Big changes are under way at Anglo Italian following the takeover of the Suffolk lens supplier. Optician asks managing director Bob Forgan what the future for the firm holds.
The sleepy Suffolk town of Haverhill is a long way from Ensenada in Mexico, but if Bob Forgan has anything to do with it, the two will become inextricably linked.
Most opticians view Anglo Italian as a commodity supplier of basic lenses but, since buying the firm a year ago, Forgan has been hard at work updating its product portfolio.
‘AI was set up in 1987, originally in Bishops Stortford as a cooperative venture between an English individual and an Italian company, hence the name. My understanding is that it was set up to satisfy a demand from Specsavers but quickly moved to supply others,’ says Forgan.
Change of direction
The move to larger premises at Haverhill in 1989 gave the firm more space to house lenses for its expanding customer base and to make room for a lab – although unfortunately the laboratory never materialised.
Over the next few years its direction and ownership were to change. ‘During that period AI became part of Galileo which had strong links with Signet Armorlite Group and Crossbows Optical in Ireland. It became part of SA Group around 2000,’ says Forgan.
By the mid-90s, two-thirds of Anglo’s business was with Specsavers, and AI was supplying in excess of two million lenses a year. But change was on the horizon. The Specsavers’ business was lost as a new supplier was created to service its needs. In separate moves, a frame operation was added along with a safety eyewear business. AI then settled down under SA ownership.
Anglo Italian came to Forgan’s attention about a year ago. ‘I heard through a lab owner that SA was looking to do something with the business. From the outset I thought there was something with a solid foundation that could be built on. This was confirmed when I went along to the business when I saw the strength of the customer base and how poor the lens offering was in terms of the product mix,’ Forgan says. ‘What we saw was a well run facility with a good widespread customer base. No one customer was more than about 8 per cent of the turnover. It had about 400 active accounts, 300 practices and 100 labs.’
Forgan put the poor product mix down to company politics and the conflict between AI and what its parent, SA, did in Gloucester. ‘In essence, 12 months ago AI was a supplier of standard index, CR39 lenses. They were doing nothing in regards to polycarbonate, nothing with regard to high-index products, they were doing a little bit of photochromic and they were doing a small amount of semi-finished product.
Product overhaul
‘The product line was limited because SA had been looking to sell other product through Gloucester,’ Forgan continues.
‘Haverhill was volume driven. The operation was a commodity supply service company. I felt there was a great opportunity being missed there. What better way of building a business than to sell more product to existing customers, as opposed to going out and finding a whole load of new customers?’
The business, he says, was ‘almost stuck in a time warp’. The industry was demanding products more complex than the CR39, such as the 1.6 and 1.74, but AI was simply not offering these, and the products it did offer were not competitively priced.
A total product overhaul was the first action Forgan took on his arrival at AI, introducing or changing 18 single products, before turning his attention to the semi-finished. He also recognised the requirement for a competitive photochromic product.
‘Each year the independent practice gets clobbered as the big multiples go out with their free photochromic offer and, to date, they have been unable to do anything about it. To start meeting that niche, we launched our Respond photochromic in response to the demand and the fact that it responded to UV and the sun,’ Forgan says.
Eyes to the east
The journey to find those products took Forgan to Korea and Japan. ‘The West has shown China how to make frames and CR39, and with their lower cost base, they have taken over.
‘For high technology you have to go further afield to Korea or Japan. The monomer for 1.74 has been very strictly controlled. There are still only four companies in Japan that can supply that,’ he says.
These, says Forgan, were the products he needed initially to bring Anglo on to a par with its competitors. The next job was communicating those changes and talking to the labs.
‘More and more the big players want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to supply labs with some products, but in the main they want to get to their customers direct. We felt no one was really looking after the [independent labs].’
The big labs, notes Forgan, develop new products, and over time the independent lab is kept out of the supply set-up. Cherry-picking a minority of labs to supply new products to was definitely not the way forward for Forgan.
‘In the past, lens companies have offered optician customers a better price than the labs. We felt it was necessary to go back to the old-fashioned way of doing things. The volume customer, the lab, should have a different pricing structure,’ he says.
Trivex – the way ahead
So, if the new products already mentioned were to bring Anglo on to a par with other suppliers, what products were going to define it?
‘One product that particularly grabbed my attention was Trivex,’ comments Forgan. ‘I felt that Trivex was very much a material of the future and if we wanted to be a bigger, growing company then Trivex was a material we should be involved in.’
He says there is a lack of focus about the way in which Trivex is promoted because it is a monomer and not just a lens product per se. ‘You have Hoya with PNX direct to practitioners, you have Younger product available through Norville and Taylor Optical, but both of those companies have other products that compete with it,’ he says.
Trivex is a product surrounded by misconceptions, he believes. Some believe it is purely a safety product only to be used in special cases, for example, in situations where chemicals are present. AI is now making a concerted effort to educate labs and practices about Trivex.
After researching the sources of the material Forgan identified an American caster. Having identified Augen, a Mexican lens firm as a potential supplier, fate played its part when Forgan literally stumbled across the Mexican company, exhibiting under another name, at Mido.
The firm had only decided to exhibit at the show as a last minute decision and it was the company’s first trip to Europe. ‘We had an immediate rapport and within two-and-a-half weeks, I had visited their headquarters and had formed a basis for an agreement,’ he says.
The Latin American company has clearly impressed Forgan. ‘It was probably the best operation I have seen in terms of cleanliness and modernity, with excellent in-house engineering design and support,’ he enthuses.
But discovering Trivex at Augen was just the start. Forgan found Augen also offered Sun Sensors Plus from Corning, a photochromic lens designed for rimless frames, that also satisfies the latest UV protection criteria. For Forgan, the ‘real icing on the cake’ was that all of Augen’s products were in aspheric or double aspheric form – a technology it originally applied to single vision and then broadened out to progressives.
Customer perceptions
Such products, Forgan says, offer a great opportunity for independent labs and practices in terms of dispensing opportunities that have real benefits for the wearer. Advanced lens designs afford practices the opportunity to provide customers with a better optical product, and by providing it through independent labs, this in turn gives the labs the opportunity to differentiate too.
‘The structure whereby the independent optician will only be able to get the product from an independent lab means that all of the independent sector is getting the benefit of it,’ says Forgan.
By providing technically superior products, and backing them up with education and support, Forgan hopes labs and practices will work together to improve their businesses and benefit their clients. ‘What we are trying to achieve is the situation where, if you have a practice that wants to dispense a nice rimless spec with a tint, then the labs might say "Have you not thought of Trivex?" It won’t be more expensive than a 1.6 or a 1.67 surfaced lens, yet it has the benefits of being thinner, lighter and if they want to tint it they can. In terms of protection there is no comparison.’
AI has moved at ‘breakneck speed’ to introduce the product – in 16 weeks it has finalised negotiations, imported the product and has now started marketing it. So one year on from buying the business what would Forgan like people’s view of AI to be? ‘I think they have seen a company that was stagnating for many years, and then they have seen a lot of activity in a short period. I would like to think that they do not see us as offering the equivalent of what others are offering at lower prices.’
Offering products at lower prices would not be difficult, he says, but then there’s nothing to stop others following suit and, ultimately, there are no great benefits. ‘You hear tales of people driving around the country, selling lenses out the back of a van. When product is available on a next day service from anyone, you have to have a difference. The only thing you can offer them is products they can’t get elsewhere that are going to have real benefit for their customers,’ he stresses. ‘In this sector the ones who are going to survive are those who don’t try to compete on price with the others. If they have good product knowledge, access to good products and provide a good service, they will succeed.’
So are practices missing a trick on lens technology?
‘Totally. Rather than sell customers the latest designer frame, if they started looking at the optical needs of customers, rather than the fashion needs, that is an area of huge opportunity to them. If patients have a lens which is lighter, flatter and offers a better visual performance, at least they’ll understand why they are choosing to pay for it, rather than heading down the road and paying £69 for two pairs.’
