Sunglass Pricing and Insurance

[Eyeguy88]

We struggle at our optical with pricing sunglasses at 2x because we accept Eyemed. Eyemed treats all frames the same sunglasses and eyeglasses. This means we are basically giving away sunglasses frames if we accept insurance on them. Does anyone know if you are allowed to exclude sunglass frames from be used with Eyemed? Any thoughts or info on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

[mervinek]

(we don't take eyemed though... we dropped them exactly 1 year ago and haven't been happier!)

[drk]

Dudes. Pricing strategy in public?

[lensmanmd]

Dudes. Pricing strategy in public?

+1. Really? This is a private discussion.

[AngeHamm]

Yeah, don't share your markups, man. Edit that post ASAP.

That said, remember that sometimes inexpensive sunglass frames exist mainly so you can make revenue from the lenses you're putting in them. You can't really dictate how your patients use their insurance, of course. But you may have better results if you have some aggressive second-pair sales that encourage your patients to use their benefit on an everyday pair and then get those sunglasses as a second pair with some kind of discount. Your lab should offer you a deal on a second pair of lenses for the same patient.

[drk]

I've always found this a riddle without a perfect solution.

Since the vast majority of plano suns can be either sold "as is" or disassembled and used as a frame only, how do you price that?

On the one hand, if it's a plano sunglass, there's generally NO professional service involved in the transaction...no lens designing, no measuring, no verifying, no dispensing. On the other hand, there typically IS a professional service in frame adjustment (unless they're Oakleys with the "never fitting/never not-fitting" skull temples), but maybe we can throw that in as a value-added service. What's more, some optician shops will spend time educating regarding tinting, coating, polarizing, etc. Is that a professional service? I'm going to say more "no" than "yes", and consider it part of the retailing.

So, instead of a professional service, in the main, with plano sun sales, there's only the retailing component involved (cost associated with representing a line, inventory cost, overhead costs, staffing costs, which ain't nothing, of course).


The situation is the exact opposite with Rx sun! Oh, for the ease of using an ophthalmic-designed frame for sunwear! But we have all upped our game from the bad old days of "tint my old lenses into sunglasses, please" to providing performance prescription sunwear. We've written mountains on the lens design complexities. But we are talking about pricing the frames.

The frames in Rx sun do have to be selected by a professional (vs. the Sunglass Hut method of "If you like it, it works"). Eyesizes and wraps have to be selected carefully. Then they have to be adjusted at dispense, and possibly maintained for fit over time. That's professional service, and that has to go into the frame cost.

We all know that ophthalmic frame pricing structures typically exceed try-on plano sun. So what do we do?

I simply split the difference, even though I sell about zero plano suns.


There's another thing, too. Patients are in actuality paying for the plano sunlenses that we trash. I'd be happy to give them to them, but VCPs say it's VERBOTEN (and I understand why). They deserve a little recompense for this fact. That also justifies the lower-than-ophthalmic-frame pricing.

[jpways]

Our solution is we offer a discount on our sunglass frames to our cash paying patients. Without going into markups and discount %s you have a price X that you are willing to accept to sell your frames, this is your post discount price. Now, take into account how much the insurance company discounts your retail prior to payment (in the case of Eyemed this is a straight % discount off of retail.

If you feel comfortable advertising a really large discount (and I define a large discount as anything over 25%) then you can give the cash paying patient the same discount that you are giving to Eyemed (just divide price X by the Eyemed discount to give you the retail price). Otherwise you need to either raise the price you charge to cash paying patients, or lower the retail price, which means you get less from Eyemed.

I you would like me to give you examples with numbers, then PM me.

[Jubilee]

I mark mine up the same as I do regular ophthalmic. This is one of the reasons why. VSP is no better with their formula either on those post lasik pairs either. If you aren't careful, you may be paying someone to take them.

We do offer a large discount on second pairs. Plano sun is an option for a second pair to a pair of glasses or a year supply of contacts. We also have promotions and events where we offer a 50% discount off all our suns as well. This helps to even things out. Insurances forbid a "cash pay" discount. However a prompt pay discount is allowed and often used as well.