Becoming Kid-Friendly
Tips for welcoming children to the dispensing counter, or just into the waiting room
By Susan P. Tarrant

Children play, wait for their parents, and sometimes pick out their own eyewear in your dispensary, as long as you have children for patients or your patients have children. With a few minor adjustments, some creativity, and lots of patience, your dispensary can handle children with a minimum of disruption. How much you alter your dispensary to accommodate children depends on how much of your business involves children's exams and/or eyewear and how many of your patients bring their children with them during their visits

Certainly, deciding to offer children's eyewear is a business decision only you can make. But if you're not already selling eyewear to the younger set, you should consider it. Creating a dedicated section designed to showcase children's eyewear makes good business sense, and it shows your adult patient base that you are interested in serving the eyecare needs of the entire family. But to be successful, even if children's eyewear is a small portion of your business, you've got to show off your selection and make children want to pick out eyewear during their visits.

Whether or not the children are in need of vision correction, adult patients are going to bring their children with them when they come to your dispensary. Making them feel welcome and giving them a place of their own to wait allows their parents and other adult customers to pick out eyewear and speak with the optician without distractions.

Eyecare Business rounded up a team of design experts to provide tips for creating children's displays and planning waiting areas just for kids.

WELCOMING LITTLE PATIENTS

A kid-friendly dispensary makes children feel at ease about the process of picking out eyewear and comfortable about the prospect of wearing glasses. It's important to make sure some portion of your children's eyewear section is geared toward the intended wearer.

Graphics. "When they walk into a dispensary, children should see graphics of other children wearing eyewear, or graphics of their role models wearing eyewear," advises Margaret Furman, vice president and display designer of Visual Dynamics in San Francisco.

	Eye Designs turns a children's area into a jungle scene

Smaller scale. Create a display area that's a bit more oriented to a child's reach by bringing in child-scale manufactured counters and cases, or by displaying the eyewear on a small child's play table.

"The child can emulate what they see their parents doing--picking out and trying on frames, and sitting at the counter with the optician," says Alan Winig, president of Collegeville, Pa.-based Eye Designs.

Furman also reminds dispensers about the importance of mirror placement--a smaller-scale mirror just for kids is the perfect complement to your children's eyewear section. "A full-length mirror mounted to kid-size height may also help them see the whole picture," she says.

Accommodate adults. While it's fine to create a children's eyewear section with areas designed to accommodate the smaller-sized customer, watch out for overkill. Making everything in your kids' section school-desk size could alienate the other important person in the transaction process: The parent. Sure, you want the child involved in the decision-making process, but the ultimate decision-maker, and person paying, is the parent.

"You don't want to make everything low, because adults are also involved in the sale," says Justine Krefft, a designer with Ennco, a design and display firm in Redmond, Wash. "Plus, the optician is an adult, too. He or she is not going to want to sit at a kiddie table or lean over a tiny counter throughout the whole transaction."

Educate kids. Finally, don't forget your role as optical educator. When children first begin wearing glasses or getting eye exams, they may have a lot of questions about how it all works. Take the opportunity to educate the children who visit your dispensary. "Children's books which talk about eyecare or optics or optical illusions may be more beneficial than the standard fare of waiting area magazines," Furman says.

A child-size table and colorful display racks from Ennco creates a welcoming environment for youngsters

DESIGNATE AN AREA

If you're going to sell children's frames, make sure people know it. Our display experts recommend dedicating at least 10 percent of your stock to the market segment. Various categories of frames are difficult for the lay person to distinguish, unless they are given visual clues including signage, P-O-P displays, and color.

When it comes to displaying children's stock, designate a specific area of your showroom that's just for kids' frames. "It's hard sometimes to tell the difference between kids frames and adult frames," Furman says. "The adult frames are so small now, plus the styles of the kids' frames mimic the adult styles. Obviously, one of the easiest ways is to put up signage, indicating the children's eyewear and also that you do children's exams."

Bright ideas. Brighten up your frame display mechanisms to make them more appealing to children, says Robbin Belzer, president of Design Concepts, an optical display company in Clearwater, Fla. "Most of the stores already have display systems in place--rods for the frames or countertop display with clips that hold frames," she says. "Replace those clips or rods with brightly colored clips, that will say 'kids frames' pretty loudly."

"It's an inexpensive thing to do," she says. "And the children's area is usually not a very big area, so we're really not talking about a lot of time or money."

Belzer adds that dispensers can add child-oriented props such as little boy and little girl figurines to the frame clips and stands, something that can be purchased inexpensively through a display company.

Color it. Whether you choose a primary color or other colors, make it bright. "Color is really a big attraction for kids, and you're free to use your creativity," says Krefft.

You certainly don't have to change the entire color scheme of your dispensary in order to designate a children's section. You can incorporate the color into the section in smaller ways that are still effective. Paint a rainbow or an "A B C" on the wall behind the frames, or use colorful frame display rods instead of the usual glass, metal, or acrylic.

	Accentuating displays with props including P-O-P materials is recommended by Bright Displays

Toys vs. props. Use the display tools offered to you by the frame manufacturers. Makers of children's frames have some effective and creative displays and P-O-P materials to support their lines. You can also use items bought in toy stores as props, although designers warn against using actual toys as display props.

"I don't like to put up a lot of toys, because the kids inevitably want to play with them, and then that ruins your display function," Krefft says.

One of the mistakes she sees dispensers make is bringing in their own kids' old toys and just putting them on the counter and shelves. "It confuses people," she says. "Is that the play area or the frame display area?"

Go ahead and touch. When adults are choosing eyewear, they need to be free to try on as many as they like, looking at themselves in the mirror, and moving onto different frames. Kids are the same way, and they and their parents shouldn't have to ask the optician to remove each pair they want to try on from a locked case. Although some dispensers may be uneasy at the idea of children touching all of the stock, our designers stress that it's all part of the process.

"You definitely want the kids to touch the frames," says Eye Designs' Winig. "Hopefully, the parents are able to monitor the kids and keep them from getting out of control. That's something every retailer who has children's merchandise deals with."

Winig also says the downfall of keeping the children's frames in a glass cabinet can be twofold: There's the potential for a child falling into or onto the glass, and there's the problem of fingerprints.

Winig suggests using display props such as clothing or gear you might buy out of a skateboard or snowboard magazine, or music videos of the latest teenage heartthrob, even if the sound is off. And make sure your product reflects the desires of the various age groups. Character-based styles are great for little kids, but the older kids are going to be more impressed with cool color treatments or performance elements, such as bendable metal.

Keep it separate, and important. When creating a children's display, avoid throwing some frames and a couple of props in a bookcase and sticking it in a corner somewhere. That makes children and their parents feel like they are not as important as the other patients.

The designers also stress that dispensers should not mix the children's play/waiting area with the children's frame display area. "If the kids (in the waiting area) do get out of hand, you don't want that to interfere with or distract any dispensing conversation that's going on about the frames," Winig says. "The optician can't finesse the sale when there are kids playing right next to him and the patient."

	Primary colors and kid-friendly graphics enhance racks from Design Concepts

A PLACE TO PARK

Not every child who comes into your dispensary is there to pick out eyewear, however. It's a fact of life that parents often bring their children with them to appointments or to shop. And unless you want children running amok through your dispensary, you'd better have a plan for those kids who will otherwise get bored quickly while waiting for mom or dad to pick out eyewear.

A sure-fire way to keep the kids happy while their parents are otherwise occupied is to create an area just for them. "If you want a 'kiddie park,' so to speak, there's nothing better than a video game, along with books and coloring for younger kids," says Eye Designs' Winig.

Dispensers can do several things to really define the kids' waiting area so that it doesn't interfere with the other aspects of the dispensary. "When you find that space that you want to use for waiting kids, define it by putting up short (about two-feet high) walls," says Sandy Bright, owner of Bright Display in Woodinville, Wash.

"The kids can go into a space that they can see is designated just for them. The walls also help hide the toys and junk," she adds.

With this setup, children can be easily observed, there's stuff in there to keep them happy, yet at the same time they are out of the way of the business portion of the office. Bright emphasizes, however, to avoid stocking the area with beeping toys and other noise-making playthings that will only annoy others in the dispensary.

Another positive to the walled-in area is that it sends a great message to your adult patients. "It says, 'We love kids and here is a special place for them,'" Bright says.

Animal-head novelty frame holders by the Magic Designs division of Visual Dynamics are a light-hearted prop for a children's display

Don't ignore parents with younger kids, too. Kids younger than age two will not be able to entertain themselves, so take some steps to make it as easy as possible for parents to bring infants with them, but still have a meaningful visit to your dispensary. If you have the space, leave an area clear in which parents can park a stroller while still keeping it in sight. It will all translate clearly to your patients that you care about serving their families' needs.

And you need not go to the expense of bringing in a designer for the entire project. "If you really don't have a clue as to how to get started on any of these ideas, or can't come up with anything on your own, you can simply call a designer and say, 'Listen, I have no clue where to begin, but I want to do something simple and inexpensive. Where do I start?'" Krefft says.

"Even if you pay for an hour's worth of the designer's time on the phone, anything you do to make your dispensary more kid-friendly--whether they be patients themselves or just accompanying their parents--makes good business sense," Krefft adds.

"The parents really appreciate the fact that you're making an effort to include the whole family," Winig says. "If you make the effort and are not afraid to be a little creative, you'll be fine."