I was told by one of my reps that Lenscrafters is getting rid of one hour service! Or at least testing it in some areas!
Is this true!
It would be interesting to know why!
anyone!
I was told by one of my reps that Lenscrafters is getting rid of one hour service! Or at least testing it in some areas!
Is this true!
It would be interesting to know why!
anyone!
These are possibilities I came up with:
1. Can't do a quality job in one hour.
2. Can't find qualified people to do the work.
3. Not enough business to justify offering 1-hour service.
4. Alternatively, too much business...Can't get the jobs done in one hour. If you can't meet expectations, get rid of the expectations?!
Whatever the specific reason, it boils down to the general reason that they aren't making enough money off of it.
Paw!
Are you saying it is true! Or just what it would be if it was?
I don't feel many people care about 1 hour service!
No, I'm not saying it's true. Your post is the first I've heard of it. I am strictly speculating why any entity would discontinue 1-hour service.
I don't feel many people care about 1-hour service either. It's actually MORE inconvenient because you have to hang around the vicinity for an hour. It's only good for the infrequent occasions where someone who can't do without glasses broke theirs and they have no backup pair.
One hour service has become huge in our area because some people hae to drive a half hour to reach us. If we can complete their service on the spot, it saves quite a bit of time and money for them.
Wal*Mart is getting rid of their on-site labs, why not LensCrafters ? (
( One more opportunity for us !)
$150+ for a frame, $200+ for PAL lenses, and maybe another $50 or $75 for polycarb or transition lenses deserve more than 1hr. Afterall, why do you think third party reimbursement is so pittiful when everyone is tooting their horn about 1hr service.
Although we have the ability to process some eyewear orders in one hour, we feel that advertising 1 hr service often devalues the eyewear investment. Indeed, we are always looking for modern tools and equipment to process eyewear more efficiently but under these conditions things can go south a lot easier to compromise quality.
Location probably has the greatest bearing on consumer expectations. A person walking into a mall chain retailer can do some other shopping while their RX is being processed. Take away the one hour service and the effort of a return trip, parking, and walking half way through a mall to get to the retiler makes life inconveinent for these kind of shoppers.
Kevin
LensCrafters is not doing away with one hour service. The focused has changed somewhat do to the increased demands for anti-reflective coatings and drill mount frames.
The majority of jobs will still be out "in about an hour." This is possible with having a combination of the right equipment, lenses and most importantly....people.
Cassandra
As for those who don't think one hour matters... I really wish you would tell that to the people who always cry for a refund of some money when the glasses take an extra two minutes to process.
Or those who ask.. if you can comfortably do them in an hour, couldn't you rush them to get them done sooner? I have to be at work.. or the airport..or on the bus.. whatever you want to insert here... in 50mins!
I don't know how many people who decide they need new glasses the morning of their trip... or the night before if they are leaving at 6am... come in wanting to have them done now..
Last edited by Jubilee; 11-06-2003 at 11:24 PM.
"Some believe in destiny, and some believe in fate. But I believe that happiness is something we create."-Something More by Sugarland
Thats why the LC are still in bussines!
With the exception of multifocal A/R jobs and drillmounts, facets etc... why couldn't a qualty job be done in an hour? Some business in our area was circulating a pamphlet stating that your lenses "wont" be done in an hour. They spoke of the 57 or some odd seperate steps involved in the making of a pair of lenses yada yada yada.
I have no qualms with bringing someone into our lab and letting them watch us make the glasses. With todays machinery you can easily pop out a pair of sv lenses in about 10 minutes. What kind of mystical qualities do you want your customers to believe you have because it takes you 5 days to make a pair of sv lenses as opposed to a "crappy" mall chain that can do it in less and therefore must be inferior. Captivate them with the qualtiy of the materials and a basics in optics. Let them know how much the equipment to make them costs. They gather an appreciation for the cost of their glasses pretty quickly
Someone stated on the boards before about the genius of 1 hour in a large chain due to the fact that it elliminates a lot of book keeping and accounting. Why would one want to ditch it? Perhaps, like some Walmarts in the US they could add an extra charge for it.
I'm not all for the "big guys", one day I would love to be a little guy. There is always room for more of us and I'm not saying that one hour chains don't dispense some ****, but I'm sure you've seen a hell of a lot of bad glasses that have been produced by the little guys as well(of course, not by anybody on this board).
edKendance:
I agree...
We also let customers come back into our lab and take the mystery out of their glasses. We explain the many different prescriptions that can made using just two lenses. We also show them how the measurements we took relate to where the lenses are placed into the edger and so on. Finally, after they marvel at the 3 dimensional tracers and the autogroovers and so on, I tell them how much $$ we have invested in our lab.
One guy had spent over $300 on a SV pair of glasses and after getting "the grand tour", said, "With all that you have here, I don't see how you can afford to sell glasses so cheap!"
Federated Pilots In-Store Partnerships With LensCrafters & American Greetings
CINCINNATI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 7, 2003--Federated Department Stores, Inc. (NYSE:FD)(PCX:FD) today said it is piloting in-store boutiques with two leading consumer brand companies to offer categories of merchandise not currently available in most department stores. Focused merchandise areas initially being developed with LensCrafters and American Greetings are designed to maximize customer convenience and enhance the Federated shopping experience for the holidays and beyond.
"Customers tell us they want to buy a wider range of merchandise within our stores, and with brands they know and trust," said Federated Vice Chairman Tom Cole. "Through these partnerships, Federated strengthens its role as a one-stop shopping destination better able to meet the needs of our customer."
The first optical boutique, designed with LensCrafters, opens today in Tacoma, WA at Bon-Macy's Tacoma Mall location. Additional optical boutiques are planned for:
-- Ft. Myers, FL: Burdines, Edison Mall - opening November 19
-- Scottsdale, AZ: Macy's West, Scottsdale Fashion Square - opening November 21
-- Sacramento, CA: Macy's West Downtown Shopping Plaza - opening February, 2004
-- Concord, CA: Macy's West Sun Valley Mall - opening February, 2004
The 1,500-square-foot optical boutiques will be located adjacent to accessories or apparel areas and will blend seamlessly with Macy's store design. The merchandise assortment also will be tailor-made for Macy's customers - more than 1,000 prescription and sunglass frames from designer brands such as Ray-Ban, Prada, Versace, Brooks Brothers, Kenneth Cole and Persol, as well as an exclusive Tommy Hilfiger collection. In addition to free eyewear fashion consultations, Macy's customers will enjoy free cleaning and adjustments to glasses anytime.
The optical boutiques will be full-service, open during store operating hours. A Doctor of Optometry will be available 40 hours a week to give complete eye exams. Contact lens customers will be able to choose among a full range of contact lens products, including daily disposables and color contacts.
The upscale Winking Moon Press line from American Greetings will be available in kiosks in forty-one Federated stores including Bloomingdale's, Macy's East, Rich's/Lazarus/Goldsmith's-Macy's, Bon-Macy's and Burdines. The cards are featured in gift locations throughout the store, primarily home, bridal and children's departments, complementing the stores' positioning as prime locations for gift giving.
"We will carefully monitor results of these pilots and roll out concepts that are successful with our targeted customer," Cole said. "Based on results, we also plan to identify other partners that can make shopping our stores more interesting, exciting and productive."
Federated, with corporate offices in Cincinnati and New York, is one of the nation's leading department store retailers, with annual sales of more than $15 billion. Federated currently operates more than 460 stores in 33 states, Guam and Puerto Rico, under the names of Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Bon-Macy's, Burdines, Goldsmith's-Macy's, Lazarus-Macy's and Rich's-Macy's, as well as macys.com and Bloomingdale's By Mail.
(NOTE: Information on Federated and its operating divisions is available on the Internet at www.fds.com <http://www.fds.com>.)
The emphasis on one hour service has shrunk due mainly to the popularity of rimless mountings. Besides A/R, these are the greatest part of the non-one-hour jobs.
However, this doesn't mean that Mrs. Bertha Bojangles' CR-39 ST28's in a full frame will need to be a next day job. She can head to the food court, maybe Sears, and pick 'em up 60 minutes later!
There is also a lot of truth to paw's first point - sometimes you just can't do a quality job within an hour. No sense in getting the customer all upset because it took an extra five minutes to get their custom tint just right.
It's kind of ironic that as the technology improves to allow better throughput in the lab, it also improves in other areas (such as A/R) that can't be produced in-house.
From my experience (6 yrs. with LC), the only people who come back in an hour for their glasses are the ones where you had a breakage and need a few more minutes, then they raise holy heck. The rest show up sometime later, or wait at the dispensing counter the whole hour (usually less because you try to get them on their way).
Blake
This thread has been sitting in the archives. There was mention of Lenscrafters doing away with 1 hour service. Is that accurate?
I think it got rid of advertising it.
I think if you ask it will still do it.
It takes me five to ten minutes to cut a job, but I do prefer to take the time to do all of my jobs at once.
Also, the only demand I personally get for quick service is if it is a patients own frame.
Not doing away with it Jason. Just not making it the be all and end all.
I have noticed the same thing in recent TV commercials. Why is that? What's wrong with one-hour service? I wonder if Dean Butler would agree that anything is wrong with it.Originally Posted by For-Life
This doesn't compute with me. Why fix something that has been working well for 20 years and isn't broken?
Jason, I think someone needs to justify their position. If it ain't broke then break it, right? Weird place to work at the moment. Nobody know what the expletive is going on.
Sadly, you may be right. I can imagine some bored LensCrafters marketing executive saying "Hey I have an idea! Let's get rid of one hour service!"
Well, they are yanking all of our plastic AR stock. It's Poly or the highway if you want AR. It's profits of course but it's a pretty thin line.
Your businessess model of not selling a presbyope a SV lens is a pretty similar concept. LC maintains that poly is the best lens we sell. Why offer anything else?
Hope they stay.......................
Hope that they will stay one hour service......................
All you retailer independents,,,,,,,professional..............your main argument afgainst one hour service is:
"Quality work at the prices sold.......in the hundreds of Dollars.............. should and can not be done in one hour at the proped quality required and and requested."
I also think it is a cost cutting move. Having a full service lab in all 900-1000 stores, plus fully staffing with qualified lab personel is a major investment. Imagine halving the lab staff and instead creating regional labs that would service all of the surrounding lenscrafters. By keeping a skeleton crew in the lab to do the jobs in order of when the customers expect to return, or having the salespeople who sell the glasses go back and make the glasses in their 'spare time', would seem to have a positive financial impact in the short term. In retail there is always an ebb and flow. The lab always needs to be staffed to process jobs in 1 hour. During busy times, under the one hour modality,the jobs need to be processed FIFO, but if you prioritize by when the customers expect to return (which can be over an hour later or even next day), you can even out the job flow, cut staff and be more efficient (instead of having excess capacity when there is no work, but multiple lab folks standing around).
But Lenscrafters has become synonymous with one hour service so I would like to see the long term effect, if this is in fact what they are planning.
AA
Years ago I worked in that rat race. You always had new people in the store because it was cheaper to keep training new people than keep good people in the stores. Many jobs could be done in an hour with the lab people in the stores. In theory CR-39 could be surfaced and edged in less than 30 minutes...I have done it solo just to prove it could be done. Beautiful work might take a little longer. I had an area lab director chew me out for surfacing half eyes on a flatter than normal base curve because it took too long. I did it to do a better job for my customer.
Ed
Total guess, here:
Does the concept of free-form have appeal to a giant like Luxcrafters? It seems to make sense to reduce the inventory on hand.
Also, with so many freakin' locations (including Cole) it seems only efficient to have a dozen or so regional labs.
I can see having an edger and some SV finished lenses hanging around...
Maybe the de-emphasis is a gradually floating trial balloon?
Inventory is expensive if it does not move!!!
With all the vast changes in the last few years it makes good sense to order when you need it. That is why in China they have too much supply and not enough demand.
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