I was welcomed with the news that the owner of the main lab I use just announced his retirement and his assets are going to be assimilated to a nearby Essilor lab. The closing lab in question was independent and had private label IOT designs in addition to the usual players (Shamir, Essilor, Hoya, Zeiss, etc.) and in the year that I've been at my current location, a lot of the patients have loved their new progressives (half of time it's the IOT H45).

While the liquidating lab is honoring warranties from the original lab, there might be issues as the new lab doesn't offer the same lens formulary and has already offered the Essilor Ideal as a direct replacement for the H45. While I hope this doesn't lead to too many adaptation issues, my main worry comes when patients ask in the next year to order a new version of the 'lens they got last year'. The other two labs I work with both have good selections, so it's not the end of the world when one of your favorite toolbox progressives suddenly vanishes, but I do worry about some of our very stubborn patients.

The tricky part is that most labs that use IOT designs typically don't like to advertise that fact, and I'm pretty sure if I were to contact IOT directly that they wouldn't voluntarily offer up nearby accounts that use their products.

As such, if anyone knows of any lab they work with or work for that offers the IOT Alpha, Camber and/or special designs, please feel free to private message me. I'm in Washington state, but if I can get reasonably fast shipping, I don't mind working with labs outside my neck of the woods.