Eyecare Business connects with EB contributor and board member "Optician About Town" Sheena Taff for The Inside View—a video series dedicated to exploring overarching conversations taking place across the eyecare industry. Here, Taff offers insight into how independent practices can differentiate and thrive in a rapidly evolving eyecare landscape—from elevating patient experience beyond price to embracing breakthroughs in myopia control and smart eyewear.
The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Sheena Taff, also known as Optician About Town. I'm an optician and an eyecare business owner in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I have been a contributing columnist for Eyecare Business since 2018, and today, I'm here to share some thoughts on the eyecare industry.
EB: When it comes to eyewear, do you find patients are more focused on price, technology, or personalization?
I think it's really easy to ask, "What are my patients most focused on?" Is it price, technology, or personalization? And I think that a lot of that depends on what type of practice you work in or have designed as your business model. But as ECPs, we all have the opportunity to steer clients away from focusing on price by educating and demonstrating the technology available in lenses, coatings, and frames—the things that really bring value to the wearer.
It should never be assumed that a patient knows everything about eyewear or lenses, and that goes for even the ones who have been wearing glasses their whole life. They may have never been introduced to a certain lens feature, and it's still shocking to me how many people walk around without antireflective coating on their lenses when the benefits are instantly tangible and debatable when demonstrated. That's our role as experts: to focus on the technology and really personalize a product for patients. When working with clients, if price is the focus, the buyer isn't likely getting value because value is created through ease of use, quality, longevity, and their overall satisfaction with their eyewear. Cheaper, lower-quality products don't offer these characteristics. One of my favorite quotes from Warren Buffett is “price is what you pay, and value is what you get.”
Demonstrating value comes from personalization. It comes from engaging with clients and uncovering their needs. Offering suggestions on what would benefit them visually—eyewear that would make their life better, make them feel better, make them have more confidence. And as consumers, price can overwhelmingly be the main focus. We're becoming too desensitized about customer service because, most of the time, buying something isn't done with help. You're doing it on your own. And that shouldn't be the transactional equation when it comes to eyewear, either.
I'm sure as a consumer, even getting greeted when entering a store is something that doesn't occur on the regular. So as an expert, we really have the opportunity to create a relationship with a patient by giving them face-to-face time and care, really connecting through their medical needs and their personal needs, and putting the focus on price on the back burner.
We have the ability to shift the focus through knowledgeable customer service, and it seems so simple, but it is 100% achievable and true. It can make your practice thrive and make you feel far more fulfilled as an expert if you focus on offering top-quality service to your clients.
EB: Where do you see the biggest opportunities for growth in the industry?
It might not seem like there's a ton of room or opportunity for growth in the optical industry, but you couldn't be more wrong. Although there are some big players both in Canada and the United States that keep gobbling up practices, it can naturally be really easy to throw up your hands and think they're just ruling the landscape. But I believe that, ironically, consolidation is an opportunity to differentiate yourself from the homogenous landscape, and it gives us the opportunity for independent and specialty niche practices to really thrive because we can offer something different.
We have the fluidity to make changes and really listen to your consumer base: what they need, what resonates with them, and how you can connect that and create an environment and a user experience. Your patients will return, they'll tell their friends, and your business can thrive. And a segue into that, which is probably one of the greatest opportunities for all across the landscape, is myopia management. It's likely the No. 1 growth sector in the coming decades, and it's becoming a long-term shift in how we care for the eyes of young patients. With myopia rates rapidly increasing, ECPs have an arsenal of tools that can help prevent that progression. In the United States, there are now spectacle lenses that are approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, with hopefully many more options to come in Canada.
We have some incredible products—one that is coming to the market is showing zero progression in myopia after 12 months of wear. That is unbelievable. So we are on the first line of defense in protecting young individuals and giving them healthy eyes for life. So I think that's something that all ECPs should educate themselves on and focus on, because even if you don't see a lot of children in your practice now, you are likely to see more in the years to come.
I think another area of opportunity is wearable tech. Now, I know a lot of people kind of roll their eyes, and that can come a lot from the misinformation or the narrow focus of what smart eyewear actually does. When you have the opportunity to delve a little deeper into smart eyewear and some of the AI functionality, you can see a whole new area for low-vision wearers or, now, wearers who have low hearing,
Smart eyewear does so much more than take pictures and videos. The opportunity for smart eyewear to show low-vision patients a new world through mobility and visual assistance is incredible. And what if your smart eyewear could help you see better, but also help you hear better? Smart eyewear is in its very early inception and there are many new features on the horizon, but I encourage experts not to discount the products that are available now and look deeper into their functionality in order to see all the different options and features that can really help their current clients today.
