Insights From Our Editors

How Much Are Custom Progressive Lens Sales Growing?

August 26, 2015

Custom progressive spectacle lenses are a growing sales sector in many practices, findings from Jobson Optical Research’s 2015 Premium Lens MarketPulse study suggest. More than two-thirds (68 percent) of retailers said that customized or personalized progressive lenses made up a greater proportion of their total lens sales in 2014 than they had versus three years ago. Comparatively, 29 percent said standard progressive sales had increased over the last three years, while 27 percent said that sales of bifocals and trifocals had decreased as a percentage of total lens sales over the last three years respectively.

Click HERE to purchase Jobson Optical Research’s 2015 Premium Lens MarketPulse study.

Custom progressive spectacle lenses represent a little over a third of all progressives prescribed, according to the 2015 Premium Lens MarketPulse study by Jobson Optical Research. That number represents progress over previous years. That is good to know, however, the most important thing to know is how are you doing in your own practice? Use this data to look at your own prescribing patterns. What percent of your progressive lenses were customized or individualized versus standardized in 2014? What is the percentage so far in 2015 for your practice?

In the same Jobson report, over the last four years, finally package pricing usage surpassed 50 percent in the practices surveyed. Some 51 percent of practices now say they use package pricing for spectacle lenses. What about your practice? Do you utilize package pricing, or do you still use the old a la carte pricing method?

Examining these two basic areas of the spectacle lens part of your practice gives important insight into your prescribing patterns (i.e.: the percentage of your progressive lenses that are customized or individualized versus standardized), and how well you and your staff are doing selling lenses (i.e.: whether you are packaging lens features together and offering them to patients in a value proposition).

Take this week to review the spectacle lens part of your practice. Look for trends over time. Set goals for the rest of this year and for next year. While you’re at it, set up your next review period (how about monthly, or at least quarterly – yearly is too long).

Our goal for you is for you to be intentionally proactive in the management of your practice. Today is the day to take charge of your practice. Start today measuring and managing these two areas within your practice.

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