Carl Zeiss Vision Announces Customized Lens Strategy for 2009: “The Revolution is Now!”
Carl Zeiss Vision President – Americas Fred Howard has announced major initiatives in the development, production and promotion of customized lenses for the coming year.

“We now have everything in place – outstanding lens designs, a unique customization approach, a patented process and outstanding partners,” said Howard. “2009 will be the year that we bring the customized lens revolution to many, many practices and patients around the country.”

“Today, we are moving to the next level of customization with the launch of Zeiss Individual™, which accounts for the unique interaction between a patient’s Rx, frame, and face. We are also launching Zeiss GT2™ 3D, a customized version of our award-winning GT2™ progressive lens. Both Zeiss Individual and Zeiss GT2 3D are manufactured using Carl Zeiss Vision’s patented back-surface technology.”

Prior to today’s product launches, Carl Zeiss Vision already had an impressive customized lens portfolio. The HD series (SOLAOne™ HD, SOLA Compact ULTRA™ HD, AO Easy HD) are customized for the patient’s full prescription, eliminating the visual compromises that often occur in semi-finished progressives. SOLA HDV adds a continuously variable corridor that maximizes lens performance in virtually any frame with a fitting height from 13 to 35mm.

“Customization is more than a lens design,” Howard said. “It is an entire infrastructure. To provide a real benefit to the wearer and the ECP, you first need the right customization strategy. You need a sophisticated software calculation engine that can create the ideal design for each wearer’s unique circumstances, and can do it in real time. You need a network of labs with free-form generators. And you need a precise, verifiable process that can deliver a highly complex design with tight tolerances consistently and on-time.”

“Carl Zeiss Vision can lead the custom lens revolution because we have all of the pieces of the puzzle,” said Claude Labeeuw, Carl Zeiss Vision’s Vice President for Business Development. “We have outstanding customized lens designs. We have a proprietary manufacturing protocol, called Precise-Form™ by Zeiss, which delivers these complex customized designs with extraordinary precision. We have a rigorous Precise-Form certification process that labs must pass in order to manufacture these products.”

Howard cautioned against using the terms “free-form” and “customized” interchangeably. “Free-form only means that the production process involves a free-form generator at some point,” he said. “It could mean that a free-form generator was just used to surface
a semi-finished lens. Or it might have been used to cut the mold used to produce semi-finished lenses. Customization uses the full potential of free-form to create a personalized design in real time without the constraints of a semi-finished design. That is what our initiative is all about.”

Practice support is another key element of Carl Zeiss Vision’s customized lens strategy, according to Bernadette Hiskey, Carl Zeiss Vision’s Director, Customized Lenses. “To make customized lenses a success for independent practices, we know we have to provide training and support for fitting and dispensing, and for communicating with the patient. We support practices with a comprehensive certification program, and in-store marketing based on the powerful ZEISS brand.”

In the coming months, Carl Zeiss Vision will announce new customized products, lab partnerships and ECP programs. At present, Fred Howard encourages eye care professionals to recognize that “superior optical performance through individual customization is not tomorrow’s technology. The customized revolution is now, and Carl Zeiss Vision will partner with you to maximize its potential for your practice.”