editor's letter

Grow or Grab

by Stephanie K. De Long

There are lots of ways to build a business.

You can help grow your market—with new offerings, savvy marketing, and even community outreach. Or you can grab customers—often tried by lowering prices—from the guy next door. The first increases the size of the pie. The other slices the current one into still smaller pieces.

Most business are built by a combination of strategies. Though our market has often preferred grabbing, the optical landscape is littered with examples of why that's often less than successful. One problem that companies used to overlook—and it's one that happened with the contact lens price cuts way back in 1985—is that lowering prices can turn a product into a commodity too early in its developmental cycle.

And, if ever there was an example of slicing an already small pie into smaller bites, it was the progressive lens ads of the mid-80s. Instead of trying to grow the then miniscule PAL market, some manufacturers' ads—featuring shaded contour plots that confused the market even further—seemed simply to vie for those few dispensers who were already buying into the PAL concept. A lot has changed since then. Certainly most companies have switched to longer-term tactics. And growth has followed.

The lessons of the '80s apply to dispensers as well. Short term, lower prices may grab you some business. But the problem with trying to base your business on it is that the guy down the street can get customers back with a single two-for-one ad. In the end, most small businesses find that lowering prices is at best a short-term solution to a longer-term problem.

Simply put, grabbing might win today's battle, but growing is much more likely to help you win the war.

Stephanie K. De Long Editor-in-Chief

P.S. Don't miss, "The Skinny on PAL Technology," this month's Seiko-sponsored CE course for opticians that begins after p. 16.