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What it did was build a website that offered its 58 per cent and 72 per cent water content daily disposable lenses as direct replacements for other companies' brands at a price of just £12.99 for 36 lenses. It also offered to pay a rebate to its independent practice clients if their customers chose to buy online.
Biggest decision ever
'The big fear for us was that all of our practice customers would walk. It was a big decision for us last year, about as big a business decision as I have ever taken,' says daysoft chairman Ron Hamilton. But he needn't have worried. In its first year, the venture has seen the value of daysoft's contact lens business rise by 80 per cent and the negative feedback from its traditional customer base has been negligible.
Hamilton explains that he has plenty of capacity for the extra demand and is keen to show off the plant's modern infrastructure. He is proud of the vertical storage units that hold millions of lenses in stock. Any lens is immediately accessible simply by tapping in the power to the control unit, and the selected power is brought to hand.
The half million or so lenses despatched each day are packed just feet from the foot of the storage unit, and are usually despatched by Royal Mail. The company has designed the packaging to be especially slim, meaning a three-month pack can be sent in the same way as a first class letter. Customer data is taken from orders placed online, reducing errors and doing away with re-keying. This is just one of the many 'lean and green' measures the company employs, says Hamilton. Within the compact despatch area there are bulk packages, practitioner packages and individual B2C orders. But it has been politics and not production that has engaged much of daysoft's time since it started this consumer sales venture.
Verification issues
One of the biggest issues the company has had to wrestle with is verification. Hamilton estimates that around 60 per cent of orders are repeats, but of those that aren't, around 20 per cent must be verified. 'If there was one request I could make it would be for people to know the difference between a spectacle prescription and a contact lens one,' he says. It is in areas like this where life starts to get harder for online buyers and sellers.
While some opticians are happy to verify their customer's prescription when telephoned, others simply don't play ball. Some opticians don't issue their patients with a contact lens prescription at all, notes Hamilton, while others send them off with a spectacle prescription. Hamilton doesn't go as far as to suggest that there is a concerted effort not to provide information, but claims at least two of the major chains, Specsavers and D&A, 'have got their story straight' when asked over the phone to verify what a patient has claimed.
Other times, matching the prescription is stymied by simpler problems such as people getting married, moving home, details taken down incorrectly or using a different name to that on the prescription.
Mark Hegarty, managing director, says the response from customers is often one of shock: 'People say, "I'm a responsible adult - why are you questioning me?".'
The way prescriptions are issued, he says, simply isn't robust enough and he argues there should be a standard prescription document.
Hamilton, Hegarty and the firm's professional services director, Malcolm Louch, all agree that most contact lens prescriptions are very short on details, such as base curve, diameter, lens type.
It's a strange irony that a company under pressure over its policy of brand switching should be the only voice urging for the rules surrounding prescriptions to be tightened up or at least policed.
But then again, perhaps it is not so surprising. The company insists brand switching is a perfectly safe and reasonable way of providing lenses (Optician, June 15) and extols a strong patient care message within an environment of independent optical practice. It also supports patients by phone as far as it can. Louch is on hand at all times to talk through issues with patients.
'We quite often end up having a better relationship with them than they have with their own optician,' he says, adding that in the event of any problem the advice given would be to stop wear and visit an optician.
And far from being against the profession, daysoft insists it is supporting independents with its online venture. The company says the response from its professional customers has been good and it has received very little negative feedback. 'I see this as another step in opticians being able to charge for their professional time,' says Louch.
The daysoft approach allows opticians to buy the lenses through the trade and retail them in the normal way. If a patient from a daysoft customer buys online the practice gets a refund, whether the practice knew the patient was going to buy the lenses or not.
Benefits to the independent
'Opticians may be starting to see that the business model stacks up,' says Hamilton, running through the benefits to the independent. 'If my customer goes online I get a rebate, I don't have to carry all of that stock, and I can give them a lens at a competitive price.
'The business proposition is that the optician does what they are good at, looking after patients, and charge for it. Maybe they should look at daysoft through fresh eyes.'
He wants the firm to be viewed as a mainstream supplier of products, but only among independents: 'I do not want to work for Tesco, heaven forbid.'
Hegarty is also keen to point out the benefits daysoft can bring to practices. 'We get a lot of customers asking us to recommend an optician because they are not happy with the one they have,' he says.
Hamilton envisages daysoft's relationship with independent practices growing in the future as it cooperates with practices to supply what customers want, delivered in the way that is most convenient. He sees daysoft's role as selling and shipping lenses and the opticians' role as caring for patients.
Worn for a day and thrown away
'To have stayed the same would have meant a slow and painful death. We can't be a smaller J&J,' he says. The value in the optical business, he believes, is through new routes to market using the daily disposable modality and its actions were following that credo.
'We want a real recognition that lenses should be worn for a day and thrown away. If that happened the UK might have a 15 per cent market penetration for contact lenses and not 7 per cent,' he says.
As a group, the daysoft management team believes the silicone hydrogel bubble will burst. They see no benefit to a daily disposable wearer of the more expensive and less comfortable SH technology. The comfort of the daily lens, they argue, is pretty much where people want it to be and future innovation will be in areas such as its own rounded-edge technology, torics and packaging. Trying to develop lenses that have to be cleaned by the wearer is simply a retrograde step.
One year on from the change, Hamilton says he is delighted with the results. His sales of lenses are up by 80 per cent in value and he still has his trade relationships intact. The company believes it has a part to play in supporting independent practitioners to change their business structure and charge more realistically for their time.
'Two years ago I would have described us as a contact lens manufacturer. Today I would also describe us as a communications company. We are learning how best to use the internet to do business,' he says.
As a simple illustration, he points to a customer activity chart. 'The internet operates 24/7, a practice opens for 40 hours. Forty per cent of our business is done when the high street is shut down.' ?