office
Office Space
Making room in your dispensing plan for office eyewear takes time and effort, but the specialty has great potential dividends. Here's how you can get to work
By Karlen McLean, ABOC, NCLC

Office eyewear has a wide appeal, providing near vision clarity for office workers, tech fans, and others needing visual comfort during computer work. Nikon image courtesy of Essilor

Patients generally adapt easily to office eyewear and find it a useful vision tool. Lenses for office, computer, near-vision focus, small environment, indoor use, and workstations have proven to have a wide market, providing visual comfort and performance for many age groups. But some ECPs are slow or reluctant to bring in this category and profit from it, or they are awkward in their presentation of office lenses...in other words, it's ECPs who have the adaptation problem, not patients.

Here's how establishing an office eyewear platform in your practice can take your office eyewear approach beyond marginal to magnificent.

TOP TARGETS

Knowing what patients to target is key to developing, growing, and becoming a sought-after source for computer eyewear.

"We target computer eyewear for second-pair sales and suggest it to almost everyone, especially PAL wearers," notes Brian Benham, optician-owner of Contacts and Specs in Chicago, Ill. "Most of our computer eyewear business is in the 30- to 40-year old range although we have a lot of seniors in computer eyewear."

■ TECH TIPS: To grow your office eyewear business, consider opening a branch dispensary in a nearby technology area.

Leaving office eyewear at the office is cutting out an important part of its potential use as people hit the computer at home for leisure activities after a long day at work. Images courtesy of Shamir (top) and Carl Zeiss Vision

Advertise in local technology publications or online and visit targeted locations in office parks with your story, business card, and even discount cards to hand out.

Ron Swengel, LDO-owner of College Place Optical Center, Inc., in Edmonds, Wash., has set up in computer country. "Our office is located on the threshold of a technology environment, so we sell a lot of office eyewear to techno-people."

■ AGE BRACKETS: Facing intermediate vision challenges and wielding a larger disposable income, the boomer and senior market are a strong potential audience for office eyewear.

Over-60 citizens typically thrive when using eyewear for the computer in the workplace or keeping active in retirement by taking computer classes, shopping on the Internet, E-mailing, or utilizing computers for hobbies such as photography.

Consider opening satellite locations near large retirement areas. Get the word out by advertising in senior-focused publications and visit senior centers and condo associations.

"We fit primarily young and old boomers and senior citizens with computer eyewear. Not only glasses, but contact lenses can work, especially monovision. People are realizing that one pair of eyewear or CLs won't do it all anymore," says Angela Abraham-Nichols, OD, of Wright Eye Institute, Inc., in Orangeburg, S.C.

Monovision contact lenses for working on the computer and other tasks like painting and golfing are also an option for this group. 

Early-presbyope boomers are solid candidates for either option. "With farsighted people who don't need much distance correction, but are going into presbyopia, computer or office eyewear is a good way to segue them into a plus-power correction that they'll wear and use."

DONE DEAL

Start to finish, it takes more concentration on the details of patients' vision and how they use their eyes to successfully prescribe and fit office eyewear. As a result, consistently good doctor-dispenser interaction is crucial to success.

At Contacts and Specs, "the doctor often recommends computer eyewear during the exam and will write an Rx specifically for the computer," Brian Benham says. "After talking with patients and assessing their focal distance using a computer here in the dispensary, sometimes we'll have the doctor recalculate the Rx based on the new measurement of the patient's eyes to the primary work focus, like the computer screen," he adds.

Lenses at work at play. Image courtesy of Prio

Understanding the unique visual requirements of the office environment will help you be a more functional part of your patient's office eyewear solution.

Keep in mind, for example, that "today's bigger computer monitors mean users have to lift their chin up even higher if they're wearing regular PALs when they're on the computer, causing even more neck cricks and other ergonomic-based discomfort," Ron Swengel says.

And, finally, knowing the nuances of proper office eyewear fitting, along with the basics of the lens technology, can pay dividends in patient satisfaction and reduced redo rates.

Notes Ron Swengel: "These lenses work best in smaller- diameter frames since they have shorter corridors. If you push the frame diameter too high, say to a 58 eye size, it results in too much visual distortion at the lens' edge. We stick to medium to small frame sizes only."