Ok cool, so out of those 93,000 results, I'd just like you to link me to one pair that is 'top quality'.
Thanks.
Ok cool, so out of those 93,000 results, I'd just like you to link me to one pair that is 'top quality'.
Thanks.
There are cheap knock offs of basically every consumer product, eyeglass frames inlcuded, on alibaba and aliexpress - so around 92200 of the 93000 frames listed are garbage - enjoy spending your days sifting through to find something decent. Alibaba is actually one of the least effective consumer "price discovery" tools in my opinion, and people are wising up to the old adage that if it sounds too good to be true....
Try to find a Lunor or Lindberg frame on the web. In particular try to find the same model/size/color that you just tried on in a shop....
There are brands, even RAYBAN is tightening up pricing policy for online, that actually care about how their "google look" affects the supply chain, in a way the wild west is getting cleaned up a bit, in my view.
Have all a Happy New Year and lots of success.
Last edited by Chris Ryser; 12-31-2018 at 06:17 AM.
In the old days a frame manufacturer made a deal with a known fashion designer and paid a fee for each frame sold under that name.
Then we knew it was made and manufactured by a known quality company.
These days a frame brand can be owned by any "Joe and Jane Company" who orders a larger quantity of a frame models from any of the existing hundreds of manufacturers, and another model from another manufacturer and so on.
A brand name in frames does not mean anymore that their models are created in the same location and quality as we were used to in the old days by our standard frame brand manufacturers.
The brand name frame business can be the largest prostitution the optical trade has ever known. It is a totally open field that can be played as you want, as long as you follow the deal signed with the registered original name owner.
High quality does still exist but, cannot absolutely be linked to branded manufacturers these days as the competition has snowballed into the largest avalanche ever.
In 2018, an estimated 2.5 billion people, mostly in India, Africa and China, are thought to need spectacles, but have no means to have their eyes tested or to buy them. “The visual divide”, as NGOs call it, is one of those vast global shortcomings that suddenly makes sense when you think about it. Across the developing world, straightforward myopia, and presbyopia, the loss of near vision caused by ageing, have been linked with everything from high road deaths to low educational achievement and poor productivity in factories. Eye-health campaigners call it the largest untreated disability in the world.
The looming power of EssilorLuxottica is the subject of morbid obsession within the eyewear world. Everyone knows the new company is poised to have a profound impact on the way that we are going to see. “Forgive me,” said one longtime entrepreneur in the sector. “But it is nothing short of control of the industry.” One investor described the new corporation as a “category killer”. In many conversations, people described its arrival, which would have been genuinely unthinkable a generation ago, as both extraordinary and somehow inevitable at the same time. That struck me as the kind of contradiction you come across more often in a person than in a business. And it is true of EssilorLuxottica and, to some extent, the business of vision itself, because it is – to an amazing degree – the legacy of a single man.
some long, but interesting weekend reading:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/201...ilor-luxottica
Above introduction is an excerpt of a very interesting article in the history of optical retail business as it is going to be in the very near future, and we should better be prepared for it. North America is the testing ground for it.
In manufacturing any product that has steady and good sales through a distribution system around the globe, you do not look to sell the same products to as many customers as possible, as there are contracts and exclusivity arrangements set up with the buyers. So top brand sellers can control their market share.
When you have a website, you always check the popularity, and daily website ranking of it, by installing a button on top of your screen on the address bar. The latest version now lists Alexa, Google and Bing at their measured hits.
After a while you will know what the percentage of your sales will be compared with the hits the website get's. You might need a thousand hits to make a sale, of more or less. The more visitors you can draw to a site, the more hits you will get, which again translates into actual sales.
If I would, and I did already years ago, advertise anything, I would and i did already over 12 years ago, search for a website that shows the best and largest distribution and interest, as well as the widest variety of products. Alibaba has been a top ranking site for many years, but was geared towards the retail market.
These days with more and more online sales of just about anything on the market, Alibaba is directing their advertising also to the consumer directly, so they can compare the actual cost of any item they choose, at the point of manufacturing with the actual pricing of the advertised retail market.
The times of a eyeglass frame importers and exclusive brand wholesalers, showing a gross profit of 40 to 50%, have changed totally for higher markups, since the competition has become very fierce some 25-30 years ago, due to special warranties, free return policies and lots more factors allowed to retail buyers.
The best tool to sell optical frames to an optical retailer is through a travelling sales person. This person is best, when having at least a basic knowledge of the optical retail trade and profession. They have to be totally reliable and are not easy to find, so a company has to provide good training in every aspect.
They represent the personal contact with the customer and the company they work for. If they are good, reliable and pleasant to deal with, they become successful and make sales, if not they have to be changed for better ones. This only shows after a certain period of time of employment by the selling company. The successful ones usually choose to work on a commission basis. The more they, and get repeat orders, the higher their income.
So the cost of a sales rep to travel the circuit, which is actually and finally paid by the purchaser, as it is added to the selling price by the frame wholesaler, is just about the double of its value.
With the now increasing sales on the internet, were selling prices do not reflect the cost of selling from wholesale/importer to the retail market, the cost to the buyer of the identical same product is cut by more than 50%, if they purchase the conventional way.
If they buy direct at the factory level, you can find most of the pricing on Alibaba's website.
There used to be a time when a manufacturers name on a frame indicated and proved top quality. These days when they are all made in the far east in one, or several of the hundreds of different manufacturers, and then sold by an old name supplier under a brand name frame, the market is totally prostituted, by actually the name of the end distributor for of these products.
Top quality these days is the money of advertising, that creates the top quality not the actual manufacturer that produces only prime quality products, which could be anyone. The actual manufacturer is not even mentioned anymore, as in a line of brand name frames there can be dozens of different producers.
The optical retailer these days buying and selling a brand name frame product line, actually sells frames that come from different producers within the same so called name.
It is all in the power of the original buyer of the manufacturers minimum quantities conditions. That is why these days some companies now have the own private frame lines. The same models can be had, also under other names if the ordered quantities justify it.
The consumer is not aware of this fact and can actually look at the exactly same frame, in maybe under other names and maybe different colors, at huge selling price differences.
But behind those selling prices may lurk so much added value that people are willing to pay the dufference.
If that needs to be explained to you, THAT’S the real problem.
B
Last edited by Barry Santini; 01-16-2019 at 05:40 AM.
Barry ..................Your lurk of added value does not have to be explained, I am aware of it, and fully agree with you in your position.
However the large majority of opticians does not fully work on the same level, as you state in your posts.
Furthermore times have changed, and are changing even faster at an increased speed as we can see, on a near daily basis by just checking independent sources from all over.
absolutely interesting article in:
WHAT INDEPENDENT ECPS CAN LEARN FROM ONLINE OPTICAL RETAILERS
In recent years, several emerging vendors of optical goods have launched consumer advertising campaigns with claims that they deeply undercut the artificially high prices maintained by the optical industry establishment.
The marketing message of these “disputers,” as trend-watchers like to call them, is that they have the answer: eyeglasses or contact lenses at far lower prices, sold directly to consumers online. They are the consumer’s advocate, they suggest, while optical manufacturers and ECPs are price gougers.
There is a clear fallacy to this claim, of course, but manufacturers and ECPs have a hard time defending their price structures and looking on the level at the same time.
If you take the superior quality argument, you open yourself to criticism that a better pair of glasses can hardly be worth six or eight times as much as the low-cost alternative.
Alternately, if you try and meet low-ballers where they live, you descend to a commodity arena that won’t sustain your practice.
As they say in politics, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing,” and ECPs are challenged by that very dilemma.
Through the years, Review of Optometric Business has argued that the key is to establish a value-based relationship with your patients. We realize that is not easy, but it is imperative. Define what you stand for, explain the difference in the goods you prescribe, and be price-competitive.
But maybe those “disruptors” have a point.
That was the takeaway from a recent conversation with Michael Kling, OD, a highly progressive independent OD who has contributed many creative ideas to Review of Optometric Business. “The disruptors have figured something out about what people want,” he counseled me. “Often times, they have a better idea, and we can learn from them.”
So, before dismissing new and disruptive entries to the retail landscape, take a look at their value statements.
Warby Parker entered the optical arena suggesting that a virtual monopoly inflates the average price of eyeglasses. So, do they sell cheaper products or mark-up less? Not likely. Warby Parker is about buying eyewear in a new way, in a Millennial context, where the shopping process is…awesome. And where your parents don’t shop.
Take a look at the Warby Parker “story” on its web site:Hubble Contacts similarly markets around the concept that contact lens manufacturers conspire to keep the price of contacts too high. Are their contacts cheaper?
see all of it:
https://eyecarebusiness.ca/what-inde...ical-retailers
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Bookmarks