This article is best viewed in a PDF Format.
|
|
Optimal Vision's arrival in the UK has been a something of a geographic road trip. The company was conceived and created by Andre Hancu.
A former Romanian Chess Master in the 1980s, Hancu sought and was granted political asylum in Austria when touring Europe with the national team. Later moving to the US, Hancu wasted little time in establishing his company, he quickly set up his first outlet in California supplying lenses to various customers. Moving to Mexico in the 1990s, Hancu set up a manufacturing laboratory and Optimal Vision began to go global.
Today, Optimal Vision is expanding with tie-ups and ventures in Mexico, Spain, China, Romania and South Korea.
The new generation
Hancu's son Dan recently relocated from the US to the UK, and is now based at the company's Baldock offices in Hertfordshire. Hancu Junior has grand designs for Optimal Vision in 2008. 'We have recently signed a joint venture with a Chinese factory to produce photochromic lenses for its home-grown market and production is expected to start this year. This will lower our costs, while significantly increasing our production capacity. And, of course, it will benefit our customer base,' he explains.
'Casting photochromic lenses is more difficult than casting clear lenses, and most Chinese factories do not yet know how to do it. This is a natural relationship for us because we provide the skills and technology that they lack. In addition, we can greatly increase our production capacity. Our research and development is still several years ahead of what we currently produce and an increase in production will allow us to bring new products to the market much more quickly.'
Helping independents
Helping independent opticians compete with the multiples is high on the company's agenda, says Hancu.
'We want to help the independent compete against the larger firms by providing them with lenses at the price the conglomerates already get due to their buying power. When a customer buys a pair of photochromic lenses several people are getting paid down the line - the optician, the glazing or surfacing lab, the distributor, the lens manufacturer and the monomer manufacturers - and that's not accounting for the suppliers of the raw materials at various stages.'
Optimal Vision's selling point, however, is combining the lens and monomer manufacturer's output as well as the distributor's.
'We can eliminate two of the stages of profit-taking from the price chain,' continues Hancu. 'Our customers are effectively buying direct from the manufacturers. Another way we've reduced costs is by not stocking finished lenses with only a hard coat. All of our finished lenses have an anti-reflective coating, partly because it reduces our inventory costs, and partly because we would never wear lenses without an anti-reflective coating ourselves.'
It is still early days for Optimal Vision's UK expansion, but Hancu is adamant that the company's success will hinge on strong research and development, and the ability to deliver 'what independents really want'.
Hancu is particularly proud of the company's own-brand Optimal Brown and Grey lenses, which are designed to complement the skin colour of the customer. New tones such as green are planned over the following few months.
'Due to our small size we are an agile company,' he says. 'Consequently, we have taken feedback from our customers into consideration and have developed this whole new generation of lenses. These will also be faster to darken and lighten and they will have less residual colour - no photochromic lenses can get completely clear yet.'
New materials
With most of the company's materials being sourced from the EU or the UK, Hancu is keen to point out that: 'The next step in terms of research will be to work more closely with our UK and European suppliers, such as James Robinson in Huddersfield, to develop new materials and processes to make a monomer with even better properties.' He is confident the company will be taking online orders by March, although he suspects that as much as 95 per cent of the company's future customer base will prefer to order by telephone or fax.
Last summer the company brought in the services of an experienced new business manager Georgie Russell. She describes the new venture as 'an exciting new project'.
'I particularly like the fact that Optimal Vision is in its infancy as far as selling lenses in the UK is concerned,' she says. 'We put a strong emphasis on our relationship with our customers. We really do take any concerns and suggestions seriously. Having worn reading glasses for four years now, I decided to test run the lenses myself and immediately had them put into frames by Helen Kelly Opticians. I have been very pleased with them.'
Thus it was that Optician visited dispensing optician Anne Cavalier at Letchworth-based Helen Kelly Opticians, who was herself sporting a pair of Optimal Vision's latest photochromics.
'We were tipped off early about Optimal Vision. The company's turnaround, quality of product and toughness of coating suit our needs very well. What's more, Optimal Vision offers attractive prices and easy terms and conditions,' Cavalier concludes.