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.’
He stressed that professional care provided by practitioners was the one all-important commodity that could not be found online.
David Samuel, managing director of Eyesite, said: ‘Having spoken to patients who buy their lenses online, they are often totally loyal patients but they are just “buying some more lenses online”, with the prescription we gave them.
‘For them buying lenses online is not a big deal, it’s a bit like how I might do my shopping at Sainsbury’s normally but buy a sandwich in Marks & Spencer today. It doesn’t make me a disloyal Sainsbury’s customer – I am simply buying my sandwich from a different place.’
Practitioners sometimes felt unnecessarily ‘miffed’ when their patients bought lenses elsewhere, Samuel added, but it was often a practice’s pricing structure which put patients in the position whereby they could make such savings by buying online.
Research by Optician in April, sponsored by the ACLM, showed 10 per cent of wearers now purchase their contact lenses from online retailers, while 41 per cent expected to do so in the future.
Explaining how countries including Sweden had closer to 50 per cent online penetration already, Sauflon’s joint managing director Bradley Wells (pictured left) identified the existing opportunity for UK practitioners.
‘In the UK sales of contact lenses via the non-optical channels is currently at 10 per cent and growing,’ he said. ‘The internet threat is not going to go away but with ECPs adopting the right strategy such as a home delivery service and prescribing brands that are not widely available at cheaper prices it can be combated.
‘I would urge UK practitioners to review their contact lens business and make sure it is right for today’s marketplace. The opportunities for eye care practitioners to grow their contact lens business are enormous.’