EaseVision.com – News and gossips of vision care and optical industry

There is news about the things going on at Lenscrafters, a giant in the optical industry. The most attractive to the public may probably be the very last sentence in the internal communication about the security. One point is sure that if an employee is forced to take that step, it is really crappy. There are some important factors associated with the internal communication. Out of respect, the principle will communicate first with associates who are part of the reduction and restructure. After that, both those associates’ immediate supervisors and nearby team members will be informed of such changes. This will help them make further work transitions, which are mostly needed. Then broader communication will be made. One aspect involves the whole company and another one is between each department. All departments should communicate with each other about specific changes to their area regarding people, processes and transition plans.

A key point of the internal communication about reduction and restructure which involve associates is to protect privacy. The best practice is not to publish the names of impacted associates. In addition, the information of changes should be prevented from being gained by social media sites. Lenscrafters maintains a secure system which supports the manager team to share information about impacted associates in a respectful, appropriate and timely manner. All communication is made on a need to know basis. The two sides need to be well balanced that one is the desire to protect the privacy of those impacted associates and the other is to share necessary information for work transition.

Lenscrafters has eliminated many open positions as part of its strategy, which aims to reduce as many positions as possible while minimizing impact on current associates. And some associates being reassigned will be filling open positions which have been decided to remain untouched. By February 5^th, all updated open positions will be published. Lenscrafters also gets help from a representative from Anthem’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP).

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Recently, Essilor issued a new action, which has been probably testified by the Vision Source meeting last week. In brief, Essilor has much probably taken a 51% stake of the Vision Source, gaining a controlling status. This can simply be considered as a buying movement or acquisition. For most of the reporters in the optical field, it is just a logical step taken by Essilor, who has long aimed to become the largest monopoly in the optical community. Currently, Essilor is maintaining the largest lab network in the world. Earlier before, Essilor bought FGX and gained direct access to consumer chain for reading glasses and sunglasses. In addition, even the largest online glasses website Framesdirect.com has close partnership with Essilor. Some people guess that the final purpose of Essilor is to buy the website. Over the years, products from Essilor have been considered pricey. All these movements thus are believed by some customers to build Essilor as the only leader in the optical industry.

Except for the fact that Essilor has never cracked down on grey lab sales, this group continues to cover all fields of the optical mafia by controlling Vision Source. Essilor is buying up everyone that has been considered as any barrier to its continued growth. It has also been reported that Essilor had an attempt to buy independent labs and then shut them down, as part of its strategy. This is aimed to gain a greater market share for its ELoA labs. This new action of buying Vision Source is widely believed to be a tiny step of this strategy.

Who is Vision Source? Owning 4,000 independent optometry practices, Vision Source is the largest independent optometry buying group in the world. The company works much like Amway. There are words in the field that “Vision Source is the optical equivalent of Amway”. Its long term members make profit while the company is still recruiting new members.

There has been rumors talking about that Essilor will probably buy the biggest and earliest online high-end optical retailer of eyeglasses and sunglasses- FramesDirect.com. It is true, maybe.

Let’s wait and look at the progresses of this merging case.

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