Sixty professionals from all branches of the optical spectrum converged on the Maison de l’Amerique Latine in Paris on Friday, May 19, to participate in a European Forum dedicated to the future of the sector. The meeting was organised by the Club Inter-Optiques (the French association of optical leaders) and its president Harro Lotz. It is the first vehicle for exchange and experience by people who represent all the strands of the optical sector in France, people who share the same conviction to ensure the sector evolves assuring a prosperous and lasting future.
Ten percent of CIO membership comes from healthcare, 38% from manufacturing optics (frames, lenses, contact lenses, equipment, etc), 35% from distribution (all types of sectors in retail optics including internet providers) and the remaining 10% from other avenues such as schools, insurance companies and IT.
Exchanges in the CIO are intelligently made in a non-partisan spirit of friendship and conviviality where the participants are ready to accept diverging points of view, respecting the professional convictions of one another to encourage free speech. Each member of the club is objective, conciliatory, constructive, attentive and loyal to their colleagues.
Each member brings to the table personal experience to help the collective development of the different optical professions. By exchanging experiences and analysing the common tendencies relating to the profession and by using the conclusions of the meetings of minds, each of the members participates actively to accomplish their ambitious objective to take the optical sector forward.
ABDO has enjoyed participating for several years in a Bilateral Franco-Britannique meeting with the CIO. The French also shared a similar action with the Germans represented by their professional body, the ZVA. A few years ago it was decided to have regular meetings between the three countries and make time to get to understand each others’ preoccupations, to cement professional friendships and respect and to discuss topics to advance the profession of optician in respective countries.
Lotz opened the forum by stressing the importance of knowing each other. The purpose of the forum, he said, was to look at the future of optics to see what we have to do together as an influential European group. Practical issues relating to the digital revolution would be discussed. The train was said to be travelling towards a more digitally intelligent destination and would leave without us.
The train’s journey will change the way the optical sector works and we are not sure how long we have before it stops at its final destination or what that destination may be. We will have a chance to hop aboard as it stops to pick up willing passengers who want to evolve and succeed.
There was time to put some preconceived ideas to bed regarding the average cost of pairs of lenses and frames in France, For a long time, France has been accused of having the highest spectacles prices in Europe. This was contested and statistics from GfK were shown to the audience.
The average price for a pair of PPL lenses in France is €340 and for a pair of single vision (SV) is €116 (including VAT). The European average is €438 for PPLs and €128 for SV. As far as frames are concerned the French average price is €108 and in Europe €93.
Each country presented legal and economic information pertaining to the optical sectors in France, Germany and the UK. Laurent Dosseville, vice-president of the CIO, Thomas Truckenbrod, president of the ZVA, and Peter Black, past president of ABDO all shared overviews and analysis of the optical landscape in their respective countries.
For France, there are three main influences on the optical economy. New legislation on ‘responsible health contracts’ will impact on value as will reimbursement capped at a maximum amount. There is also an impact on volume with people only being allowed reimbursement on one piece of equipment every two years. What is new, is the Macron Law, named after new President Emmanuel Macron following work he completed as a minister in the previous government.
This law was published in May 2017 and is designed to give the consumer more transparency about the price they have paid and the origin of the supplier. After years of relatively strong growth between 2006 and 2015, the spending on optical health has plateaued between 2015 and 2016 at €6,586M.
There are 12,480 optical stores in France for the same population as the UK. The turnover per store has decreased from €573K to €527.7K between 2015 and 2016.
In Germany, they have noted an increase of 1.5% in the number of spectacles sold between 2015 and 2016 but this increase is slightly slower than in previous years. The turnover of the optical sector is estimated at ¤5.954 billion.
There are just over 12,000 optical stores in Germany – 9,270 are medium size stores, 600 are medium chains and 2,030 are made up of the 10 biggest chains. The medium sized stores are predicted to undergo erosion in the next three years with the estimate being 8,350 in 2020. The biggest chains will be gaining traction with 2,500 stores.
Approximately £3,067M was spent in the UK on optical goods and eye exams according to Mintel – 61% of that came from spectacle sales. The market is predicted to increase in the coming years despite the challenges of technology entering the sector.
The subject of the future of the sector was under much discussion during the rest of the forum.
An enlightening speech came from French businessman Jean Philippe Sayag from the company ACEP. ACEP describes itself as ‘believing in anticipating opticians’ needs for sales support solutions and offering them access to all the innovations and new generation tools essential to the fast changing profession’.
He took us through some of the fast-paced internet solutions around the world, such as Lenskart available in India. He spoke of the Uberisation of spectacle delivery which is also being trialed in India as a mix between domiciliary eye care and internet sales.
The reactivity to respond to the ‘here and now’ and changing face of optical consumers make such concepts more a reality for tomorrow than a fantasy. The emergence of the 3D scanning, parametric design automation and 3D printing was discussed as being the future of dispensing. Hoya’s Yuniku, Indo’s Made 4U were both highlighted in the section on 3D tailored eyewear. Silhouette joined the race for differentiation with the addition of a lens catalogue to its portfolio making it easier for it to control the glazing of its product and ensure the optical professional has a complete service with the widest possible array of lens/mount/shape combinations.
This is called Silhouette Vision Sensation. Essilor and its recent merger with Luxottica is predicted to join the personalised landscape with frames playing a more prominent role to compliment the lens offering currently available.All the speakers agreed that the optical landscape was changing and this change was coming rapidly. Optical professionals maybe were not the best at being proactive but they had to learn to be reactive quickly so as not to be left behind. Competing in a technology-driven world was going to be important if they were to stay relevant.
Optical chains are already gearing up for changes and market disruption in France, Germany and the UK. The smaller groups and independents need to embrace technology too in order to compete.
JP Sayag stressed the future end-to-end customer journey was the key to success and this would be an online, unified experience, 24/7, global, self-help, real-time and multi-channel. This future is in the next five years.
The internet is the new strategy where the customer journey lasts three years and not 40 minutes.
It starts two weeks before buying on the internet while the person is thinking about the prospect of a new equipment and change of prescription. A lot of internet providers direct people to store and so there is then 40 minutes in store. In the future there will be a three-year push then to get the consumer back into store and ready to buy more glasses. This is known as Drive to Store.
All the speakers discussed the merits of digital dispensing aids and the fact that they were indispensable in the practice of tomorrow and, increasingly today. Everybody agreed that what we do and the way we do it will change.
Dieter Grossewinkelmann from the ZVA in Germany reiterated that the future was today. He introduced the delegates to Big Data and the fact that extensive customer data is constantly used and available. It was very useful in predicting customers’ consumer behavior. The ZVA is making this type of data available to its members in conjunction with a specialist company. A worrying trend was the desertion of city centres leading him to ask the question when will there be only online portals for eye care and other services?
All the speakers discussed the merits of digital dispensing aids and the fact that they were indispensable in the practice of tomorrow and increasingly today. Everybody agreed that what we do and the way that we do it will change.
Changes in consumer expectations, behavior and availability of technology would all come to a point where our professional way of life would inevitably change. The customer journey would be dictated by the customer himself and insurance companies, suppliers and possible competitors dictated by new technologies would add to the new direction of travel.
Elaine Grisdale from ABDO, discussed the trend to shift the responsibility of care into the domain of the patient. Auto-medication and healthcare was on the rise – with health kiosks appearing in pharmacies and shopping centres around the world. In one way they are seen to be a way of capturing people who have never had an eye examination or do not want to see a doctor for a general check up. The health kiosks, with the help of a questionnaire and some fancy algorithms relating to risk
factors, direct them to a practice for professional care if an anomaly is thrown up.
The trend for diagnosis in the home or out of hours fits in with the increasingly busy lifestyles people lead. Family, work, travel to and from work all eat into leisure time and quality time with loved ones. Financial constraints of travel and parking and time off work for appointments. Having to either plough through bad weather or miss out on good weather, all these factors come in to play.
Having the ability to have an eye exam online or to buy glasses online would seem to be a time saving option which could be appreciated by sections of the population such as men (more likely to use a health kiosk according to US research), busy mums and the younger generation of teenagers who in the coming years will be so attached to their phones and digital devices that interacting with health professionals in this way may be more appealing to them and could become the new normal.
ABDO past president, Black talked about the changing face of the optical retail environment. Contact lenses, frames and lenses would be direct to the consumer. Virtual try on would be the norm with real time social media connectivity to share potential new looks with family and friends.
Bespoke 3D printing, eye health screening and online and app-based refraction would be the norm rather than the exception.
Already there are new marketing and business strategies in the UK coming from high street providers such as Specsavers with a stronger focus on eye health, loyalty schemes and their web-based services.
Both Grisdale and Black stressed the need for upskilling, specialisation and personalisation as avenues of differentiation and survival for independent opticians in the future. Optical practices will have to give people stronger reasons to visit their practices. The independent general optical practice that tries to do everything will not be able to compete with the multiples in the future.