In an act of rebellion against the ‘one size fits all’ mantra, mark’ennovy has established itself as a successful bespoke contact lens manufacturer making millions of pounds profit each year.
Its headquarters in Madrid mean the company has a market presence right across Europe, with its growth in the Italian market reaching nearly 100% this year. In December 2016, the company moved all manufacturing units to its Spanish capital headquarters, a move which seems to have boosted the company’s profile.
mark’ennovy prides itself on its ability to cater for complex prescriptions and catching the windfall on those who have given up on standard fit contact lenses. It creates ‘made-to-measure’ individually manufactured toric and multifocal contact lenses in a broad range of parameters and materials and sells them exclusively through eye care professionals. In a rare move at a time where business is driven by the internet, the brand refuses to sell it products online.
Group marketing director Chris Carter says: ‘The internet is a real problem. We believe that issues of eye health should only be treated by an eye care professional, so that’s why we don’t sell online and never produce consumer facing promotions.
‘What we do here would be economically impossible for the big guys. We don’t carry any stock so we can provide whatever is asked for us. We go from -30 to +30, with cylinders of 30-4 and an axis of 180-18. Vision evolves and it’s these small changes which make a huge difference.’
All orders are therefore taken through the company’s customer care unit, where talented multi-lingual speakers sit ready to take on emails and calls from wherever its customers may be based. Most of the employees answering the calls are trained optical professionals, meaning they can offer advice based on their own practical knowledge of contact lens fitting.
‘We have professionals helping professionals which is really helpful to our customers, says customer care director Esther Gimenez. They seem to appreciate that the advice they are given is a peer discussion rather than a sales call.
‘Our main goal is for our customers and patients to receive the best contact lens for them, it’s important that the first experience is as good as possible. If you get an uncomfortable lens then the patient won’t try another one, so we try to match this up as best as possible.’
Lens journey
Time is of the essence at mark’ennovy, given that once an order is placed, it arrives in the lab within 15 minutes. From the point of the order, the lenses take 3-5 working days regardless of where the customer places the order from, an impressive feat for a company which doesn’t class itself as a large contact lens manufacturer. For urgent cases, customers have the option to pay extra for the mark’ennovy premium service, where lenses can be manufactured, shipped and arrive at a practice within 24 hours. In order to keep up with the bold promises, the lab is open for 24 hours a day, five days a week.
To ensure quick dispatch of orders the lab is open 24 hours a day five days a week
Just a few months ago, the lab underwent a makeover, installing a new fleet of robots developed within the company to increase efficiency and accuracy. Given Madrid’s hot summer weather, it is imperative that the lab has a controlled climate and humidity does not exceed 40%. Head of logistics Julen Uribetxebarria says: ‘It would be a disaster if the temperature controls broke, with our materials having a high level of water content, they would all start expanding and would be ruined. Every part of the lab is watched very closely.’
The lathing process is performed by advanced Optoform manometric lathe technology to ensure the parameters of each lathe are true to the measurements of the patient’s eye. Quality is of the upmost importance and therefore lathes are checked and measured every four hours.
Like all contact lens manufacturing, precision is key, and therefore the non-hydrated disks or ‘buttons’ are shaped using diamonds. The machines are fitted with three different diamonds to cut the parts of the lens, using a rough cut to start, a smaller finish cut and then a precise cut. After every 2,000 cuts, the diamonds are changed to maintain this high quality precision. Lenses are then hydrated in saline solutions of 7.20 Ph or 8.50 Ph for three hours, before undergoing quality testing with a sample size of 20%.
Lenses are hydrated in saline solutions for three hours
mark’ennovy takes pride in the fact it controls the complete contact lens journey and can therefore monitor the product’s quality at every stage. In order to accomplish this, it acquired raw materials company Vista Optics in 2010, a company originally used by the brand to develop polymers for its Saphir line of high water content silicone hydrogel contact lenses.
The philosophy behind the brand
What becomes abundantly clear throughout the visit is that the mark’ennovy employees are extremely passionate about the lenses they produce. R&D new products and clinical trials director Mercedes Burgos Martínez says: ‘I love this job, I’ve been here for 15 years, it’s been my longest relationship. I like the research side of things as it means so much to the customer. We are trying to improve the patient’s quality of life and in a lot of cases we do that and it’s brilliant.’
And it’s this idea of improving the patient experience which drives the manufacturing process. ‘I remember the first time I put contact lenses on when I was 14 and I was amazed, the experience gave me goosebumps. I felt like it was recovering my vision and I remember that when I’m fitting patients,’ she says.
One of a new fleet of robots installed to improve precisions
When pressed on the company’s current commitments to waste management and reducing its carbon footprint, Uribetxebarria is guarded. He says: ‘Of course we manage to recycle and we do our best, but we do have waste material from the lathing process which at the moment we haven’t found a way to recycle. We are not focusing on it at the moment but we are always open to new ideas.’
As the launch of the new robots was a success, the team is now working on new technology to improve the quality control system. With the contact lens industry progressing at such a fast pace, the company is now investing more into myopia control as well as pushing its blue light filter lenses.
Head of finance Stefano Larosa is excited about the company’s future: ‘We have a fantastic product but the company has got a lot of room to grow. At the moment we re-invest our net sales, which is a lot of money to put in. Our priorities are currently on improving our materials and products but also how we can improve our production footprint. I think we are ahead of the rest of the industry in terms of lathing, but we have the potential to produce more.’
As the brand expands into America and the Middle East in the near future, there will have to come a point where the small but mighty Spanish base will be forced to consider an extensive expansion at home or more facilities dotted across the globe. For now though, mark’ennovy seems more than happy to carry on delivering high quality bespoke contact lenses to a wide reaching customer base, all of course in quick-fire time.