Opticianry in the 21st Century??
Originally Posted by Stan Tabor
.........................................We are in a world that is accelerating in terms of change. Focus on adapting to the change and capitalizing on new opportunities rather than fighting change.
*************
And just how are we to accomplish this??
Your being a hard working educator and entrpreneur in the field , do you have some suggestions Ted ?
I would love to hear his ideasI'm doing it by specializing.
If opticians do not adapt very fast and not over years.......................
Originally Posted by tmorse
As there is no way of destroying the internet, unless you can shoot down the satellites that transmit it instantly and the world will be set back more than 60-to 70 years, because the old telephone and telegraph cables do not exist anymore as they have been removed, in which case your profession will flourish again for a while and there is no need for any change.
If this ultimate disaster does not happen you will be dying a professional death as we can see from these many posts on OptiBoard. There is no consensus, no agreement, only bickering.
The consumer looks for the best price and the internet provides the information where to to and get it. The BC Government has now ordered optometrist's to provide the PD on every prescription. (Copy of letter in a Canadian Forum post). How long will it take until other provincial and or State governments will follow this trend ? It is bound to happen.
One post on another thread quotes an OptiBoard member buying his new car on-line because it saves thousands of Dollars. How long will it be until we can just about get anything on the web for cheaper ? And aren't we all doing it, ............but do not like the on-line optical's to interfere with our profession?
According to the post's right here on OptiBoard any post dealing with this competition where just about ignored for the last 6 years.
There is no way of picking the brains of on-line operators as the few that came on this board have disappeared or have been banned for whatever reason.
I could even project that at some point your optical labs will start selling directly to consumers as the B&M businesses will not be able to order enough for them to survive. Most of the big labs are corporation owned, the same corporation that owns the largest on-line optical.
They are playing the field both ways and don't care how it is going to be in the future, they will still be selling their lenses and AR coating them.
If opticians do not adapt very fast and not over years, they will be a historic profession.
There was once an optician who..............................
I pretty much bought my car online but I still had to have a salesperson to give me quotes from several dealerships via a central website for the car brand I wanted. I still had to go pick it up, sign papers and tie up the loose ends but the selection, make, model, color and loan was all done online and via email. Is it out of the question that optical could someday use the same idea? If there is a central website that takes customer info, asks questions to narrow down the selection and then gives several quotes from area opticals it could work. It would save the consumer price shopping via car and direct them to your own website where they might be enticed by the info there to pay you a visit. Just a thought.
I think we may be seeing more of this type of business
http://www.optiboard.com/forums/show...38-Zip-Eyewear
As opticians, we need to prove our value-worth to every customer and every-time. As we look to the future, one great tool that some of us have taken advantage of to enhance value is a digital measurement system. Getting the customer involved, discussing/showing monocular measurement accuracy and having a digital file/picture of the measurement to reference for future sales/measurements is a great help. This is especially so for when a different optician may measure that customer in the future. Being able to take incredibly accurate measurements works for all, and is especially impressive for the people who have a 1mm or greater difference in the mono pd or height. They have the greatest potentially to be 100% believers in the opticians and the technology. They will share these experiences with others and help to build business.
A key point for some customers, show/prove that they have a "special eye wear need", mono-pd-height differences with the frame pre-fit. They cannot get the accurate mono-measurement online and in many cases, will not get it from your competition who is not using the latest technology.
Your digital PD measurement will be antiquated by the next century system, as it will be commercially available within the next couple of years incorporated into I-Pads or similar.
Long before the next century, probably over the next few years............There will be a new type of optical service retailers, as the present system has been terminated by lack of customers that are willing to pay the prices charged by today's opticians.
These will be optical service stations, that do urgent repairs, adjustments, measure PDs and anything else when needed and required. The employees will not need any big qualifications as the job is more mechanical and needs good hands and fingers. Any technical support will be available with digital input by lens and frame manufacturers.
These service stations will also go the way of being set up by the few large optical corporations on a similar political setup as today's gas stations. They will be run by a new professional, the optical service manager. Optical Service Stations could also be part of the on-line optical's, carrying frame samples for peoples easier choice and charge only a service fee.
The major optical corporations will eventually take over most of the large on-line optical's after having successfully deregulated the optical retail by big time lobbying government regulators in the USA and Canada.
The on-line optical's will make and sell the glasses and prescriptions, while major lens manufacturers will setup proprietary and complex software which will replace the learned wisdom of today's optician. You will only click the links on the computer and get the correct answers to any occurring problem. All you can teach presently a live human brain is already at your fingertips and can be concentrated down to only optical wisdom.
These digital centration devices further illustrate the lack of professional in an optician. The onliners have been using ratios and known values to scale images up and get PD's from images for a few years now. The manufacturers of these digital centration devices are packaging up a computer, webcam, and software for $10K for the professional. Last I checked a webcam with good resolution costs about $60.00, a computer $600, and even if I splurged and bought photoshop at about $500 I am still way under the $10K mark. The average optician has zero know how outside of his/her realm, they have specialized into a corner.
...and they have allowed lens manufacturers determine what their "education" should be.
I will not be around in the next century and most of you will not be either..........
What good argument............these same manufacturers that today own and operate your largest competitor on the market "Frames Direct", have been educating the optical world and still are.
This discussion is turning again into the educational bickering which will be going nowhere as have other threads instead of finding a practical solution for the present situation which steamrolling ahead and is belittled by most.
One of the major retailers has recently, and without publicity closed one of five of its five lab operations, of which each have been doing between 5,000-6,000 jobs per day. Can anyone tell me that better education by their retail staff would have saved them in one lab 36,000 jobs per week or 1,872,000 jobs per year which they lost. By that calculation sales must have gone down 20%.
Those are news that do not make the news..............and there are probably more of them.
The lens and frame suppliers are not loosing a cent, as the business has just been shifted to another corner of the market which sells for a lot even.
You can totally ignore these facts as most of the previous posts indicate, or blame it on education which takes years to aquire.
As Johns says in his above post macaroni is macaroni and in this case it is ----------------------> glasses are glasses and lenses are lenses, and the consumer decides where to get them.
I will not be around in the next century and most of you will not be either, and neither will be the trade, or as you prefer to call it the profession, because you did not seriously recognize the virus that has been planted through the internet on the future of opticianry as it exists today.
I don't think the "digital dispensing" visio-office-type system vs a pd ruler and a china marker debate is relevant to the future health of privately owned opticals. while these are probably fine marketing tools, in my experience it is not what consumers are looking for in our practices. Seems to me, in no particular order, that frame selection, location, ambiance, quality of staff (competence, personality, disposition), pricing are of way more importance. A smart renovation, good lighting and updating the overall visual appeal (both from the street and the interior) of your shop may be a better spend. It's also not about whether you offer the latest non-sense overhyped digital bs (with a non-measurable wider field than the competitions bs) - the lens giants are distracting us with pseudo science and their own marketing wizardry when there are far more important matters for you to deal with vis-a-vis the customer's experience.
A practical solution is exactly what we should be focusing on. Maybe part of the reason we can't get there is that so many of us are in different business situations. What an optician in an OD office needs to focus on is different from an OMDs office, independent optical, wholesale rep, manufacturer, chain employee or small chain owner. I don't mean to say we should divide our discussions, but there are just so many areas of focus I think ideas get lost in the fray.
The digital systems are significantly less than $10k these days and some labs offer credits to help pay for them. If you have not used the best systems, then you are short changing yourself and your customers IMHO. The opportunity to train licensed and apprentice opticians in the "profession" of pre-fitting and measuring with a digital system is significantly more effective and efficient than without them (Warren should feel better that I used the right word). I have the Ophth. Science Degree, I have been an Apprentice, I have student taught at one of the schools and taught many AO's and licenses in my day, and having the digital image to work off of to show opticians what they are doing well and having them point out what they need to improve on is night and day better as compared to sitting across from them or to the right or left when they are practicing.
As I have said to many of my counterparts, we could survive without the systems, but, the WOW factor with it is incredible. Better to thrive than survive,
That's one of the reasons why I chose not to be a they. The lens manufacturers are not determining "educational standards", what they are doing is taking advantage of the lack of an educational standard. There is a bit of a difference I would like to think. I could see the manufacturers making money either way educated or not. The average optician chosees to remain uneducated and the reason I hear the majority of the time is the lack of financial reward. Although I would like to say education will equal more money down the line, I have seen in my experiences that the more educated one becomes the more of a threat they become to the system. The dispensing optician is prefered uneducated, market forces are dictating that short intervals of training with regular sales training is more productive business wise then a more education in the realm of optics.
Currently lenscrafters is also wowing them with their digital centration device. I see your point and agree with it completely, but I think you're confusing the device fro some sort of diagnostic equipment when in really functions to it's fullest as a sales device.
Phi,
There are a good number of independents and small chains who are using digital systems and WOWING customers. As an optician, mentor... I am most WOWed by the ability to train current and future opticians on how to take their skills to the next level. Imagine having a fill in optician or a newer one who has a remake on a PAL. Instead of only having the "numbers" on the order form to figure out where they measured the pd-height, you could have a digital picture to pull up and analyze where the measurements were taken. Not only will it make processing the remake potentially quicker, but now you can view the picture with the optician and discuss why the original measurements did not work. Hopefully you do not have many of these opportunities to teach from, but when you do, the more info the better for the current customer and the future ones.
I do not sell these systems, but I am passionate about what they can do to help opticians prove their worth in the dispensary.
You have forgotten one very important thing. The majority of full time eyeglass wearers still want to try on frames and not just virtually. You can't do this at a kiosk or "service station" because you need a large space and many frames, mirrors, lighting, so how would it fit in?
You just make to the size you want.......................that is all open to the way you want it. only it should not be a luxury store...........a service station for glasses.
Nail on the head there coco...
Sometime this century, opticianry will go the way of the blacksmith, and it won't be the internet that does us in. As medical procedures, products and breakthroughs accelerate (such as the ReStor IOL), there will be no need for glasses.
Yeah, heard the same thing with the advent of soft contact lenses and then with laser vision correction. Nothing galvanizes an industry like the cry of "we're all gonna die!!"
Want to awaken Opticianry...threaten to de-regulate every state with a licensing requirement, however minimal.
You may be right, Optical24/7, but if need is reduced, I'm sure fashion and filter will step in as want.
B
Chris,
These systems have come down in cost significantly, the accuracy is incredible, and the customer response is "WOW". When is last time someone was WOWed by a pd stick that was used to stir coffee earlier in the day? When we can show the consumer that we are state of the art in technology, we teach why pre-fitting is critical to accurate measurements, we show them how they are unique (different mono-pd-height)... then we do additional sales today and tomorrow. If I am worried about spending a few thousand dollars on my business and the customers visual acuity outcome, then maybe I should be working for someone in some other trade.
1960....................I have learned to measure monocular PD's with a Zeiss pupuillometer in the 1950s during my apprentiship as well a the lensometers, and when going to optical school in London, I had to learn to measure with a stick and neutralize lenses with a trial set as in the UK these instruments where not in any fashion then.
So this is all not so new, but if you can impress customers, good for you, as long as they are not financially strapped and look mainly for deals which are thrown at them in every Saturday newspapers insert and thousands of websites.
The close of this paragraph is a key to this poster's feelings about Opticianry and the way they view it. He/she refers to it as a trade, and therein lies the difference from many of us here. We consider Opticianry a profession, and want to improve the knowledge, skills and abilities of Opticians, not necessarily retaliers, as the tag indicates on his/her post.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks