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Since being established in 1972, Lentoid has employed as many as 85 people at any one time at its extensive premises in Otley, Yorkshire. The current staff levels are limited to a dozen or so, reflecting the company's modern focus on the more specialist end of the lens market while also providing a strong glazing service.
'This is the 39th year that we have been in operation,' says Ian Jackson, co-founder and co-owner of Lentoid with John Bolton. Three of us started the company the other two were engineers by trade whereas I was from an accountancy background. The three of us met while working at an optics-related firm in Bradford. When we were offered the opportunity to put some money into the firm, we thought if we were going to do something like that maybe it would be better to go on our own.'
Jackson explains that when they first set up Lentoid none of them had actually made a lens. 'The first thing we did was buy a copy of British Standards so we knew which tolerances we had to work to. From an engineering point-of-view we knew the procedures but had no practical experience as such of making an actual lens. We started over the other side of Otley and moved to these premises with the plastics side of the business before eventually situating the glass operation and everything else here too.'
Today a big part of what Lentoid does is the supplying lenses for high prescriptions and other complex jobs that are not typically done elsewhere - although the lab also turns over regular jobs to a high standard.
'We take pride in not only getting difficult jobs done but getting them done quickly,' notes Jackson. 'Speed of service is particularly significant in the treatment of very young children as some of the youngest recipients of our spectacles may be as little as six weeks old.'
Hospital work
Jackson explains that the first time that Lentoid got involved with working with hospitals was after receiving several phone calls from practices asking for +40 lenses to be made up. 'We were wondering why everyone was asking for the same thing and it turned out that one of the children's eye hospitals had a baby that was definitely going to go blind if they could not get the muscles working. So we made the lenses - John Bolton personally did the work and Vertex made a one-off frame and the baby's eyesight was saved.'
'It went from there really David Sprittles, who was senior dispensing optician at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, found out that we were prepared to have a go at anything and when word spread, other hospitals got in touch too with stuff people can't do that we will have a go at. We also made all sorts of lenses for use in science too.'
A recent accomplishment for the Lentoid team was the construction of a hyperocular Franklin split lens with a distance power of X6 and a reading power of X12, although Jack Jones, senior works engineer responsible for its construction plays, down the difficulty of making it.
'With jobs like that it is just a case of looking at it as an engineering problem - how to fit A into B,' he explains. 'There can be a lot of unnecessary mystique in the optical industry, you just need to cut through that and get the job done. We have modified all the machines here to work to wider ranges and that is the most difficult thing really,' says Jones.
'We've got over 30 years' worth of tooling on the tool racks and that is very handy when you are doing higher powers as the correct tool is usually already there,' adds specialist lens adviser Andrew Myers. 'Also for requests like a bifocal, say -20 and +6, you have to be realistic as to the size of the lens that can be constructed and what frames can go with it. We do the glazing too and a practical solution is the only way to get tough jobs done.'
The willingness to make modifications is also applied in the Lentoid office, where the computers run specially programmed applications and databases to allow the high powers that make up much of the work to be input.
Glazing responsibility
Lentoid mainly works for independent practices but also does the difficult jobs for many multiples. 'The likes of Specsavers and Vision Express are geared up to dealing with 90 per cent of the market and don't want to handle the difficult 10 per cent, so they send it to us,' says Jackson. 'We work with practices all the way from Scotland to the south coast. I think we offer big benefits to optical practices as they can send us any job and know we will get it done one way or the other. Another upside for them is that because we do the glazing too it means that making the lenses actually work in a frame is our responsibility.'
Jackson notes the changes in the wider optical industry that have led to changes at Lentoid. 'We used to do as many as 200 pairs of glass lenses as well as 500 in plastic each day. These days it is more like 25 glass on a good day and we have considered wrapping that side of the operation up, but as there aren't necessarily any labs that can take over the glass business we keep going.
'Of course you've got to make money but we get a lot of satisfaction of from helping people too.'