When I first opened my cold-start practice, Connecticut Vision Associates, I was focused on the clinical aspects of patient care. At the time, the optical was more of an afterthought. 

I knew that I wanted the optical to feel high end, and I only wanted independent frame lines. However, I didn’t realize how much fun optical can be from a business point of view. There is so much strategy that goes into it, as well as fashion and trends. Once you start to look at the numbers, the goals you can set with optical present fun challenges. 

Look at the Data

Though the optical wasn’t my primary area of focus when we first opened, we managed to have a steady flow of business. At the time, we let feelings guide our decision-making – not the numbers. We did what we thought was best, but we weren’t looking at the data. We work with great sales reps, but they had a huge advantage over us. They knew our turn rate, but instead of helping to strategize, they introduced new frames. Our board space for each brand kept growing, and we didn’t get a sense of trends because we were always showcasing new frames.

Making a Change in the Optical

As with any area of business, things improve when you measure them. I’m in the phase of my practice now where I want every aspect to be perfected and finetuned. I don’t want bigger, better and more; I want to look at what we do well and make that better. The biggest room for improvement is in the optical.

I have an amazing staff, and I didn’t realize how much responsibility they’d taken on in the optical. They did everything: buying frames, meeting with reps, working with customers. Since we opened, there hasn’t been any guidance in terms of tracking metrics. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, but we needed to implement a strategy that works for everyone. 

Making the Most of Industry Resource

To help implement this strategy in the most effective way, I met with Kayla Ashlee from Spexy to create a game plan that felt authentic to my office. We have monthly meetings, and she gives me homework and guidelines to follow as part of her FrameTurn program. My goal was to make improving our optical our top goal of 2025. Now that we’re a few months into the year, we’re already feeling more confident in this new plan. 

As part of this plan, we pressed pause on our meetings with sales reps. We were re-ordering what was sold off the board and wanted to bring our frames down from 950 to 650. It takes a lot of discipline. We’re focusing on the numbers and the trends in our optical, and we can see what styles are selling, analyze the range of price points and identify which frames are just taking up space. This strategy allows my opticians to feel more in control, and when we are ordering, we are ordering with purpose.

I’ve also taken on more of a leadership role in the optical, which has been helpful for both my optician and me. I used to leave it up to my optician to make the buying decisions, which I realized was unfair. We now go over the numbers weekly. She knows the styles that she loves and I know how many of each frame we sold. We also know what our ideal board space allotment is for each brand, so we work together. 

Setting Short- and Long-Term Goals

Since working with Kayla, she has helped create the ideal board space allotment for each brand based on past performance and the ideal turn rate. Each month, I input how many frames of each line were sold, so we can adjust as needed. This also creates a clearer view of what frames are not only top sellers, but the highest sellers of that group, so we can increase the price on those frames.

In the short term, I hope to get to our ideal number of 650 frames – with an amazing variety – and a bell curve price option. In the next year, I am striving to increase my frame turn rate. Long term, I’m hoping to learn from our data to find the perfect frame lines that fit with our demographics at the correct price range. Ideally, this won’t be a battle in the optical about whether we made the right choices based on feeling, but instead, will be based entirely on numbers, facts and results. Once that doubt is gone, I think it will be fun to see how successful our optical can be!

The optical can get out of control quickly, and then you have to do damage control, which is not nearly as fun as bringing in new and fun inventory. But if you don’t have the board space for it, it’s not getting displayed and it’s not selling. Having a consultant to create a game plan, and be very strict with that game plan, completely changed how we approach our optical. I now feel like we’re in a place where we’re in control of the optical instead of the other way around.