Adding Personal Pizazz

Offering custom-designed lens art can result in walking advertisements for your dispensary, growing your business, and attracting high-end customers

By Susan P. Tarrant

Eyewear frames come in all sorts of styles, shapes, colors, and materials. They can be blinged out or barely there. But ophthalmic lenses are meant to be invisible, simply offering high-quality optics and the best vision possible for the wearer. Right?

Not if you think outside the box and welcome customers who value personal style and want something different from what everybody else wears.

Dispensers who are adding pizzazz to lenses are enjoying a niche that is not only profitable, but also gives their practice a reputation for high-quality, custom service.

Lenses can be personalized cosmetically in a number of ways, from custom shapes and edge designs to etching, facets, and embedded jewels.

“It’s anything that gives the eyewear a little something extra,” says Marcus Harden, finishing department head at Ice-Tech Advanced Lens Technologies in Atlantic Beach, FL, and co-owner of Rumars Design custom eyewear in Jacksonville, FL. Harden has been putting a personal touch on lenses for more than 30 years, along with designing frames.

“There is so much out there that is plain, plain, plain,” he says. “This kind of work makes eyewear exciting.”

THE LURE

The very thing that Harden loves about custom work is the same thing that draws customers to the idea of their own personal eyewear design.

“You will not see yourself on the street coming toward you,” he says.

“We’re not just opticians, we’re artists,” adds Bill Curran, ABOC, owner of William J. Curran and Son Opticians in Drexel Hill, PA. Curran and optician/designer Mike Shanahan, ABOC, display custom eyewear throughout the shop. It gets people’s attention, and it gives people ideas.

The beauty of custom lens designs is that there really are no limits to what can be done, as long as the optics and the stability of the lens are not compromised.

Patients may be driven by the desire for something artsy, unusual, or just colorful. Others may want something elegant for a special occasion. “If you can still get the optics, especially with a progressive, you can do anything you and the customer want,” says Daniel Protz, owner of Eye Elegance in Houston.

Coming up with a personalized element to a lens can mean modifying the intended shape of a three-piece mount or designing a piece of art that will fit a frame.

“If you want something detailed, it’s going to take me some time do the job right,” Harden says. It’s time well spent, however, when it results in a happy customer who will return—and spread the word about your dispensary.

If you’re not comfortable doing the work yourself, then send the job to a specialist.

“If somebody is asking for something special, do some research and you’ll find somebody who can do it,” Harden advises, adding that the wholesale lab is the best place to start. If the lab won’t do it, they’ll most likely know of a skilled optical craftsman who will. “Don’t be shy, and don’t turn away that customer,” he says.

WHO’S THE CUSTOMER?

Though opticians report a much higher percentage of female customers opting for customization than men, the demographics are wide open. “Sometimes it’s the people you least expect,” says Curran. “You can’t judge people by how they look or what you think they’ll be like. The people who come to my shop are people who appreciate quality when it comes to eyewear.”

The clientele of Craig Chasnov, owner of Eyetopian in Ft. Myers, FL, is mostly female, mostly older, and mostly affluent. With an average eyewear sale of at least $1,000, 70 percent of his sales are three-piece mounts, which makes lens customization a perfect fit for him. He also gets a lot of his custom work from referrals from other dispensaries that do not offer the service.

Personalization in spectacle lenses run the gamut when it comes to design originality. Images courtesy of Daniel Protz (top) and Bill Curran

Custom lenses can express individuality and practical benefits such as lighter weight. Images courtesy of Marcus Harden (top) and Santinelli

“We do a lot of custom frames, too, so we can match the frame to the color of the lens edge or the jewels they want in the lens,” says Chasnov.

Adds Protz, “In most cases, it’s a matter of reading the individual. If she is looking over our frame collection and just not seeing anything that grabs her, or she seems to have a style of her own, that’s when we’ll say, ‘You want to try something really different?’”

Custom lens work is not limited to the high-end retail customer, either. It can have aesthetic, optical, or even medical origins.

■ HARD-TO-FIT Rx. Being able to manipulate the edge, bevel, and sometimes even shape of the lens can be a solution for fitting those tough Rx’s like high minuses and high curves into frames while maintaining optics and aesthetics. Cut-outs on a very thick lens can aid in reducing the weight of the lens as well.

■ MEDICAL/NEURO. Creative thinking can help create personalized eyewear with specialized lenses (even as magnetic clips) for treating neurological conditions such as dyslexia.

■ KIDS. Making reticent children excited about wearing eyewear can be as simple as making a cool lens shape or etched designs, or adding gemstones in the lens.

COMPETITIVE EDGE

In addition to a little extra in profit, offering quality and creative lens customization can build a dispenser’s reputation and popularity.

“I don’t do it to get money up front,” says Protz. “That’s shortsighted. I do it to get someone excited about his eyewear and spread that excitement. I do it to create someone who is, essentially, going to sell my shop.” EB