not get a "ZEISS" lens made by Shamir, or vice versa.

Here's a question, if Darryl feels like answering it:
Just how would a company go about "knocking off" another design, anyway? I think its a practical impossiblity.

It's actually easier than you think, especially if you have the right software tools at your disposal. There are several commerical instruments available that will map out an entire progressive lens design. The following discussion illustrates some of the possibilities, though this certainly isn't directed at any lens manufacturers in particular:

You could recreate the very same design using the measurement data from one of these instruments as the "target." Simply plug the measurement data into an optimization routine that attempts to create a lens surface that comes as close as possible to matching the "target" design. This approach isn't entirely unlike the procedure used to optimize lens designs for the individual prescription and position of wear measurements in more advanced free-form processes. However, this approach is the most likely to result in a lens design that appears to be a knock-off of another (which increases your patent violation exposure risk).

Another option, for lens designers who already have progressive lens design software tools at their disposal, is simply to parameterize a progressive lens design to emulate the viewing zone configuration and distribution of surface optics of another lens design that has already proven successful in the marketplace. That is, you would evaluate a commercially successful progressive lens, and then design your own lens to mimic the width of the distance zone, width of the near zone, corridor length, peripheral boundary gradients (softness), and so on. However, I'm not suggesting that any lens manufacturer currently engages in either of these two practices.

A third option is to recreate the original manufacturer's approach to lens design from their "prior art" or patents. If the information in these patents is sufficiently descriptive, an individual with an adequate mathematics background could even reproduce the original lens design algorithms in some cases. This approach would be particularly useful if you do not have the technical competency to create your own lens design tools from scratch. This approach could also be used to create new lens designs as well, although these designs will be similar to the original manufacturer's design and the process would still infringe upon the original manufacturer's intellectual property rights. I have seen instances of what I suspect to be this type of practice in the past.

All three of these scenarios illustrate how a less scrupulous lens manufacturer could save on the overhead costs associated with a large Research & Development group by simply exploiting the efforts of another manufacturer. Keep in mind that creating a novel, successful progressive lens design frequently requires a huge investment into research and development, including vision science research, prototype lens fabrication, and developmental wearer trials, in order to determine the most optimal progressive lens designs (viewing zone configuration, distribution of surface optics, etcetera). Replicating a successful progressive lens design, on the other hand, requires considerably fewer resources, which could potentially allow a smaller company to keep overhead low. But I will spare you the ethical and economic implications involved here.

[Barry Santini]

I don't get it either. I have stopped using Essilor products. :cheers:

It's not the product, it the Rx and person fitting/interpreting it...

Let them sell Essilor products...they *need* the handicap!!

Barry

[vikramg]

Replicating a successful progressive lens design, on the other hand, requires considerably fewer resources, which could potentially allow a smaller company to keep overhead low. But I will spare you the ethical and economic implications involved here.

Dear Darryl .. Most small companies need not go through all the trouble mentioned in your post above ...

They simply buy progressive moulds from legitimate mould making companies for whom progressive lens designing is not exactly rocket science, neither a domain where they need to "steal/mimic " big companies designs to make there own ..

Mould making companies do a terrific job at making progressive moulds as it their only means for survival .

What this gives, the small lens manufacturers, is the latest in progressive designs at realistic prices , not some 15-20 year old design which the big companies need to continue, just because they have become "successful".

This trend along with the "real world market production competition dynamics" which the markets in asia generally tend to be ,has resulted in progressive prices fast approaching flat top prices as manufactures compete for larger market share by lowering costs .

[Darryl Meister]

Darryl .. Most small companies need not go through all the trouble mentioned in your post above ... They simply buy progressive moulds from legitimate mould making companies

I agree completely. I'm referring to the original (OEM) vendors here, not companies that may buy their molds or lens designs. Though even companies that use OEM lens designs may still have their own lens design group.

neither a domain where they need to "steal/mimic " big companies designs to make there own .

I disagree. I suspect that at least two or three companies have heavily cannibalized the prior art of other lens manufacturers for the basis of their own progressive lens design efforts. But that's all I really intend to say on that particular matter.

[Chris Ryser]

This trend along with the "real world market production competition dynamics" which the markets in asia generally tend to be ,has resulted in progressive prices fast approaching flat top prices as manufactures compete for larger market share by lowering costs .

I wonder how the advertising hype is going to look in a year or two when maybe the corporations are reverting back to advertising fancy biforcals, that will make you look more distiguished, and will be more expensive than those distorted progressives.
:hammer:

[Dot the Eye]

Ah yes, I can see it now ... The Nonadaptar.