Perspectives
Narrow Your Focus
Stephanie K. De Long

It may sound like a riddle, but narrowing your focus really is a way to expand your business. At least, that's what retail consultants are saying. The message? You can't be all things to all people. You need to pick your targets, and then refocus to make sure you can hit them.

"The goal," he adds, "is three-fold. It's to look at your surroundings in a fresh way. It's to look at your own capabilities and goals in an equally new way. And, ultimately, it's to mesh the other two into a set of specific targets for building business. That means adding muscle in areas you hadn't concentrated on before."

Adding muscle is, in fact, what this niche issue of EB is all about. From beginning to end, we talk about new opportunities. In our up-front columns, we talk about a new niche for photochromic lenses with post-Lasik patients. And, at the back of the issue in "Last Word," we talk about targeting the new ethnic order. In between, we show off a hot, new urban look in our feature, "Ethnic Edge," and in our lens feature we discuss the newest niche in progressives--personalized PALs.

The bottom line, says Markley, is that adding niches is really all about service. "As I recently told a sporting goods retailer: 'Your new niche may be extreme sports. But your core business is really extreme service.'"

Sincerely,

Stephanie K. De Long
Editor-in-Chief

P.S. Speaking of niches, be sure to read the patient-directed, waiting room piece created by the BCI special projects team for Transitions Optical that's between page 32 and 33.