Why do we sell high-end lenses to mid/low income consumers? We're killing ourselves

[VisionAiry]

Patients don't want to pay two or three times the price for lenses that are 10-20% better. Why do we sell patients with average incomes top-end progressives for $400 and $120 AR coatings? Because WE think they're great. I do, but THEY don't notice any difference that's worth to THEM the extra $300 over something like a "low-end" freeform or Navigator that we can sell for $200 all day long. The exception would be "high-end" markets but that represents a tiny fraction of the market. We can't ALL be high-end, by definition that's impossible.

When the consumer can't justify to themselves the $500-700 bill we DO look like the bad guys. We're GIVING our business to the internet, just so we can "feel" high-end or "professional".

My shop used to try to sell high end lenses to everyone. We had average tickets of $500-$700. We switched to inexpensive PAL's and have sold thousands of pairs for $160 (Plastic no AR) and advertised great prices. 2 years later business is up. I'm just saying. Crizal is great but I talk every single customer that mentions it out of it because I guarantee you it's not 200% better than FEA Industry's AR, not even close.

You could argue that it's not up to us to decide what the customer can afford, but the truth is the consumer doesn't have the information to decide what the best value is. Unless of course you want to make them 6 pairs of glasses with different PAL's/coatings to see which they like better and decide for themselves if they should spend $200 or $600. It's part of our job IMHO to offer products that offer a proper balance of cost/benefit.

Let's stop getting sold on the fractional improvement they're getting from lenses that cost 300% more.

This is all my opinion based on my 20 years experience and 8 years of ownership of an independent optician owned practice.

I welcome any comments and differing opinions.

Note: I do believe that these products are better and if 500-1000 bucks is a drop in the bucket to a particular customer, that's fine. But we're doing ourselves, our businesses and our customers a disservice by acting as if they have to spend 2 weeks salary or they're not going to be able to see a dang thing. One particular very successful practice I know of sells almost strictly Navigators and does $3M a year in sales and has been voted by local publications as the best optical in town.