With the anniversary of the first Covid-19 nationwide lockdown in the UK approaching, it is an opportune moment to sit down with an optical company that has had a particularly eventful past two years. In that time Hoya has supported its clients through the uncertainty of the pandemic, launched a myopia management spectacle lens and won big at the Optician Awards.
‘Hoya is positioned to support independents,’ says Martin Batho, managing director at Hoya UK. ‘Our whole approach is to support independent practices and that has only been accelerated by the pandemic. During those days in March 2020 when there was a high degree of uncertainty, we found a lot of eye care professionals (ECPs) and independent practices were looking to us for support and guidance.’
Batho notes that, thanks to the shared experiences of sister companies in countries like Spain and Italy, which were further along the Covid-19 timeline at that point, Hoya UK was able to provide much needed insights.
‘Thanks to that heads-up on how things would likely develop here, we were able to set up some roundtables that brought people together to work out what the future might look like,’ says Batho. ‘These were particularly focused on the patient journey because ECPs at that time were quite concerned about exposure to patients. As a result of those discussions, we used our relationships with other industry players, particularly with equipment manufacturers, to quickly come up with a patient journey that allowed the ECPs and practice staff to socially distance as much as possible while doing essential work.’
The company also moved swiftly to provide online CET (now CPD) points to ECPs who were furloughed and unable to access in-person educational events.
‘We made the modules open to everyone,’ says Andy Sanders, professional services director at Hoya UK. ‘It wasn’t just for Hoya customers. We used our relationships with various key opinion leaders to have expert-led presentations on different subjects from different companies.’
The roundtables and engagement through the education provision enabled Hoya to identify other areas of practice life that required new ways of working.
‘Beyond the use of equipment to facilitate social distancing, we realised that practices needed assistance on things like digital marketing to reach out to patients, booking appointments online, and utilising their websites more effectively,’ says Dale Hughes, marketing manager at Hoya UK. ‘So we teamed up with a whole range of companies that could really add value to the services offered to independents. Opti-Commerce helped our customers with digital marketing and how to use online as a service. We’ve teamed up with the Hearing Care Partnership on audiology to provide additional services that practices could employ during the pandemic and beyond. Finding good quality optometrists and dispensing opticians during the pandemic was difficult, so we partnered with a recruitment business called Locomotive.’
Dale Hughes, marketing manager at Hoya UK
Visionary Alliance
Despite the pandemic now easing, Hoya is integrating these services and more into its Visionary Alliance offering to independent practices.
‘The Visionary Alliance is an evolution of the things we’ve been doing to support the independents in recent years,’ says Hughes. ‘It’s a partnership programme for independent practices. What we’re trying to do is connect independent practices to Hoya and other independents while offering services, tools and support activities to really help their business grow. This includes the services we already mentioned but also lots of other things as well. We’ve got our own in-house vision care consultancy. This helps practices look at how they can improve the sales process to the consumer, the mix of products that they’re selling to the consumer, while ensuring the patient doesn’t have buyer’s remorse. The Visionary Alliance isn’t about Hoya. It’s about practices, their brands and how we can support their growth.’
The Visionary Alliance is split into three tiers with benefits and access ascending in line with a practice’s volume of sales. In terms of services and tools, these include digital marketing aimed at attracting new patients and boosting value, patient communication and recall tools, audiology services for additional revenue streams, and practice equipment for enhanced eyewear. Practices in the highest tier also receive advanced access to product trials, and access to bespoke marketing materials.
‘We have what we call a menu card with a selection of offers,’ explains Hughes. ‘There’s probably between 25 and 30 services that the ECP can select from. We don’t encourage them to take all of them. When we talk to an independent practice owner, we’re looking to tailor-make a plan for them. We get to understand what drives their needs, what’s important to their business. Then we offer services from within the Visionary Alliance that really will help meet those needs. By the nature of independents, the needs will vary across practice to practice. A one-size fits all solution would be inadequate.’
Batho shares that, on the back of supporting independent practices, the last year has been Hoya UK’s strongest growth period in the independent sector on record.
‘We have seen a really strong bounce-back in the optics industry,’ he says. ‘Clearly patients who couldn’t go to the practice at the peak of Covid-19 are coming into the practice now. So, actually, we found that we haven’t really lost any business, it just transferred to a different year and quarter. We’re also seeing that, because ECPs are controlling the patients that come in more carefully through appointments, we’re tending to find that there is a higher value-add in terms of what’s being dispensed as well.
‘Around a third of our growth in the past year has been attributed to bounce back, while the remainder is from winning new business and from the launch of new products and categories. One of those, of course, is Miyosmart.’
Pandemic launch
Miyosmart, a spectacle lens offering a non-invasive option for myopia management, had its UK launch in February 2021.
‘We originally were planning to launch in September of 2021, but we decided to bring it forward because the European launch created such a big buzz,’ says Sanders. ‘We developed our own three-stage accreditation programme. Stage one is presented by Carly Lam, who was co-principal investigator on the development project at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Stage two is Bruce Evans talking about different interventions and how excited he is that there is a spectacle lens solution with good efficacy. Stage three is an exam because we regard this as a full-scale treatment rather than just another lens. The exam has an 80% pass mark. After that, I present on the fitting of the lens and the principles of the lens. We wanted a robust training programme to ensure that everyone was aligned because myopia management in the UK is a relatively new field.’
Andy Sanders, professional services director at Hoya UK
So how did launching a major new lens product work during the pandemic? ‘The experience that we had through the pandemic of running education and roundtables helped us get very effective at doing online communications with our customers,’ says Batho. ‘So when we launched Miyosmart, we were able to do the three-stage accreditation process as an online training programme, which I think we probably wouldn’t have had the confidence to do without that experience from the pandemic.’
‘First, we did a couple of webinars on the subject and spoke with key opinion leaders,’ says Sanders. ‘We really had the confidence to push that forward. Even the very first webinar that we did had almost 400 participants and we’ve continued on in that vein. During the first month of launch we had about 500 ECPs go through accreditation.’
With myopia management currently at the forefront of the optical zeitgeist, the lens has proved highly successful in its first year in the UK with actual sales doubling projections.
‘We’ve had a fantastic first year,’ says Hughes. ‘But we need to continue to raise awareness around myopia. There’s still, I think, fairly low levels of awareness within the public. The trade is certainly getting the message now. But I think with the public, there’s work to do. So far, in order to reach consumers, we skewed more to online than print, advertising on websites like Mumsnet and working with bloggers and influencers on Instagram. We ran a PR campaign back in September 2021 that was covered across the national media outlets and we will do something similar in March or April this year. That will involve real world data from 2,000 parents and guardians looking at children’s wellbeing as a whole.’
A fitting reward
The launch of Miyosmart and Hoya’s general excellence throughout the pandemic was recognised at the Optician Awards 2021, with the company taking home the trophy for Lens Supplier of the Year.
‘It felt like recognition for the huge amount of effort and hard work that our staff put in during that 18-month period from the onset of Covid-19, and an endorsement of the services and products that we had introduced,’ says Batho. ‘Outside of the kudos of winning the award it was a really good social event for us, one that we had missed during the pandemic. Of course, we are long-term sponsors of the Independent Practice of the Year Award, and that aligns with the very heart of what Hoya is about; supporting the independents.’