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

If you own a retail clothing store, and you want to extend your reach online, you may register as a “seller” on eBay or Amazon, and then you can also sell to your online customers. Now the same thing will be possible for the independent ECPs selling eyeglasses online. This is what I browsed about at a blogger’s site —– a new concept of online optical store, ZipEyewear.com.

Though Zip Eyewear is just an informational site of its beta version, we can of course know about what the founders are going to do. As what the site reads, ZipEyewear is a uniquely innovative approach to online eyewear sales. If ECPs are ready to embrace Internet sales, ZipEyewear is here to help lift up their business to the next level.  ZipEyewear offers to provide traditional ECPs’ business a strong Internet presence, as well as increase ECPs’ store’s sales volume. Any ECP who wants to sell through Zip, they can register as “provider” and upload own frame selection, and Zip will advertise these frames for ECPs free.  Zip only charges 10% of the voucher that the online buyers fulfills on ZipEyewear.

Zip’s “from site to store” program is really an ambitious idea, striving to drive online surfing customers to the stores of ECPs, enabling customers being served with ECPs’ professional optical services(normal online stores are just crippled on this point). ZipEyewear claims all the lenses and frames will be priced based on what the other major online competitors are charging.

Then questions arise naturally. Firstly, How can Zip price the lenses and frames at the same level as other online stores while the ECPs can still make money? 2. How can Zip attract end-users to visit their site? It is very capital- and wisdom-intensive! 3. How can Zip attract ECPs to become providers and upload their frames selection?

Will Zip be the next eBay or Amazon in optical area?

After the MIT scientists use iPhone or Nexus One to handle the eye test and issue full optical prescription, Essilor releases its own iPhone or iPod application to allow the users to take an interactive test of the eyes. There are a couple of modules for testing things like vision acuity,astigmatism and duochrome.  After finishing the test, the robot will advise you to take a formal eye test, not in other doctors’ office, but in the independent Varilux specialist practitioners in the United Kingdom.

So the real purpose of issuing this app is to drive the potential patients to come to Essilor’s eye test doctors’ office. On this point, this is really a good idea, and this will help Essilor further vertically integrate the optical business.

Currently this app is customized for UK market.  The built-in software even has a feature of searching the nearest Varilux office for you to make an appointment for an eye test.

Here is the personal experience of EOH blogger:

http://eyeoverheard.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/essilor-releases-sight-test-for-apple-iphone-global-domination-continues/

German Optical company Vistan.de’s idea of creating different-look eyeglasses is worth mentioning.

As the photo on the left side shows, Vistan make the temples of the eyeglasses detachable, so you will have different temples in different shape and color to match wearer’s costume and for use in different occasions. In this case you can only have one style of the front style, the only thing you have the option to change is the temples.

This idea well addresses the needs of eyeglasses wearers while keeping the total cost on the eyeglasses low. This is quite similar as the purchasers of online eyeglasses buying more than one pair at a time, of course in this case, the buyers will also change the “front style” of the glasses.

The Italy-based industry giant Luxottica Group, a $6.6 billion company, has recently launched its first Eye Hub optical retail store in Melbourne, Australia. Designed by E2, a designer of London’s Millennium Dome. Eye Hub is a part of  OPSM, which is the equivalent of LensCrafters in the United States. This new concept optical retail store is the first of its kind to include a simulator room with wind, snow, water etc to test the eyeglasses and sunglasses of its glare and wind-resistance features. It also boasts a touch-screen interactive mirrors that allow people to play back their new look and share the image with friends from social networking sites such as Facebook. The new store has a kids area where parents can leave their kids while they are shopping and experiencing around. The store’s floor plan is in the shape of an eyeball.

This new store costs 2 to 3 times more than a normal LensCrafters store in the United States, with 1500 square meters. Based on the article published in the ads section of  New York Times on July 20,2010, Luxottica is going to open 10-15 stores in this kind in the coming 2 to 3 years in China, UK and USA.

The setting of the stores also includes a concierge who meets customers at the door. Besides selling eyeglasses and sunglasses, Lux expects to use this store to conduct live research and development, and then copy successful experience to use in other existing retail stores in the future.

“If the Internet was perfect for everybody, obviously no one would shop at retail stores,” said Chris Beer, chief executive of Asia Pacific, greater China and South Africa for Luxottica. “The reality is, you need to create a connection, create a personal experience, and that’s what we’ve done.”

Luxottica was starting to recover from a tough 2009,  its 2010  1st quarter sales rose by 6% comparing with the same period of 2009. Lux hopes that the  new type of retail experience would help recover its sales. Luxottica is facing two very tough situation. On the one hand, it needs to address the sales slump arising from the recession, on the other hand, it also needs to face the siphoning of eyeglasses customers by online eyeglasses shopping.

Can Luxottica really collect information from customers through the new store? I guess not. Apple may be successful in doing the similar stores, as Apple is always releasing new things from new ideas, but the eyeglasses and sunglasses are just two pieces of lenses. Are these lenses fancy enough to lure visitors to buy?

In addition, I think the online eyeglasses buyers, in most of the cases, are not the ones who will have interest in Eye Hub’s eyeglasses. The best result possible for Eye Hub is grab a niche market who really really does not care about money.

VillaEyewear.com has just announced new agreement with Allison to distribute John Richmond Eyewear Collection, a new collection of eyewear and sunglasses boasting and combining strong music components and street chics.

Here are some of the photos showing part of the collection.

In the similar ideas of PixelOptics’ electronic bifocals, TruFocals.com’s touch-focus eyeglasses mean to address the same needs of the people over 40 or 45.

Following the same route as Benjamin Franklin, TruFocals’ touch-focus glasses help people with presbyopia to eliminate the constant shift between distance eyeglasses and closeup spectacles. By touching the ’slider” on the nose bridge, the wearer can easily and flexibly change the pressure of the liquid inside the lenses, thus achieving the sharpest vision.

The mechanism of the touch-focus eyeglasses requires the shape of the lenses to be round. Currently the company design a frame style which is similar to classic Harry Potter’s eyeglasses, as only the round lens shape can allow the pressure of the liquid to be allocated evenly. There are two lenses, one is firm while the other is flexible and is filled with clear liquid with good feature of light transmission.

UK Oxford-based company Adlens have the almost same eyeglasses which are now commercialized by the same name American company.

We believe technology and innovation will mostly bring well being and convenience to the general public. Eyeglasses in above mechanism, adjusted to the best possible vision possible by the wearers themselves, can sure achieve the vision acuity.  This actually skip the step of eye check by the eye doctors, and actually the wearers are issuing “RX” by themselves. As I know, the RX from optometrist does not only mean the vision sharpness, doctors will have a wider consideration of all the other aspects of eye health before issuing the final RX. Are these self-adjusting glasses really healthy?

According to TruFocals.com, customers can order from their online portal, and the price is US$900 which is not cheap. Currently the style of the frame is really not fashionable at all.

GIA, Global Industry Analysts, the reputed publisher, recently announced that the eyeglasses market by 2015 will reach US$95.66 billion, a pretty positive forecast for the industry.

Eyeglasses has transformed itself from vision corrective necessity to fashion items the same as jewelry and fashion clothings. Eyeglasses market used to be resilient at any economic conditions, but now, as a part of the fashion industry, eyeglasses sales become vulnerable in the time of financial downturn. In addition, as the eyeglasses are sold at a considerably high markup, the high price also serves as the biggest hurdle. In the past two years, many consumers drift to low-price eyeglasses to avoid the high prices charged by most of the optical stores.

The most worth-mentioning point in the coming years is the dramatic rise of eyeglasses sales sold through e-commerce channels. This contributes to the continuous sale increase. The rise of the Internet as a potent vehicle for selling eyeglasses is additionally expected to expand the retailing reach of eyeglasses worldwide. Thanks to the growing popularity of E-commerce and Internet based sales transactions, the revenue inflow for eyeglasses from cyberspace is increasingly on the rise.

In the history, US and Europe are the major revenue contributors of eyeglasses sales. In the past two years, and also in the foreseeable future, Asia Pacific and Latin America will be acting as the major source of revenues.

As the baby boomer accounts for a big part of the population who is over 45, the demand for reading glasses and bifocal or progressive eyeglasses is on the steep rise. This is believed to be turbo-charging the sales of eyeglasses and prescription sunglasses in the coming years.

For the sunglasses market the fairly-priced quality sunglasses will be the major contributor to the acceleration of sales revenue. In addition to this, plastic frames will further add momentum to the consecutive demand as shown in the previous years.

Major players and manufacturers and distributors of eyewear products are still unchanged.

Another new optical product, but actually it is not new. As early as March 2003,  in the Commercialisation Forum and Fair of Ideas in Sydney, this LED light glasses were displayed to the public for the first time.

Australian Researcher from Flinders University developed this  special LED light glasses designed to adjust people’s biological clocks and address the circadian rhythm problems like insomnia and jet lag, as well as problems from workers of night shifts. And this LED light glasses is being commercialized by Flinders Technologies Pty. Ltd. of Australia.

The mechanism of the special glasses arises from the bright light therapy of treating diseases like insomnia and mental disorder like depression.  Traditionally strong lights are deployed to tinker body’s response to light, and put people’s biological clock to an appropriate status. Comparing with the bulky and immobile light devices, the LED light glassed utilize 9V battery to power the LED light installed in a pair of special eyeglasses, providing blue light directly to the eyes, making the wearers easily reset the body clock to the proper time.

This product hopefully can address a market which is not small at all. Based on statistics, insomnia only has a $5 billion market, while 94% of the long distance travelers have the jet lag problems. In addition, the population of seasonal depression reaches 70-80 million in US and Europe only.

Founded by James Chen and Oxford University Professor Josh Silver in 2004, the Oxford-based technology company Adlens aims to develop and commercialize the new-invented liquid-filled adjustable eyeglasses to the developing countries. Adlens strives to address the unmet need for refractive vision correction and pursuing commercial applications of the adaptive lens technology. Today over 1 billion people around the world need but actually lack the access to affordable eyeglasses. Seeking to provide for this need, Adlens has created a set of specs affixed with fluid-filled lenses whose magnification can be adjusted with just a simple turn of the dial! See the photo!

A clever invention for eye vision and well being, the ingenious lens could prove to be particularly useful in the developing world, where resources for vision care are scarce or priced beyond the ability of the consumers. Some people suggest it is also very helpful for youngsters whose vision worsens quickly within a short period of time, to eradicate the chance of buying new rx eyeglasses too constantly.

Adlens make the stock of a large amount for a unique lens for different RX obsolete, and the creative liquid lenses can be adapted to thousands of different prescriptions. Since very little expertise is required for adjustment, this makes the sharing a pair of glasses with others possible and without harming anyone’s eye health.

The first actual consumer vision-correction device in this concept and tech is an adaptive reading glasses. A US private company called Adlens Beacon Inc, in 2008 was granted the sole license in marketing this product.

Present version of adjustable reading eyeglasses only address the needs from people with the same RX in both eyes, as we see from the photo there is only one dial at the side of the frame.

Essex Woodlands Health Ventures invested the 2007-startup QSpex 12 million dollars at the end of 2009. This is an amazing new technology enabling the optical stores to finish casting the lenses for the eyeglasses in 30 minutes. According to the in introduction on its website, the in-house lenses making machine is able to make Anti-glare, photochromic, polarized lenses in one integrated process. The surface quality of the lenses can be comparable with the lab-ground lenses, with accurate and precise prescription acuity. And it requires no special skills for the operators. It is heard recently QSpex finialized another round of capital financing from GE. All these venture capitals help to commercialize the patented technology and bring the novelty technology lenses to final users. QSpex plans to test the market in the southeast before the end of 2010, and then rollout through the country in the coming 3 years.

QSpex will market its lenses through the independent doctor’s offices, and then spread though national chain stores. This new tech will greatly the increase the profitability and efficiency of the independent stores.

The major members of the QSpex team are with perfect background in the industry of eye-care products. Stephen M. Martin, the CEO of QSpex Technologies. Is a veteran contact lens manufacturing executive, and he founded Ciba Vision in 1980 and Ciba Vision Ophthalmics in 1990. Dr. Kai Su, originally from Taiwan China, is the founder, Chairman and CSO of QSpex.

Dr. Kai Su’s (PHD) background is particularly worth mentioning. He Founded QSpex Technologies Inc., and serves as its Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Su has been in the vision care industry for over three decades and is an expert in the field of polymer chemistry. Before QSpex, he was the President & CEO of Technology Resources International (TRI). Before this, Dr. Su spent 21 years leading research and development groups at Ciba Vision, Alcon Laboratories and Bausch & Lomb. During all these years, Dr. Su has invented over 100 eye care patented products and published many scientific papers in the area. Dr. Su’s the technologies have been used in a number of successful vision care products, such as Alcon’s Opti-Clean contact lens cleaning solutions and Softcolors line of colored contacts lenses within the CIBA brand. In 1996, he was awarded the Contact Lens Manufacturers Association Trailblazer Award for his excellent achievement in product development to the enhancement of the industry. Dr. Su gained his Ph.D. in polymer chemistry from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in New York, and owned a BS in chemistry from Taiwan’s Tamkang University before he came to United States to further his study.

This new technology, if proves to be workable soon, will surely transform and reshape the business model of the optical industry, and this will greatly impact the current participators, especially in the eyeglasses lens manufacturing industry.