so nice Chinese lady from an apparently large lab in the Shanghai area comes to visit the other day. She brings along samples and a price list for both conventional and digital progressives. Needless to say the prices are, shall we say, remarkable. Basic materials, cr, mr8, mr7 and a photochromic. They seem to really want to make inroads in North America....curious given the massive size of the domestic market over there....I mean, Montreal would not even count as a minor village in China....yet she gets on a plane to travel for 18 hours to get here....

If a small group of canadian ecps got together to buy from this lab (to mitigate shipping costs only, which amount to around $40 for a small box, enough to fit 10 pairs), the savings would be very significant. while i have not tried enough pairs to really know the quality, so far it is very good.

This trend of "global sourcing" will continue to trickle down to smaller local operators and put the hurt on larger local distributors, I believe. That it has not already made even bigger inroads into optical shops, is really surprising. Nikon and Essilor have big production facilities here in Montreal.....as they do in numerous other places around North America. I highly doubt this will continue to make economic sense. We'll see.