Irish company Scope was founded in 2009 by brothers John and Tom Freyne, but the story behind the family run business dates to 1935 when their grandfather, Jack Freyne, opened a pharmacy in Clondalkin, a town in the Dublin suburbs. ‘Grandad was a very entrepreneurial man,’ says Tom Freyne, chief executive officer at Scope. ‘He actually went to Berlin in 1947 in order to formulate his own pharmaceutical products and work with manufacturing partners there before bringing them back to sell in Ireland and the UK.’
A generation on, Freyne’s father, Garrett, combined running the pharmacy with veterinary work and expanded the business into eye care via a partnership with German company Dr Mann Pharma. ‘I used to work in the pharmacy, started off as a security guard and then worked my way up to be a pharmacy assistant,’ says Freyne. ‘Serving customers, getting to know the business, getting to know the different drugs. I got a real appetite for the healthcare space. John and I were learning a lot about the dry eye segment, how big a market it was, how big an opportunity it was, and that it was something that we could get into if the opportunity arose.’
In his formative years, Freyne had a spell as a jockey before doing an undergraduate business degree and then a Masters in
marketing. He then worked in various marketing, sales and product manager jobs before forming Scope with his brother in 2009.
‘We knew that Dad’s partnership with Dr Mann Pharma was not going to be extended,’ says Freyne. ‘So, around 2007 and 2008, we started to look for products that we could licence. We came across another German company in the dry eye space, Ursapharm, and things escalated rapidly from there. We signed a long-term partnership, and in September 2009 we launched Scope.’
The company started out in a small office above the family pharmacy, with two sales reps and an office manager. ‘We went about building the Hylo and Hycosan brands,’ he says. ‘John and I, in the early days, did four days a week in the UK. We would fly over on a Monday morning, then sell for four days before flying back on a Thursday night. Friday was our administrative day.’
Freyne notes that in 2009, optometry was just beginning to recognise the opportunities presented by dry eye. ‘It definitely has proven a good time to get into a growing market,’ he says. ‘In the early days we found opticians were very slow to jump onto the opportunity presented by patients being willing to come back to buy dry eye treatments from practices again and again. I think companies like ours have been very important in driving the message forward.’
Today, Scope employs 145 people across Ireland and the UK, and another 40 in the US, into which Scope has been rapidly expanding since 2019. Along the way the company headquarters have migrated to larger premises within the wider Dublin area and, over time, Scope’s product range has expanded too.
Products to the fore
‘The biggest area for us is ocular surface disease, which includes dry eye, meibomian gland dysfunction and blepharitis,’ says Freyne. ‘Within that we have heat, which is the Optase Moist Heat Mask. We have cleanse, which is our different options for blepharitis. These include the Optase TTO Blephawipe, our Optase TTO Eye Lid Cleansing Gel, and you’ve also got Optase Protect, which is a hypochlorous acid spray and is another way of managing blepharitis.
‘Then you go to hydrate, which is another important part of our regime, and that’s where you have the Hycosan lubricants and the Optase Comfort Dry Eye Spray. Those two and other products are all about the lubrication of the tear film. Outside of that we have a product for allergies, called Optase Allergy. We have supplements including Actase Lutein ZA and an Omega-3 supplement as well. We also have some prescription products; a couple of glaucoma medications that we’ve launched preservative-free, as are all our products.’
Freyne notes that the company has recently executed a project to bring the brand design of its Hycosan and Optase product groups together in terms of their look and feel. ‘I think we’ve done a really nice job with this,’ says Freyne. ‘It helps eye care professionals (ECPs) to understand the importance of the heat, cleanse and hydrate regime, and brings the two brands much closer together so people know they’re from the same stable. The goal, long term, is to be a partner to ECPs across multiple eye care conditions. We are investing massively in our product pipeline, and ultimately, we want to offer something unique in almost every eye care category.’
Staying on the subject of existing products, Freyne feels Hycosan Intense, newly launched this year, has pushed the envelope in terms of performance. ‘Hycosan Intense is one of our best products yet,’ says Freyne. ‘The product benefits from high molecular weight hyaluronic acid and Ectoin as the osmoprotectant. We believe that formulation of those two ingredients together is outstanding. The results so far with opticians have been very impressive. So, we really believe, as strong as the Hycosan brand is already, that this product has the potential to be absolutely huge.’
Motivated to continue offering the best products, Scope is increasingly focused on the development of innovative technologies.
‘Right now, our business is based 50% on technology that’s been developed by other companies and 50% on technology that’s been developed by Scope,’ says Freyne. ‘We’re looking to grow and grow that second category. To give you some insight into our commitment in this area, we have a head of research and development, we have a head of ideation and discovery, and we have a head of business development and licensing. So, when it comes to long-term innovation and things that we’re trying to develop ourselves, we’re really investing in this area.
‘Our manufacturing partner, Ursapharm, might come to us and say they have a new Hycosan or Hylo product for us to consider. And that’s brilliant; the technology is already built. But then, for example, within Optase Life, which is a sub-brand of Optase that we’re about to launch, we have a make-up remover for sensitive eyes and dry eyes. That’s a formulation that we’ve developed ourselves and can bring to international markets because it’s our technology. I’m delighted that, over the last few years, we’ve been able to more and more have it be Scope technology that can be protected and brought to the work.’
The challenge of combating ocular surface disease in a holistic way requires a partnership between suppliers like Scope and practices. So, does Scope look to partner with a particular type of practice? ‘We try and work with anyone,’ says Freyne. ‘Obviously some practices are better positioned than others but ultimately everyone in optometry can get into dry eye management. It can start at a basic level and move to a more advanced level. I think our portfolio allows you to do that.’
To help more practices offer services, Freyne says the company spends a huge amount of time on educating ECPs about dry eye and other conditions. ‘We have a whole medical team, and we have thousands of optometrists taking our CPD modules each year. As a dry eye expert partner, we are always talking about dry eye, how to diagnose it, how to manage it effectively, and looking at other conditions as well. This is so that those practices can better educate the patients about the condition and how to manage it. We have experts who will travel to practices to do very specific dry eye training for all practice staff. We do a huge amount of educational activity before we get to our products.’
A sustainable future
Another area of focus for Scope is sustainability. ‘We’ve brought in a partner company, Earthshine, that specialises in supporting circular and sustainability transformations in business,’ says Freyne. ‘They are helping us look across our whole value chain and see what improvements we can make as a business in the long-term for our brands, for our customers, and for our efficiencies.’
Freyne names Scope’s Optase TTO Blephawipe as the first biodegradable product of its type to hit the market and notes that the company has more innovation involving coming to products that will be better overall for the environment. ‘We are now a mid-sized company, and we know we have a big role to play on sustainability,’ says Freyne. ‘We are putting a very sophisticated plan in place that will see our metrics improve in things like carbon emissions over the next 10 years. It is something that’s really important to us.
‘We have a sustainability lead and corporate social responsibility manager. But all the company’s departments are fully bought into the sustainability agenda and every head of department at Scope has sustainability front and centre for their big project initiatives. We’ve seen it take effect already in the development of new products and we’re also working with manufacturing partners to ensure they are meeting on our criteria for sustainability.’
By the end of the conversation, there’s a sense that, despite the rapid growth of Scope since its inception in 2009, in some ways the company is just getting going. Freyne’s enthusiasm for leveraging Scope’s increased resources and reach to the benefit of its practice partners is infectious and it will be interesting to follow in the coming years.
