Sticking to “what you’ve always done” is keeping you from massive opportunities, and these red flags signal you’re stuck.

Invision July-August 2025 Issue

“IF YOU DISPLAY your sunglasses like this in your optical,” as I showed the before and after photo and rendering of what this change would look like. “It will make the display much more inviting and allow for the sunglass purchase to remain top of mind while they are picking out glasses.”

“That makes sense,” Brittany nodded. “I never thought of displaying suns like that.”

I continued, “Now if you move this dispense table it will allow your patient to shop…”

“Oh no!” Brittany interrupted. “There is no way we can move those dispense tables. We looked at it in the remodel and we can’t match the flooring,” Brittany continued on with a list of all the reasons why this was not an option. I asked Brittany to hear me out. I showed her different possibilities for her to change the optical merchandising to make it more welcoming to shop while moving brands into more ideal locations. Her hands must have been aching from the frantic note taking. She gathered her thoughts and reflected, “Exciting! All of this makes complete sense. Now I feel like we completely missed out on something we could have been doing all along.”

I repeated a line I say multiple times a week: “You don’t know what you don’t know, but now that you know the opportunities, you can make the changes.”

In the optical world we get stuck doing the same things one way because that is the way it has always been done. Sticking to “what you’ve always done” is keeping you from massive opportunities. Here are three different red flags that signal your optical merchandising is stuck.

Your brands have remained in the same general location since you got them. Have you identified the hotspots in your optical? Adapting your inventory to move struggling brands to a better hotspot can increase their sell through rate. Don’t let a brand’s original landing place be the reason for its demise.

Your optical planning map begins and ends with: Men’s. Women’s. Kid’s. The most successful opticals are retailing their opticals by brand. Think about it, if you have a frame brand that has great men’s styles and fabulous women’s styles but also has a great assortment of unisex frames, where are you putting those unisex styles? Place them on the women’s display and most men won’t go over to them. Place them on the men’s side and you are losing the woman. Merchandising as an entire collection with the masculine on one side, the strong feminine on the other, and unisex as the blend in between allows for the entire collection to be shopped. Spexy members have proven that higher sales are achieved by intentionally mapping their optical for optimizing brand performance.

Your office layout has remained the same for as long as you can remember. Yes, a remodel in the optical is always nice with a healthy budget. In merchandising meetings with opticals, I’ve shared impactful, low-cost adaptations that can be made to almost any optical. Changing frame angles, adding a rug, moving a display, rethinking the waiting room have brought an impactful and welcoming nature back to opticals that have been overlooked for years.

Brittany was able to recognize how merchandising “the way it’s always been done” was costing the business versus merchandising intentionally. Scan the QR code for more resources available to independent opticals.

If these flags sounded familiar, I encourage you to look beyond how you have always done things. Be intentional about how you are merchandising your optical gallery to create a welcoming, exciting shopping experience!