New Facilities and New Capabilities

We've just moved to our new facility! This move is an exciting one for IOD as it increases our capacity and also our capabilities. Once we have some pictures available I'll share them along with the new products and styles our new machines allow us to make. Some really cool stuff is coming to this industry and I'm glad we are the ones that will be bringing it.

Bubbles and Boxes - New Styles in Optical Displays

Catering to a high end clientele this optical asked us to create a very different feel from anything else in the area for they, as an office, wanted to offer clients a very different experience. Their business plan called for a fun, energetic optical in a trendy district of Grand Rapids, MI to position themselves as something new for the area. The "bubbles and boxes" look we developed hit the mark by mixing some stylish laminates on straight, European feeling cases along with an airier feel from the organic placement of the floating bubbles on the wall.

The creative use of LED lighting added another dimension and aided in after hours interest. This office is housed around some of the areas best restaurants which creates a lot of after hours traffic. We used the LED lighting to try and have the offices large storefront windows become an attention getter when the lights are off. With the ability to slowly cycle through color variations the LED's in the reception counter and behind the bubbles create a real visual interest to passers-by.

This is still a full service optical using only 1600 sq ft of space with one exam lane and an office. Another consideration in developing the plan was the clients desire to hold events as part of their marketing plan. The reception desk was designed with this in mind as a place for having food and drinks easily placed at a "bar" height. This doesn't detract form its functionality though. Behind the counter sliding trays hide the frame warmer and other tools necessary to make adjusting at the counter quick and easy without showing any of the clutter seen in some offices.

In the end we ended up with a very sharp looking office that has the fun, energetic feel the clients were looking for. We've since taken the wall mounted "bubbles" concept and designed other similarly applicable shapes and sizes for other offices as the interest in them has been amazing.

Vision Expo West Invitation

We know a lot of you folks will be heading to Vision Expo West in Las Vegas and we want to make sure you come by and get to know Illusion Optical Displays. So here's your link to save the $75 registration fee, Show Invite. What can I say, we love meeting people in this industry and hope you will stop by and say hi. We'll be at booth 22049.

Opening A New Optometry Practice

We had the opportunity this year to support a book going out to optometry graduates throughout the country called "Your New Optometry Practice." It's a pretty comprehensive guide for new doctors and we were glad to be a part of it. The father and son team who put that together have recently posted a video as well to accompany it. You can see it here.

http://mcpartlandmedical.com/openingcold/

Once you've watched it please let us know what you think by commenting below.

Is Clutter Killing Your Optical Displays?

Here’s the skinny, clutter kills. Too much clutter in the form of accessories and add-on marketing items can be a real killer when it comes to effectively displaying frames. It can affect the overall feel of the office and detract from what you’re really trying to sell, the frames.

Now I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings but some offices I walk into give me the same anxious feeling I get whenever I enter Walmart®. This feeling comes from the cramped aisles and the myriad of vendor marketing pieces attacking me at every turn. In optical offices this clutter doesn’t usually happen on purpose, as in Walmart®, but is many times propagated by the good intentions of the varied frame vendors hoping to sell their wares in your office. So, slowly, all of the many different marketing pieces and strategies from these many different vendors can begin to create a garbled mess.

So here are some things that might help to save you from falling into the clutter trap:

1. Take a step out your front door and walk back in as if you are a brand new client. Ask yourself, “Self, is this an inviting environment? Do I feel comfortable? Am I being attacked by branding statements? Is there a common look and feel or is it ‘shabby chic’ without the ‘chic’? (And here’s the big question to ask) Would I buy my frames here?” Seems simplistic but in our day to day utilitarian meanderings about our offices we tend to normalize our surroundings and, many times, do not take notice of the office as a whole.

2. It’s also important to define exactly what feeling or impression your office is presenting to your clients when they walk in your door. Then define what you want that impression to be. If “what it is” and “what you want it to be” don’t match then it’s time to go about creating a plan to change that. It might be as easy as deciding which vendor POP’s are necessary and which ones are not. It might be the need for a total remodel of the office but the important thing is to define what you want, make it happen and then never let it get out of hand again. Also be sure to keep your staff involved in this process so they know what the plan is and how to evaluate whether something is a “fit” for the plan or not.

3. Rotate marketing pieces. It won’t hurt anything to take one vendor marketing piece down for a month or two and replace it with something else. This does two things for you. One is that it will continually “freshen” the look of the office. Any regular visitors will, if not actively then subliminally, notice the changes. This gives the impression of an active, fresh and rotating stock, which goes a long way in the consumer’s buying decision.

The second thing it will do is highlight the diversity of your frame offerings. If, on subsequent visits, your clients see Juicy Couture® then Coach® then Gucci® they are going to get a much clearer picture of just how diverse your frame selection is. If they see the same display over and over again they will develop the same type of normalization we talked about earlier and your frame selection will just become “normal” in your client’s mind.

Dispensing Knowledge instead of Glasses

Here is a link to an article by Ted Weinreich, Regional Sales Manager for Optogenics that comes from the Eye Care Professional Magazine website. In the article I like the fact that the focus is on the optician dispensing their knowledge to the customer rather than selling them something. All of us have become too savvy as consumers and can smell a sales job coming from a mile away. The old sales model of fast talking salesman leading a prospective customer to his desired conclusion (sale) and always "closing" has thankfully been replaced by a sales experience where our job is to give the customer the information they need to make a proper buying decision themselves. I think this article does a real good job of detailing how the knowledgeable optician can do just that. Happy reading. "Empower Your Sales"

Need to Pair Down Inventory?

Vision Care Venture has a series of articles on pairing down inventory written by Nikki DiBocca that I think are worth looking at if you are working through these issues. She lays out steps in a very logical order. The first is called "Putting Your Optical Practice on a Diet" and the second is "Getting Your Dispensary Into Shape." They are worth the read.