Echoes of the Past: Practice fronts

The commercial nature of optometric practice today means that it’s very rare to find a front window display that doesn’t promote either the practice’s professional services or frame collections.

As an article in the September 12 edition of Optician from 1975 shows, some practice fronts were quite different at the time, and there was much discussion about the role they played.

The Leicestershire and Rutland Ophthalmic Opticians’ Professional Advancement Fund had begun a movement to get window displays abolished in opticians’ practices. Started 10 years prior to the issue, the fund was created by a group of local opticians with the intention of redressing a trend for not putting the onus on the professional services side of the business.