Keeping Stock in Safety
How SRx benefits wholesale labs
Keeping Stock in
Safety
How SRx benefits
wholesale labs
"We got into
prescription safety eyewear because we felt it was necessary for us and our
customers," said Keith Cross, vice president of Northeast Lens, now a division
of Carl Zeiss Vision. "We're only 10 years old and a lot of other labs were not
doing it. When we first opened, and asked customers what they wanted us to help
them with," he noted, they asked for help with developing safety
eyewear.
According to Cross, AOSafety
eyewear predominated in their marketplace, and that working with Titmus and Aden
Eyewear, Cross was able to provide quicker turnaround on jobs, sometimes as
quickly as one day, for ECP
customers.
With one location in Newton
Upper Falls, Mass., the lab covers most of New England and parts of upstate New
York. Its safety eyewear clients are mostly involved in light
manufacturing.
Northeast works with
100 ECPs in its coverage area, and the safety client mix is] about 70 percent
small-to-medium companies, and 30 percent medium-to-large companies. Some of the
larger companies use more than one ECP to create more convenient dispensing for
workers that are spread out
geographically.
SRx accounts for about
five percent of the company's total ophthalmic business. "We do about 200 SRx
jobs a week. SRx has grown slightly over the past couple of years as people
become aware of it and prescriptions become more complicated," Cross
said.
"A lot of the safety jobs were
for guys in small shops," he said. "They might have gone to their local ECP who
did their regular eyewear. Our customers approached clients and we were able to
live up to their promises [of quicker job turnarounds]. We inventoried
particular frames for particular clients. We were competing with safety vision
vans, but our ECPs were able to promise safety eyewear produced in half the time
the vans could."
Cross told that
Northeast Lens also keeps a large stock of safety frames,
and
"we limited what we put on the price
list. Special orders are still possible, if they wanted something not on that
list, though," adding that turnaround "was usually seamless whether it was in
stock or not."
Northeast Lens assists
ECPs with sample kits, catalogs, and price lists, and offers discounts on safety
eyewear so the ECPs' clients will be encouraged to buy their dress eyewear at
the same dispensary. "Referrals come with SRx, so that's a major benefit," he
noted. The lab also includes safety eyewear in its promotional mailings twice
annually, and the safety division is always included in its
catalog.
Volume Number:
19:08 Issue: 7/18/2005
Posted: Mon - July 18, 2005 at 03:38 PM