In a small, unassuming laboratory in Ormskirk, West Lancashire Riley eyewear is assembled. Vision Lab has been making Riley eyewear since 2016. Together, they have targeted an area of the market that has been fruitful for both and have made their customers life far easier through an innovative business model and a focus on product suitability.
Riley eyewear specialises in ‘high performance safety eyewear’. Its glasses and goggles are utilised by a range of businesses but are typically used in the construction or manufacturing industry. Part of these industries’ regulatory requirements are to ensure compliance – that is, to make sure that workers are wearing the appropriate eyewear when on the job, as demanded by health and safety regulations.
And it is this requirement that has led to Riley’s innovative business model.
‘Traditionally, with safety eyewear, employers give someone a voucher, they disappear and whenever they can be bothered, in their own time, they go to the high street,’ says Neil Sinclair, business development manager at Riley. ‘Employers are never quite sure when they’ve got the eyewear and then the invoice arrives three or four months later.’
Riley’s solution? ‘We said, “okay, we’ll come to you”,’ says Sinclair.
‘We run an on site service, which has been very successful for us. We use local optometrists, depending on the area, and have established a network of optometrists that Alex will tap into and we’ll take the whole show on the road,’ explains Sinclair.
‘Alex’ is Alex Parker, head of prescription manufacturing at Riley and co-director of Vision Lab. Parker has a long history in optics, leaving a joint venture partnership with a multiple in 2010 to move into the safety eyewear sector. He started working on Riley in 2016 and has been invaluable at getting the brand, which was built from scratch, off the ground.
Sinclair continues: ‘We’ll set up with our clients and do a full eye test, including the glaucoma test and all the health checks. We’ll do up to 20 people in a day. We’ll go back to the client at the end of the day and say, “here’s the 20 people we’ve seen, here’s what they all require and here’s the bill for the lot”.’
Naturally, not all employees on construction sites or in factories need prescription eyewear, so Riley uses polycarbonate lenses in both its plano and prescription frames to ensure quality for all users. Polycarbonate is a plastic classified as low energy impact, which means it can withstand a ball baring being fired at it at a speed of 45 meters per second without smashing or causing damage to the wearer’s eye.
After performing eye exams on workers, the Riley team then come back three weeks later – on average it takes two weeks to manufacture and glaze the eyewear and one week to establish a date to deliver – and fit all of the employees with their safety glasses or goggles.
‘We work directly with the end user, but we only deal through distribution,’ adds Sinclair.
In some cases Riley also enlists the help of local opticians, bringing benefits to the area. Sinclair explains: ‘We work with the end-user to identify their opticians in the required geographical area. We then make contact with the stores, introduce Riley and Vision Lab, and kit them out with frames and a dedicated customer service line.
‘We then drive footfall to the stores via the requirement for Riley safety frames, which gives the stores the opportunity to take care of these customer’s personal requirements and hopefully make them customers for life.’
A good example of this was Riley’s partnership with Sellafield, the nuclear processing and decommissioning site in North West England. Riley and Vision Lab established a network of 10 opticians in West Cumbria – a mix of independents and multiples – and directed the local workforce of around 10,000 to the practices for their eyewear requirements.
Sinclair says that there are currently around 200 ‘Riley enabled’ opticians in the UK and the company is always on the lookout for locum partners throughout the country to help provide its on site service – a service that has seen it take home the British Safety Industry Federation (BSIF) Safety Solution Award 2019.
However, some of the industries Vision Lab caters to are based on just-in-time production or cannot afford one of their production lines to go down for an extended period. In this case, the Riley reps will manage their needs in a different way – through a portal linking them with local opticians.
Portal management
For more complicated contracts, and to tie all the players together, Riley developed its own portal system that controls the entire patient journey.
Riley will link its clients, especially those who do not want an on site service, with a local opticians practice and they will use the portal to manage and control the process. ‘We still want to give customers that control, traceability and visibility,’ says Sinclair. ‘But we want to utilise that network of opticians, which is sometimes the best option for them.’
Vision Lab uses edging technology on site like the Essilor Kappa Edger, inset
Riley has a good relationship with some of the multiples, says Sinclair, and especially Vision Express. It also works with independents and is keen to further grow its network. For businesses using the portal, the process is quite simple. They can digitally track orders, see which of their employees is due an eye exam or voucher for eyewear, see who issued the last voucher and when. It means they generally have far greater control over the process than if they were contracting eye care out to another third party, who may not have a digital platform and thus be less transparent.
Parker explains how opticians fit into the system: ‘They’ll put in the prescription, add on their fees and send the information to the lab. We’ll pay them right away because they don’t want to wait 30 days like we will on our customer. That’s no good for them. They’ll be paid immediately.
‘Opticians can then phone their customers, say the frames are ready and they’ve got the money in their till. They can tell the patient to come in at their leisure and get them dispensed. We will then bill our client and the optician will bill the end user.’
‘But the important part for the optician is that they get a new customer through the door,’ adds Sinclair. ‘They are able to have a direct conversation with the lab, they just deal with the lab, we get them paid right away and keep it nice and simple for them. They look after their customer, we look after ours.’
The lab
Parker set up Vision Lab in 2010 after leaving his joint venture partnership and it has remained on the same site in Ormskirk ever since. In total, seven employees manage the lab – Parker, three front of house staff, two lab technicians and a locum optometrist as it also acts as a factory outlet for Luxottica brands – and operate within a fast and efficient service creating Riley eyewear.
Jobs come into the lab via the portal system. Frames are stored in the lab, with reserve stock kept at Riley’s warehouse in Manchester. Lenses are edged in the lab using an Essilor Kappa Edger, with Alcom’s Huvitz Kaizer used for more complicated wrap requirements. The lab also contains an etching machine, which etches the labs’ company information onto the lens – a requirement of the safety industry.
‘I keep single visions in stock, for ophthalmic lenses as well as our safety eyewear,’ says Parker. ‘Single vision lenses are + or - 4 as that’s all the stock availability is and then everything else I will order in from a number of lens suppliers I have.’
These lens suppliers are typically Essilor-owned: Horizon, Kodak, WLC. ‘During my JVP days, we did have surfacing in house and I found that at least 10% could end up in the bin,’ Parker remarks. ‘I’m going back more that 10 years, but you would have needed extra staff and around £50-60k worth of kit for surfacing. And then your glazing. It’s dirty, it’s dusty and the polycarbonate can scratch very easily.’
Parker continues: ‘So, once I pay the price that I pay, I’m only spending £1 or £2 more for a finished job than I would for a surfaced, semi-finished lens. It became cost effective for me to do it that way.
‘So, the only breakages this lab is responsible for is what we break because we’re not making the lens, we’re getting it in already made. If there’s a fault we get a new one free of charge.
‘I’ll argue with anyone who thinks, for my size of lab, that the situation doesn’t work.’
A small set-up, Vision Lab only has edging technology on site. It has, however, established a relationship with coating experts Spectrum to produce anti-fog lenses for its eyewear. ‘They had an anti-fog dip, so it’s not a spray, it’s already on the lens,’ says Parker. ‘So, I’ll send our lenses and they will anti-fog it for us. We paid for the product and the machinery and we just then get charged the labour each time.’
‘We made the decision to own all the stuff,’ says Sinclair. ‘So, we bought the equipment, bought the fluid and it just sits off site with experts who know the economies of scale and have the expertise to coat them quickly.’
Back in 2016, the Riley brand was still nascent. Now, Vision Lab is producing just shy of 500 jobs a month, with the view to expand soon. Last year, Riley carried out 75 on site visits and Sinclair believes this will stand them in good stead in the years to come. ‘It should be three to five years of exponential growth if we keep doing things right and working hard,’ he says. ‘Those 75 days should be a baseline plus new business and incremental, organic growth as the 75 businesses expand. So, we’ve kind of went from nothing to 500 a month in two years.’
By developing their own brand, having a very focused target market and offering convenience and compliance to clients, Riley and Vision Lab have been able to compete with other, larger outfits in the industry. With room to expand, and the financial capabilities to do so, the future looks bright so long as they keep up the hard work.