Hello all,
I've been lurking for a while and it seems that this is a great resource for anyone in the optical community.
I need a bit of advice, I'll make a long story short.

My father owns an optical shop and it is doing very well. Unfortunately, he recently suffered a stroke and is unable to run his shop right now. His staff have been running things on their own for the last two weeks but now the manager is now at the end of his rope with the lab. They are having problems with the lab sending in junk, his words. The other thing is accounting but my wife and I will be handling that aspect.

THe manager complains that the current lab is sending in jobs that are off axis and off power, consistently. Now, I don't have years of optical experience but I certainly put my time in at the shop through high school and college. I'm going to have to rely on the manager's expertise here and trust that we should shop around. There are several options available, small labs, big guys ( which they use now), out of town labs and so on.

I've been working with the manager on a few options and I'm torn between price and quality. Manager wants better quality, and so do I, but the smaller guys are more. Also, one that I'm interested in, is out of state but they seem to offer fairly competitive pricing.

I suppose my question is, can the smaller guys make up for higher prices in better quality? What about turn around time? Out of state means longer shipping time, unless we pay overnight charges. My dad spent over 40 years building his business and I don't want to jeopardize the store's reputation by offering bad quality, poor service or high prices. Where's the happy medium? The manager is great with optics and managing people. Dad took care of accounting, vendors and so on., it's times like this I wish he were able to offer some advice.


If you have any insight or advice, I would greatly appreciate the help.
thanks in advance.