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Mastering the Mix
Fine tuning your sunwear assortment for faster turns
By Marcy Bruch

All the moving and shaking that has taken place within the sunglass specialty arena over the past two years has opened the dispenser's door wider to step up sunwear sales. As proof, a spot check among opticians across the nation finds that anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of their inventory now consists of plano sunwear. They go on to say that's an increase of about five to 20 percent compared to two years ago. The challenge, of course, is figuring out what type of sunwear to buy and how much space to allocate for plano sunwear.

Here's how a few opticians have gone about fine-tuning their plano sunwear assortment to maximize profits.

Live Eyewear style Live Eyes E900G (top); Kenneth Cole styles Specs (left) and Headhunter (right) for ClearVision Optical; and Paul Frank Optometrics style Orbit (bottom)

SPORT VERSUS FASHION

Nestled in the heart of ski country, D'Aun Overstreet, optician for Aspen Eyecare Specialties, in Aspen, Colo., needs no one to convince her about the importance of carrying sunwear. Two years ago, she conscientiously upped the plano sunwear ante by 20 percent, gradually building it to become 40 percent of her frame assortment mix.

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"At first, half of those sunglasses were fashion styles and half were sport, but when I observed what was flying out the door, I tweaked my assortment so that 90 percent is now comprised of sport styles and 10 percent are fashion looks," says Overstreet. "Given the location we are in, both locals and tourists want a pair of sunglasses that perform well on the slopes first and foremost. Still, I can't turn away from fashion styles completely because there will always be some customers who will want the look of the moment."

Overstreet says that the average price for a pair of plano sunglasses runs about $115, and while Aspen Eyecare Specialties offers prescription sunwear, it's the plano sport wraps that have proven to be a profit winner--especially during ski season.

By contrast, Steven Weisfeld, OD, owner of Spectacles in Englewood, N.J., considers sport sunwear to be a minor part of his sunwear business. "Most of my customers work in New York City, so they are plugged into what's happening on the fashion scene," he says. "They come in requesting whatever is currently hip on Manhattan streets."

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Since Spectacles is a high-end dispensary, his fashion-forward sunwear retails anywhere from $250 to $800. And even though sunwear makes up about 15 percent of his total frame mix, the higher margins Weisfeld yields for these frames make them worth their weight in gold.

Sport sunwear manufacturers dictate their suggested retail prices, which is generally double the wholesale price, he says. "I don't realize the same profit margins as I do with my high-end fashion sunwear, which I can mark up two-and-a-half to three times."

MIX UP CLOSE-OUTS

Still, Weisfeld points out that even though Englewood is a short drive over a bridge from New York City, what flies in Soho won't necessarily blow out the door at Spectacles. "The fact of the matter is, many of my customers are housewives that want what's fashionable, but wouldn't consider wearing anything that borders on the bizarre."

Knowing that, Weisfeld mixes up high-end frames that are discontinued with new merchandise as another way to realize greater profit margins. "As long as the quality is there, my customers don't care if the frame is more than two years old. What's more, they may have thought the frame too edgy to wear when it first came out, but they are ready to wear it now."

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BREAKOUT CATEGORIES

While Northern dispensers must be cognizant of the ebb and flow of sunwear demand throughout the year, other areas of the country report their plano sunwear sales are fairly consistent year round. Keith Smith, owner of Unique Optique in Indialandtic, Fla., says 30 percent of his board space is filled with plano sunwear throughout the year. "You can see the beach from the window of our dispensary," he says. "So we get plenty of people that walk in from the sun and sand and want sunglasses right then and there."

Smith says he has an even mix of sport and fashion sunwear, about 50/50, and of the 1,500 frames in his 1,000-square-foot location, he showcases some 400 pairs of sunglasses. He merchandises sunwear in three separate areas. "One section showcases a variety of quality sport wraps and quality polarized frames, another section is dedicated to designer fashion styles, with average retails from both areas running from $100 to $200. A third area features more inexpensively priced sunglasses, priced between $40 to $100," Smith says "Our average customer tends to own two pairs of sunglasses: one is usually a designer brand to wear for dress-up, and the other pair is more durable and less expensive to withstand a beating on the beach."

In terms of adjusting his assortment to better meet local demand, he has observed that polarized sunwear continues growing, so he has layered on more inexpensively priced polarized models into his mix.

REAL ESTATE DEDICATION

Bob Hubsch, manager of a chain of four optical shops located in the greater Chicago area called Metropolitan Eyecare, is also stocking more polarized plano sunwear to better meet his customers' needs. "When I realized about 95 percent of the clip-ons I sold were polarized, I brought in more polarized sunglasses to encourage them to buy a second pair of frames," says Hubsch. Like Spectacles, Metropolitan Eyecare sees sunwear sales dip slightly to 10 percent of total sales during winter and rise to 15 percent of total sales from spring to summer. "After analyzing the frame turns I've found carrying about 70 percent fashion to 30 percent sport sunwear works best for us to maximize sunwear profits. Our customers are suburbanites so they want both." He also finds that displaying about 200 sunglasses out of a total of 600 frames is a fair amount of real estate dedication to get the message across that he is indeed in the sunglass business.

As a sign of her commitment to building sunglass business, Lori Ashley, an optician for Downtown Eyecare in Indianapolis, Ind., recently placed a neon sign in a street-facing window that flashes one word: Sunglasses. The sign stands adjacent to a turnstile tower of rotating sun frames.

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"We are also located near the convention center and across the street from the biggest mall in Indiana, so we get a lot of foot traffic from out-of-towners," she notes.

Even though 20 percent of sales currently come from sunglasses, it's Ashley's goal to increase sunwear sales to at least 30 percent of total sales by end of year. "Between tapping into our existing patients, and the profit potential that could come from the traffic of local business people and out-of-towners walking by, I think we have a huge opportunity to build our plano sunwear sales. It's just a matter of mastering our assortment mix so we have something for everyone."