Coastal Entry Level Price Increase Up 56%

[optimensch]

Why not do everything within your power to eliminate illegal competition in your area if it is against your local applicable laws ? Why are you looking for an excuse to justify regulators continuing to charge you thousands per year while they refuse to do what you pay them for ?

Would you continue to pay your employees if they referred your customers to onliners ? That is exactly what you are permitting to happen each time you pay your association fees or you regulatory body fees IF AFTER YEARS THEY STILL GIVE YOU EXCUSES AND NO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. Your regulatory body in a self governing framework is your employee. If you would fire your receptionist for sending your customers to a competitor or bad mouthing you as a greedy optometrist then where is the difference with your regulatory body? You voted them in and you let those voted in hire others and by not insisting they uphold local applicable laws then you are paying your regulatory body to work against you , not for you . You would fire a direct employee for less so why are you putting up with your money not doing the work you agreed to? You are allowing this to happen and condoning it !

Vote them all out and fire them. How many more years would you carry an employee that sends your customers elsewhere ?

Why is it your social responsibility to have to work harder to get and retain sales while others lie to you about the job they will do such as upholding local applicable laws ?

Would you continue to pay a policeman who watches, allows and observes crime and knows the offenders but does nothing to uphold the law ?

In Quebec at least, the Order of Optometrists, the governing body, is so busy fighting against the Order of Opticians about how to tighten regulations against US , the brick and mortar, on-the-ground professionals, it is INSANE! They will wind up driving more Quebeckers to the onliners with all this garbage they are doing. The inter-professional squabbling here is over the top and I for one will sit back and watch this one play out, I've said my peace to them though. This is Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burns, the inmates running the asylum.

[idispense]

We would fire employees for sending our customers to our illegal competitors and the regulatory bodies are no different. Vote them out. Fire them. Then they can argue amongst themselves from the sidelines without our money and without the expense accounts and without their BS continuing to destroy us with our own funds. Sitting it out and watching will take years. They have proven they will not work . Vote all of them out.

And watch the voting processes carefully.

[optimensch]

We would fire employees for sending our customers to our illegal competitors and the regulatory bodies are no different. Vote them out. Fire them. Then they can argue amongst themselves from the sidelines without our money and without the expense accounts and without their BS continuing to destroy us with our own funds. Sitting it out and watching will take years. They have proven they will not work . Vote all of them out.

And watch the voting processes carefully.

FYI I have someone RIGHT NOW in the shop asking for his Rx, wants to buy from Clearly. -11.25 -2.25 cyl OU.

they don't offer 1.74, only 1.67 for around 60$. Plus the frame, to about 115$.

Oy vey.

We're trying to save this one...

[gibby2020]

Back to what Chris said wrt belittling CC and onliners: Yes we need to be aggressive in our pricing to win over the consumer but we also need to change our purchasing habits to send a clear message to suppliers that if the product can be had online for less than my cost then I cant buy and stock said product, through the usual channels. Unlike CC, small independent businesses cant run at a loss for years. So who is bankrolling this? One of our suppliers?
Yes sales are being lost based on price. Even if we lower prices and accept lower profits per sale, online will still be taking a chunk of the market. This will lead to a thinning of the heard (of ECP's). There are too many retailers of glasses in the marketplace.

Gib

[optimensch]

Gibby, I agree with you. I have brought in a big selection of lower priced frames and put them along side the bigger brands, give people options. I think having some frames under 100$, even $50 and all-in pricing is a help. I know it is working for us, but I also know that people are running to compare what the CC s of the world have. It's scary, and I'm starting to think we need to almost do some negative advertising against the on-liners (who point out to consumers how much they are over-paying for this lens or that frame, which is FALSE) - that we can offer good pricing options for end-of-line, Private Label etc..
Yes, we need to lower pricing, or at least offer a selection of goods at a more web-competitive price

[idispense]

Gibby, I agree with you. I have brought in a big selection of lower priced frames and put them along side the bigger brands, give people options. I think having some frames under 100$, even $50 and all-in pricing is a help. I know it is working for us, but I also know that people are running to compare what the CC s of the world have. It's scary, and I'm starting to think we need to almost do some negative advertising against the on-liners (who point out to consumers how much they are over-paying for this lens or that frame, which is FALSE) - that we can offer good pricing options for end-of-line, Private Label etc..
Yes, we need to lower pricing, or at least offer a selection of goods at a more web-competitive price

those things do help , and cutting ALL unproductive cost areas is imperative.

[idispense]

Back to what Chris said wrt belittling CC and onliners: Yes we need to be aggressive in our pricing to win over the consumer but we also need to change our purchasing habits to send a clear message to suppliers that if the product can be had online for less than my cost then I cant buy and stock said product, through the usual channels. Unlike CC, small independent businesses cant run at a loss for years. So who is bankrolling this? One of our suppliers?
Yes sales are being lost based on price. Even if we lower prices and accept lower profits per sale, online will still be taking a chunk of the market. This will lead to a thinning of the heard (of ECP's). There are too many retailers of glasses in the marketplace.

Gib

yes, cutting all suppliers that are working against us is imperative to survive, there is no room for wasting money at any level, with any supplier even the license suppliers. no supplier should expect to have it both ways

[gibby2020]

yes, cutting all suppliers that are working against us is imperative to survive...........

Yes we as individual biz owners and as professional associations need to change our ways. I'm going to the BCAO annual meeting this weekend and who do I have to "thank"? J&J, Alcon etc for their "support" in putting on these shows with supposed CE. Because we as professions take money from these giants we are seriously compromising our independence, profitability and quality of our continuing education. There's very little unbiased info to learn at these meetings as virtually all the speakers are paid by "the bigs". Plus all the research(ers) at the schools are corporately funded so where can I get real CE?
Another beef is there's no unbiased CE on lenses/optics, no CE in BV and refraction..yes refraction the reason people come to see optoms. Not ocular health.
As association dues rise a lot of people will look at those dollars and say they are not making enough money in this biz to justify these unnecessary expenditures..

Gib

[idispense]

Entering the race to zero, or letting it begin is wherein the flaw lies.


A point in case is Apple, leaders in the field for unique products that people want and are willing to pay high margin prices for. Yes, Apple has had its share of dead on arrival products that could not compete, but they were able to ditch those failures early and move on to market leading products with both margin and volume.


Our problem is lack of leadership and we are selling a commodity now and even a commodity service , so our margins will spiral downwards in a race to zero, while praying to obtain volumes not achievable.


The consumers race to pay the least for a commodity is why there is a huge lack of jobs. Job loss is the high cost of low prices.


To reverse the situation requires breaking the barriers, just like CC did in B C and becoming the low cost leader. To do that you must think outside the box. Our box was controlled by regulators, and CC broke the regulators and destroyed the BC optical box. Now think about this: " what box contains CC and other on liners?"


One part of that answer is: (1) internet search engines
(2) capital from stock markets


Can you think of the other walls of their box ? The walls of their confining box contain the answer to our problem, just as they examined the structure of our walls and broke our box.

[edKENdance]

I've been interested in this company for awhile. Especially since they're setting up retail outlets so I set up google news alerts for clearly contacts as well as coastal contacts. This company may be plastering itself all over the world of social media but there is nothing happening in regular news. It's almost eerie.

[HindSight2020]

I've been interested in this company for awhile. Especially since they're setting up retail outlets so I set up google news alerts for clearly contacts as well as coastal contacts. This company may be plastering itself all over the world of social media but there is nothing happening in regular news. It's almost eerie.

There's nothing eerie about it. Social media mass advertising costs only a fraction compared to newspaper, radio or television. And since they are mainly web based (for now), this is their demographic where the bulk of their customers are being derived from. Not to mention, the web demographic is global scale.

I'd say their target market is 18-35, a market consisting mainly of non-established cash strapped consumers where price supercedes quality and service. And they wonder why they have no bottom line? It's doomed long term.

In the past couple of weeks, I've had 4 patients that were previous CC customers that purchased their eye exam and new glasses from us. People will pay a little more for service and a professional they can consult with to answer their questions, not some customer service rep reading a scripted response over the phone.

[edKENdance]

Google news isn't about advertising.

[idispense]

This shows a different picture of age demographics hindsight

http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/wp-...age-by-age.gif

[idispense]

"Hindsight.......In the past couple of weeks, I've had 4 patients that were previous CC customers that purchased their eye exam and new glasses from us. People will pay a little more for service and a professional they can consult with to answer their questions, not some customer service rep reading a scripted response over the phone. "




ah so you do agree, those four patients were driven to you by the internet

[HindSight2020]

This shows a different picture of age demographics hindsight

http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/wp-...age-by-age.gif

Can you actually understand and interpret English?? If you could, you would understand that I was referring to CC's actual demographic customer base, not general internet demographics.

[Robert_S]

I doubt that most people will buy glasses from the internet more than once. We have to make sure that the products available online are not available from us.

[HindSight2020]

I doubt that most people will buy glasses from the internet more than once. We have to make sure that the products available online are not available from us.

+1 will drink to that.

[idispense]

Can you actually understand and interpret English?? If you could, you would understand that I was referring to CC's actual demographic customer base, not general internet demographics.

Yes, I do understand english quite well and there is no misunderstanding that as an insult, but thats typical so don't worry you are forgiven.

The fact is that you have absolutely no facts to back up your statement regarding what their customer demographics are. You are purely guessing. Did you surmise this conclusion from the 4 patients you saw ? Or do you have facts to indicate otherwise ?

[idispense]

I doubt that most people will buy glasses from the internet more than once. We have to make sure that the products available online are not available from us.

That won't leave you very many products and it will cut you off from most major name brands.

How do you conclude that most people will only buy once from the internet?

[Robert_S]

Mostly because the chances of the frame either a) looking good on them or b) fitting them are actually very low.

I'm glad it won't leave me with so many products as I only want to stock unique collections anyway.

[gibby2020]

[QUOTE=idispense;453141]That won't leave you very many products and it will cut you off from most major name brands.

Yeah it scares me not to have the names people are familiar with but it's the only way forward. I'm lucky in that I'm in a rural area, so if the consumer cant find the product in my optical then they are less likely to buy it just viewing it online. I still have some names, but bought through alternate channels. But big brands are now only 15% of my product. This will be hard to accomplish in a large city. Too bad it means a whole less independent opticals in a couple years.
Imagine the 3 blocks on Robson St around the new CC store in two years time. Right now there are at least 4 small opticals in the area carrying some of the same names that presumably will be in the CC store. How many will be left? What will they be selling?

Gib

[HindSight2020]

Yes, I do understand english quite well and there is no misunderstanding that as an insult, but thats typical so don't worry you are forgiven.

The fact is that you have absolutely no facts to back up your statement regarding what their customer demographics are. You are purely guessing. Did you surmise this conclusion from the 4 patients you saw ? Or do you have facts to indicate otherwise ?

I receive current, validated information from various sources, unlike yourself that posts an internet demographic report from 2007 more than 6 years old. I sure hope you don't provide web services or technical consulting as part of your offering.

[idispense]

Care to share the data ?

[HindSight2020]

Care to share the data ?

Not with you.

[idispense]

If you won't share and want to take your ball and go home thats fine with me but why not try reading the data in that 2007 report ? Where do you think that data would be today ? Would the usage numbers be higher or lower ? Then if you would like to add in some relevant facts to support your position I'd be glad to hear your theory and solutions .