New day dawning

Breaking into a market dominated by multi-national giants is never easy. Add to that scenario perhaps the biggest shake up the market has seen and things could get tricky. This hasn't been the case for Sauflon, however, which has used the recent Section 60 changes to the contact lens market to its advantage.

Sauflon has spent the past 20 years carving out its niche of exclusively supplying to eye care professionals. This has been through the provision of solutions and contact lens and solution bundles fulfilled on behalf of the optician. In recent years, the company has added monthly contact lenses from third-party manufacturers to its offering.

Earlier this year, the company unveiled its multi-million pound investment in a state-of-the-art contact lens manufacturing plant, near Fareham in Hampshire, right on the doorstep of the major UK suppliers. This is a plant capable of making 200 million lenses a year in a range of modalities.

The first products to roll off the production lines were monthly replacement spherical and aspheric hydrogel lenses incorporating Sauflon's own patented Advanced Edge Technology.

NEW PRODUCT, NEW DAY
The company really hit the headlines at this April's Optrafair where it unveiled its NewDay daily disposable lens. As UK sales director Bradley Wells explains: 'We were rushed off our feet for all three days and even had customers queuing up to learn more about NewDay.'

Wells adds Sauflon knew that the UK market was crying out for a high quality daily disposable contact lens that would also help opticians retain their business, but the response was overwhelming.

At any other time, and in any other market conditions, the introduction of the Sauflon daily disposable lens would have appealed to some sections of the profession and gone head to head with the other products on the market. But circumstances have brought a new focus to Sauflon's approach to the market, courtesy of the situation the profession finds itself in.

Most notable of these is the Section 60 changes which have opened up the supply of contact lenses and seen the high profile entry into the market by Tesco and others (see page 12). This has led to widespread speculation that optical practices will be left prescribing products to patients who then go on to purchase their products from the internet or a retail supplier.

Sauflon sees the threat posed by the supermarkets to be much greater than that from the internet. Tesco, Boots and Asda all have pharmacies and opticians which could be potential aftercare providers, he adds. Players such as Tesco could promote their offering through 900 stores and marketing their customer base. Another big difference, says Wells, is the proactive approach and the number of opportunities a retailer like Tesco has to approach potential customers.