‘Are you going to call the article: Cantor the first 60 years?’ jokes David Cantor, chairman of the Brackley-based contact lens maker. He quickly points out he is 81 years old with characteristic humour that belies a steely business resolve.
The joke underlines the fact that while his name is over the door there is much more to Cantor Barnard than one man, as the 52-strong team and the long list of specialities and skills testifies. There is also much more to Cantor Barnard’s contact lens capabilities than its high profile work in films and TV.
The journey Cantor started 60 years ago to arrive at this point lends more to chance than design, as he explains: ‘There was an advert in the London Evening Standard, which said contact lens technicians required, full training given, £8 a week. I’d left home, I was about 18, I had rent to pay on a room in North London, I had an Austin 7 to run and beer to buy.’ That led to him joining John de Carle’s company in 1961.
‘That was purely PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate) and not even clinical quality, but John de Carle had a clinic, called the Mayfair Contact Lens Clinic. It was funded by Wessley Jessen but it wasn’t doing terribly well. I was there for about a year or so but because it was on the rocks I learned everything, I got shuffled round very quickly,’ he says.
Not only was Cantor learning everything about the business, from lathing lenses through to selling them, he also lived with his colleagues. ‘One of the gang was the chap who did the contact lens fitting for John, so I learned optics in the pub with him. I used to sort out the practitioners with what they wanted and what we made.’
Cantor says that, back in the day, opticians did not often provide much information, perhaps an Rx and some keratometer readings: ‘We had to work it out from there.’ In the early days, the big drawback was getting the patients to build up tolerance. ‘Many of the wearers were girls. They got their man and stopped wearing the damn things,’ he recalls in the vernacular of the day.
‘Typically, the patients would wear the lens for a couple of hours a day and then build up wear, so it took about three weeks to get to all day wear because it was a rigid lens,’ he adds. Patients were given regimens to follow and those failing risked corneal abrasions.
‘It was literally acrylic Perspex. You bought an eight by four [feet] sheet from ICI, you took it to a company in Hoddesdon and they trepanned it into buttons. You jammed the sheet in the car or tied it on the roof and came back with a bag of buttons.’
Although the contact lens business was still emerging, Cantor estimates there were probably about 300 people fitting contact lenses. Some of the laboratories were running training courses to supplement what was happening in the universities, ‘which wasn’t an awful lot’, he adds.
While some early lathes were coming out of the US, lathes designed for different industries were also being adapted for cutting contact lenses.
New materials
Having learned about the trade, a 21-year-old David Cantor founded the Cantor contact lens business in 1964 and, as the contact lens market grew, so did the business. This was driven by advances in materials as rigid gas permeable (RGP)materials started replacing ordinary PMMA, he says. The PMMA being used was not clinical grade until new materials, from companies such as Menicon, started to appear.
‘We were able to get hold of some of the early RGP materials, which was exciting, and then we got hold of some of the soft materials. That was the input of Leslie Silver. It was very early days and a bit “gung-ho”,’ says Cantor.
The equipment was not very accurate, so product often came out at different sizes or with a slight pink tinge. He says these often ended up in a bucket so pairs could be matched up together more easily.
Around 1966-67, the development of the Witcherle soft contact lens material emerged. This technology was bought up by the US and licensed to Bausch + Lomb. From that point, soft lens materials became more widely available. Other firms then got into soft materials and the business developed further. ‘If it wasn’t for that, we would have been purely RGP,’ concludes Cantor.
The Cantor & Silver Partnership was formed in 1974 with Leslie Silver and, shortly after, another big milestone for the business was passed as it relocated to Brackley in Northamptonshire.
‘It was difficult getting staff in London, if they stayed for three weeks, we thought they were long-term employees.’ He chose Northamptonshire as he knew the area. ‘We advertised for staff, got 40 replies and we could have taken them all on.’
Brackley started forming back surfaces, while the London lab was gradually phased out and moved too. Silver had brought a wealth of knowledge and experience of the optical business to the partnership. ‘He made for quite a few people in London and was technically very good. Our original deal was: “You make ’em and I’ll sell ’em” and that’s how it stayed.’
By the late 1980s, contact lens moulding at scale was in full swing among the multinationals and the move from monthlies to dailies had become established, something that Cantor is philosophical about. Dailies are the best way to wear lenses, he says, ‘No solutions, no contamination, no case, no messing about; just wear them and chuck them.’
Where Cantor & Silver fitted into this world was in the areas ignored by the mass manufacturers. ‘The big guys made a limited range,’ he says, as the cost of building moulds for all powers didn’t make sense to them. ‘Anything over minus six was ours.’
Over time, that changed and Cantor found itself diversifying into more and more specialist areas. Through the 1980s and 1990s the business bought other smaller specialists, such as CLM and Focus Contact Lenses, to build its portfolio of specialisms.
In 2000, the Cantor & Silver partnership bought Nissel and changed the name of the business to Cantor and Nissel to recognise Nissel’s product range.
When asked how more opticians can be persuaded to get into specialist contact lens fitting, Cantor is characteristically realistic. ‘I don’t think you can buck market trends,’ he says. Back when he started, old style brass plaque practices were testing 20 people a week and dispensing to 12 of them and they had more time. Today, he says, people paying high street rents want turnover and sight tests every 15 or 20 minutes.’
Where Cantor does see a missed opportunity is that many practitioners have given up on the follow up. He says opticians do not sell a complete package with aftercare, replacement prices and a repeat exam, they just let the customer go.
Cantor's offices in Brackley
Future directions
So, what does Cantor’s future look like if the specialist business is not going to suddenly mushroom?
He says the 50% of Cantor’s work coming through hospitals will remain and there are still enough specialist contact lens practices to sustain the business healthily. ‘I think the specialist side is what it is. If someone has an eye condition that needs a specialist contact lens, it comes our way – and it’s growing.’
He would like the universities to do more contact lens training, but a bigger issue has been the lack of business training. The big changes in the market have been driven by optometrists becoming employees rather than business owners, he concludes.
While Cantor would like more practitioners to be involved in specialist lenses to transform the market, it is not something he and Garth Barnard, managing director, fear. Barnard uses a restaurant analogy and says he does not understand why someone would train to a Michelin star standard and then work in a fast-food outlet. ‘I would want to put my spin on it, make it fancy and earn lots of money. We can push that, but they have got to want to do it,’ he says.
For the moment, the team is busy and happy to take pride in doing a professional job for its customers. ‘We don’t want to take over the world and we are busy enough,’ says Cantor.
The business has been approached in the past to go with a big manufacturer, but he says that’s not for him. ‘I would rather paddle my own canoe. We own the premises, we own the machinery, we can do it our way and it suits us. It’s almost a lifestyle situation.’
The family ethos in the business is highlighted by Cantor’s attitude towards being acquired and the respect he shows to his colleagues. He says in the event of being offered a stupid amount of money for the business, he would ask his fellow directors if they would be interested and not just sell it. ‘I’ve got no intention of selling and when I see companies that have been taken over they are not always happy. It’s not the same.’
Independent thinking
That independent stance has a positive effect on the business. ‘I think they [independent practices] drift to us because we are independent, and they don’t always like the big company approach because they don’t get what they want.
‘If they come here, they probably speak to the same person. If it’s a big multiple and you just get shuffled around, it’s not so good. We are personal. We look after the independents.’ He says Cantor customers will phone and ask for an individual and that matters.
When asked what the 21-year-old David Cantor might think of celebrating 60 years in business, he refuses to indulge in any nostalgia. ‘I’ve always managed to grow it; I’ve always managed to keep it together. There have been some tough times,’ he says, pointing in recent years to Brexit and emerging from the Covid lockdowns as a more efficient company than it went in.
‘The European medical devices regulation has also been a trial with a total lack of understanding from the Europeans. The notified bodies did not know how to administer it and we had to interpret it. We were the first contact lens company to get the approvals for all the European countries,’ he adds.
For the future, Cantor says European constraints could make the introduction of new materials for the wider contact lens business tricky, but myopia control offers a great opportunity. He feels his business is well placed. Cantor’s patients have an older profile, so the ageing population works to its advantage. The business is looking at a new orthokeratology product and a new keratoconus lens so it is evolving as the market changes.
Alongside the hospital products, specialist lenses, prosthetics and TV and film work, Cantor says there is an enduring market for reusable lenses.
(L-R) Cillian Murphy wearing a cosmetic lens for Peaky Blinders; Puma bespoke lenses worn by sprinter Linford Christie
That type of lens has a coverage of powers and cylinders not catered for by others. That niche is there as are markets that like a lens that lasts. ‘That market still exists, perhaps it shouldn’t but it does.’
That offers a great story on sustainability over disposables says Barnard. ‘We are all very conscious about having a plastic bag when we go shopping, but that hasn’t mapped across to the 730 daily contact lenses a year you’d be wearing, compared to just two of ours. People haven’t cottoned on for some reason.’ Add in the packaging and blister packs and the wastage is even higher.
‘With us you have two lenses and two glass vials, which are recyclable. It’s plastic at the end of the day and you are throwing away a lot of it when you needn’t.’
Summing up the ethos of the business, Cantor recalls the experience of the Morgan sportscar company. Sir John Harvey Jones was called in to give them a plan to become a bigger business, but that just wasn’t their ethos.
‘What they ended up doing was making one more car a week. They still have a two-year waiting list, they still make a profit and I think that is a sound philosophy. We don’t want to take over the world and I don’t want anyone else taking us over,’ he says.
Garth Barnard, Cantor Barnard managing director
‘When I joined Cantor in 1987, people said don’t get too comfortable because moulded lenses are going to put you out of business in five years,’ says Garth Barnard, managing director, ‘but we are still here.’
During that time, Cantor has not just survived but thrived, adding torics, vet lenses, TV and film work and a whole host of specialist contact lenses in soft and hard materials. ‘We’re still in the market for larger, smaller, steeper, flatter, higher, lower and we can make the run of the mill stuff, but it’s a yearly lens.’
Barnard says what Cantor does is concentrate on its core customer. ‘We have never really focused on the patient; we have only ever focused on our customers: the opticians. The times we can speak to them are at the BCLA conference, HSOC (Hospital and Specialty Optometrists Conference) and working with ABDO. That’s generally how we do it,’ he says.
‘Talking about the quality and complexity of what Cantor Barnard does in Brackley, showing photographs and the like is all well and good, but they [opticians] really need to come here. They have got to come and have a look at how we do it and they will be absolutely blown away.
‘It’s very niche but we are still big for what we do. We have 52 people here and technology also plays a big role. We used to have 52 lathes, but the technology has come on so far we only need 11 now.’
While the business can cater for pretty much ‘all the conditions you can think of’. He adds: ‘We have to be careful; we can’t say “that lens is for that condition”, we cannot make those claims under MDR (Medical Devices Regulation).’
What he returns to is what Cantor Barnard does, which is manufacture speciality contact lenses and offer a professional bespoke service to optical professionals. He highlights the contrast to mass manufacture of commodity contact lenses carried out by the big multinationals and the time and effort that goes into a Cantor Barnard lens.
‘The basic manufacture of contact lenses is incredibly difficult and tricky and is time consuming. The same care is lavished on a minus two for Joe Bloggs who needs a bit of correction as for bespoke painted lens for TV and film,’ he says.
‘We are looking at three-and-a-half days,’ says Barnard. ‘Every lens has to go through that, whether it’s a minus two or a keratoconic design or for a film, it all has to be done first. For the film side, painting a lens could take anything between one and six hours per lens. It’s very labour intensive.’
When challenged that all that sounds complicated and expensive, Barnard agrees. It is because it is a handmade product, he says.
This does not mean wearers of Cantor lenses are all coming through the hospital route. Where Cantor really comes into its own is offering lenses that sit outside the norm, so fit patients who may currently be told they are not suitable for contact lenses.
Barnard says that whenever he meets people at functions, he will invariably come across people wearing spectacles. When the talk turns to contact lenses, they will say: ‘“I would wear contact lenses but they don’t make them for my eyes.” I hear that all the time.
‘When you drill down into it, it’s generally a cylinder issue. That’s bread and butter to us. We make lenses to ±65, our steepest base curve is 3.1 and our flattest is 27mm. We make lens diameters from 3mm right up to 60mm,’ he says.
The latter refers to bandage lenses for animals as varied as a shire horse, lions and an elephant. Lenses are made in a range of four soft and a dozen RGP materials, offering anything a patient may need, human or animal.
Typical customers
You could split our customers 50/50 with half being hospitals and the other half being old school, independent opticians, says Barnard.
‘We do not sell online, and we won’t sell to anyone who does sell online. We sell to the optician to ensure that the optician keeps the patient,’ he says. ‘We don’t want that patient to be able to go home and order another 20 pairs on the internet. That is what we specialise in, and we will always do that.’
The way Cantor is building that business is both through fitting courses and by helping practices build confidence. ‘They need to know that they can pick up the phone and confidently order what they need, and we are trying to make it as easy as possible for them.
‘We can do everything the big boys can do and everything they can’t do.’
The Process
Production manager Michaela Jones
Brackley has a long history as a centre for excellence, ranging from wool and silk, to Formula 1 and even medieval jousting. Today, this pretty Northamptonshire collection of stone cottages can also boast to be the centre of the UK’s specialist contact lens manufacture, as the home to Cantor Barnard.
Cantor sits in the heart of the village in a two-storey building. Manufacturing is on the ground floor with support services above. Within this unassuming site lies the expertise to make any specialist lens likely to be prescribed, along with a specialist area that makes lenses for TV and film.
The kinds of conditions that might be covered are bespoke products to help patients with conditions such as albinism, amblyopia, chemical burns, corneal scarring, diplopia, esophoria, keratoconus and strabismus.
Cantor also makes Chromagen lenses, which are used for colour blindness, dyslexia, dyspraxia and other learning difficulties. The company’s website boasts a host of lens designs and soft and hard materials to choose from. All the lenses are manufactured on site and TV and film lenses are hand painted by contact lens artists.
The process starts as the orders come in with the parameters, tints and Rx provided by the practice clients. Orders may be run through Simulens software to interpret the data provided and clients may well phone and have a conversation with one of the technical team to discuss the final design and material choice, if required.
The button material is then selected and the bar-coded data trayed with the buttons to start their journey around the lab. Each is treated as an individual job with 100% quality checking as it travels through the various stages.
Manufacturing is split into lathing, rear, and front surface, tints and hand-painting areas, plus a hydrating and sterilisation area.
With the data installed and checked, the button is loaded into the lathe for the back surface cut, which takes around three minutes, explains production manager Michaela Jones. Once cut, it is checked and measured for thickness before being loaded onto a brass chuck with beeswax for the front surface cut.
If necessary, the lens is then polished and can be etched with toric or other marking requested by the client. While the same machinery, albeit with different tooling, can be used for all lenses, Jones says an effort is made to keep hard and soft products separate to increase efficiency and maximise quality.
Once the desired shape is achieved, a dip in an ether-filled ultrasonic bath de-blocks the lens, which undergoes further visual, thickness and power checks. ‘We have to ensure full traceability throughout,’ says Jones. At this point, the RGPs go for cleaning and packaging, while the soft lenses head for hydration, cleaning and sterilisation.
In addition to visual correction and power, some lenses also require colour tinting or paint work. Tinting and prosthetics is a high-profile part of Cantor Barnard’s work, and it regularly gets media coverage for contact lenses it has made for TV and film.
Lenses are coloured using a vast array of colour swatches. Tints may be required for a range of visual and aesthetic reasons, so colour matches may be requested by clients from photographs or from a reference colour. ‘We have had people send in a piece of t-shirt and asked us to match that,’ adds Jones.
Each lens pattern or colour is built up of plates in layers to replicate matches for limbal rings, iris patterns and pupils. Set-up times for each layer could be as long as seven hours, plus another hour to stamp the colour onto the lens. ‘We start at the back and build up to the pupil,’ says Jones.
Hand painting of lenses for franchises such as Game of Thrones and Guardians of the Galaxy is a hugely skilled role. Artists are asked to replicate or interpret designs, which again require hours of painstaking work.
