On-line Sales

[fly]

I was wondering if any of you out there have been affected by online glasses and contact sales. I was wondering if it has affected anyone else adversely by large "chain" e-tailers. I have had people inquire about certain products and say well if you don't have it in stock I can order it online at @^$**^.com. Mostly sunglasses. So after seeing this I asked my sales rep if I could sell their product online and they all say, " You can't do that, we don't allow that to protect our 3 O's." Than I surf and find the same non closeout frames in front of me. $*&^ How frustrating. I am willing to join the onliners and sell product even if I am not supposed to. If they can so can I, yet better.

[Johns]

Most of us will never know how adversely we've been affected because we don't know when an online sale is taking place. Sure, you'll see people going there for sunglasses, but I think (who really cares) that most consumers still want to try the product on, and have a bricks & mortar place to return to if something goes wrong w/ the product. Do you really want to chase after the discount shoppers anyway ? Plus, look how many online places are fighting each other for these sales, do you really want to expend those kind of resources going after customers you have to hope to "snag" as they "surf" by ?

As far as Rx sales go, our office, and other colleagues I've talked to are very limited in what kind of frame info they give out anymore. When a customer asks us to write down the frame info so they can "come back later" (yeah right !!!), we always write the eyesize as a 3 digit #, and use our own office code for the frame names. Sure, if they come back we know what it is, but I'm sure they'd have a ball if they tried to order it online, or from our competition.

[Joann Raytar]

We get some people who do their "shopping around" online. They check out what styles are available and when they find out what they like they come in and ask for what they have found. Usually, the only ones that walk out are those folks looking for Oakley's which we do not carry. We send them to the sporting goods store next door and tell them to ask for a style that comes with an Rxable insert. If they purchase the eyewear at a non-optical retail outlet we will put lenses in the frames if they are Rxable.

We have been getting quite a few 1-800 Contacts confirmation of Rx calls lately. I have noticed that most of the Rx's they are confirming or either expired or we have no exam record for the patients. They are just using our name to get the form filled out.

[kjw1231]

Hey,

On-Line will not go away. This has been a banner year for on-line sales, every projection that I have seen estimates that it will double for years to come. I do agree that people will for the most part will want touch the product before they buy. However, replacement CL's, Accessories and sunglasses are missed opportunities in vision care.

I was part of a focus group study by a major CL player. The results from 2 years ago are further emphasized today. In the report, they said that 90% of all CL sales are replacements. Typically, 60-75% of those sales leave the presribing office and go to 1-800 CL, Lens Express, etc. If a typical office sells 15 replacement pairs a week at $40.00, they will lose about 1200 sales, or near $50K in revenue. The majority of people leave for convienence. In the industry, there are a very small percentage on the web. Furtehrmore, even fewer have any E-Commerce.

I have devloped such a system to compete. We have signed our first distributor and are gearing up to sign more distributors and envelope other products. Feel free to contact me with any questions. If anyone has a company or vendor contact that would like to discuss this in detail, that would also be appreciated.