Urgent action needed to stem CL exodus

Practitioners must provide top-class service to hold on to increasingly internet savvy contact lens patients, agreed experts at an Optician round table event.

With little policing of UK regulations requiring a prescription online and a growing demand for lower prices and added convenience, it was accepted that web-only competition was here to stay.

Contact lens optician Shelly Bansal (pictured right) said: ‘The majority of practitioners still don’t have a clue, they’re petrified. For the guys that are doing something individual that’s great and they’re going to do well.

‘But unless something changes there’s going to be a lot of independents go under. There needs to be a simpler and better strategy that we can actually promote to independents across the board. And convince them that they need to make a change.’