Millmead Optical Group’s Continental Eyewear brand won Frame Supplier of the Year at the Optician Awards 2021 for its customer-centric mentality and partnership approach with practices, which shone through during the peak of the pandemic.
The team appreciates the recognition of winning the accolade, as many business managers provided extra support to practices from the early days of Covid-19. James Conway, chief executive officer at Millmead Optical Group, tells Optician: ‘We were elated to win, it was a fantastic reward for the amount of effort everyone’s been putting in. There’s a real feeling of going above and beyond for everything we do, whether it’s dealing with partners, managing the production, warehouse or customer service.’
Building business confidence
Quality is a leading principle for the group, and this was demonstrated through its team’s experience, eyewear, sustainable materials for store displays and reliability during the pandemic.
Conway highlights: ‘Our business managers’ flexibility and attitude to focusing on what the requirements are for our partners is absolutely paramount and the customer-centric mentality of our team is a great source of pride for us. We look at this whole industry like it’s a partnership experience.
‘We spent a lot of time training our staff. We won the Investors in People gold accreditation recently and that reflects the time and the effort we put into making sure our staff are at the level they need to be. We also have a massive amount of quality control and auditing across our entire supply chain.’
Continental Eyewear aims to build long-term partnerships with practices, including meeting demands for eyewear collection collaborations and ramping up its merchandising support for practices over the years. The design teams from Continental Eyewear and Leightons Opticians & Hearing Care came together to develop the eyewear collection Yesterday.Today.Tomorrow, launched in 2020, to allow them to champion an in-house range. ‘When you do these kinds of projects where you are tailoring something to personalised needs, the engagement you get with the individual store teams and the members of staff is absolutely fantastic,’ says Conway.
He adds they are gaining a reputation for good merchandising and more customers are asking for help with window displays. All of the company’s point of sale materials are now sustainable and are produced in the UK, including recycled materials, wood and cotton-based products.
Enabling practice resilience
The company provided a business support package for partners from July 2020 to give extra support during tumultuous times and help safeguard independent opticians. As business managers could not go into practices during the early months of the pandemic, the team adapted communications to a virtual-based service, using video conferencing software and a faster website platform, which was coincidently updated prior to the Covid-19 outbreak.
The team had regular virtual catch ups with practices in the style of an open forum. Conway explains: ‘Even if it wasn’t product specific, they could have a discussion with their business development manager about common issues, any ideas for ways we could support them more, or just interact over a cup of tea. We were able to immediately fire up our software as we were already using video conferencing, making it quite accessible for us.’
The updated website made a difference during lockdown, resulting in a significant increase in e-commerce sales.
The company also offered all customers extended payment terms, going from 30 to 60 days credit terms across all the product categories in the UK. It recognised that it would be a tricky few months for practices after the first lockdown. ‘People really appreciated our awareness of the difficulties of getting things going again,’ added Conway. ‘While the adjustment to payment terms were gratefully received, I think just being able to talk through plans and how we could help gave people a certain amount of relief that things were improving.’
Like many, the company’s supply chain was hit by shipping complexities and overseas production closures of raw materials due to Covid. The company has since increased its UK manufacturing. This includes the opening of a large facility in Liverpool for its Optoplast brand in mid-2021, which makes spectacle cases from recycled plastic bottles, and it intends to invest further in localised production within the next three to seven years.
Conway credits Continental Eyewear’s high performance during the pandemic to the strength of teamwork within company. He recommends that applicants for the Frame Supplier of the Year ensure they have strong relationships between teams and partners because delivering frames requires individuals from every element of the business to work in symbiosis.
- Find out about entry criteria for the Frame Award 2022 at opticianawards.co.uk.