How Early Optical Pioneers Used Assembly Line Techniques to Speed Up Glasses Manufacturing

The Evolution of Eye Care: Insights from a Legacy in Optometry and Innovation.  Join us as we explore the rich history of optometry through the lens of Ryan Markey, whose family has been deeply embedded in the industry for generations. From early entrepreneurial ventures to groundbreaking technological advancements, this episode uncovers the lessons learned, innovations embraced, and challenges faced in the evolution of eyewear and eye care.  In this episode:

• Ryan Markey shares his family’s journey from colonial entrepreneurial roots to innovative leaders in optical manufacturing and retail.

• The story behind the first conveyor belt in an optical lab and its significance in streamlining production.

• How military service and early experiments with assembly line manufacturing influenced optical innovation.

• The rise and fall of Lee Optical’s 240-location empire and the differentiation between wholesale labs and retail chains.

• The evolution of frame manufacturing from metal patterns to jewelry-like craftsmanship.

• The importance of embracing new technologies such as blue blocking lenses and heads-up displays.

• Strategies for location selection and foot traffic optimization in retail optical stores.

• The declining focus on consumer education and how understanding market demands can fuel industry growth.

• The importance of camaraderie and collaboration in a competitive industry.

• Insights into future trends including meta and wearable technology’s role in eye care.

• Practical advice for opticians on pricing, branding, and building a competitive edge in an evolving landscape.

• Ryan’s call for industry unity and ongoing innovation to serve patient needs better.

Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction to Ryan Markey and his family's legacy in optometry
02:03 - Early entrepreneurial ventures: from bottles to fast-freezing peas
03:02 - Military service and innovations during World War II
05:25 - Testing and adopting new optical equipment in family labs
06:53 - The growth of Lee Optical’s retail and wholesale operations
08:36 - Expanding labs across states and embracing conveyor systems
10:16 - The evolution of frame design from patterns to jewelry-quality craftsmanship
11:14 - The rise and transformation of Royal Optical and the chain’s growth
13:37 - Connecting family stories and the importance of mentorship
14:16 - Lessons learned from industry pioneers like Bill Benedict and Dean Butler
15:49 - Building relationships: camaraderie in the optical community
17:35 - Industry standards, safety, and the importance of quality over ego
20:08 - The future of eyewear: innovation, technology, and consumer trends
22:03 - The shift toward fashion and wardrobe-building over one-time purchases
23:24 - The value of quality frames and the misconception of “cost-effective” eyewear
25:19 - Training and education in your optical practice: raising the standard
27:19 - Impact of pay structures on product quality and staff motivation
29:42 - The rise of DIY optical boutiques and the importance of location
31:37 - Traditional and modern marketing strategies for optical success
33:32 - The importance of traffic, foot traffic, and location in retail success
36:22 - Industry evolution: adapting to changing consumer behaviors
38:22 - Innovation for future generations: tech in lenses and frames
39:46 - AI, data privacy, and personalized eyewear solutions
45:54 - Cutting-edge eyewear: the eagle-inspired UV filters and clip-ons
54:20 - The significance of superlative technology and product reliability
58:42 - Industry camaraderie, the need for collaboration, and shared success
63:37 - The industry's future: patient-centered care and technological integration
64:36 - Final thoughts on industry unity, innovation, and industry leadership

Key Frameworks & Ideas:

• The importance of embracing innovation with a focus on quality and user needs

• Location and foot traffic as fundamental retail growth strategies

• The role of camaraderie and industry collaboration for collective growth

• Future tech in eyewear: AR, AI, meta, and wearable devices

• Building a practice with ethical leadership and partnership with optometrists

Notable Quotes:

• "What makes people successful in our business is when they are willing to adapt to how the consumer is shopping."

• "The industry needs more camaraderie and the ability to work together to improve the patient experience."

• "You don't need the newest tech to be the best, you need the right tech for your practice."

Closing takeaway: This episode emphasizes that innovation, collaboration, and focusing on patient needs are the keys to future success in eye care. Whether through embracing new technology or fostering industry camaraderie, the future of optometry depends on a shared vision to enhance patient outcomes and practice sustainability.

Talk with Peter Precht: www.eyecclearly.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to another episode of Thometry Profits Reveal. I'm your host, Peter Brig. Today I am with Ryan Markey. He's one of the few I can literally say from the moment he was born. He was in ICAR. Without any further ado. Ryan, nice to have you.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hey, it's fun to be here, Peter. We've we've we've known each other for a uh a while now, and uh you've been asking me to to jump on here and chat with you, and I uh you wore me down. You you got you got me, man. You got me.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Uh you know, we're gonna talk about this journey. You know your grandfather, your father, yourself. And I'm gonna let you kind of tell it in at whatever level you want. But I definitely want to focus on. You know. What technologies did you see come in that left a mark that we talked about? We talked about a covert product. We'll get into that in a few minutes. But you know, things that you saw with Lee with Royal and then and how they impacted the society, and then also, you know, some of the things that have been a letdown and then where we are currently. Um talk about that. Talk about your grandfather's journey.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Well you saw his journey is it was one of those that and some of these are just his stories. So uh I wasn't there to be able to validate their the authenticity, although I did ask his family. Um he uh when he was in college, in order to make some extra cash, he used to uh go pick up the old bottles from the fraternity houses, uh make bathtub gin and then resell them to the to the fraternity houses. So he started really young being an entrepreneur. Um he also at one point uh became a sharecropper for bird's eye and grew peas when they were trying to learn how to uh fast freeze peas. Um so he, you know, he he did that. Um he was a dressmaker for a while. Uh and when he moved down to Houston from the New England area, he was a dressmaker, he ran a dress factory. Uh, and he got a phone call from a friend who said, Come up here, we want to teach you the optical business. You can make some really good money, and we could use somebody in our manufacturing. So that was his beginning uh from dressmaking to glasses. But um during World War II, he got called to the front lines and uh he made glasses on the front line for uh the guys uh fighting uh in World War II. So and I and I pulled this for our conversation, and and now if you saw my desk, I'm not gonna turn the camera, but if you saw my desk, you would laugh at me. But I have his his original uh document that that shows that he was uh in the military in World War II.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

What's he, Army?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Army, yeah. He was in the back of a personnel carrier. Now, the reason that this one becomes a real big turning point is he had a lab with um uh a couple of guys in in Dallas uh and he said to himself, if Henry Ford can do assembly line manufacturing, so can I. This comes from a guy who would get six new uh nurses, male nurses, and he had to teach them how to use a handpan, how to get the curve, how to get, you know, how to rock cylinder, how to, you know, uh take the pattern and place it properly, use the glass cutters to cut them and the pliers to pop them off and to put the groove in, you know, they only had them for one, you know, one turn, one uh one enlistment, right? So you know, every six weeks, six plus weeks, he's having to retrain a whole new group of guys. So what he did is he started training them on each section of it, right? And so he ended up uh getting glasses done quicker, and he says, I'm gonna take this with me when I go back to to Texas. So when he goes back to Texas, he uh uh goes and finds um uh uh a machinist to help him make a generator, the first generator. And he worked with him, and this guy, I've read the guy's book. He doesn't give my grandfather any credit for it, but that's fine. Grandpa wasn't big on credit. Uh but he builds he builds two of these generators, one grandpa's puts into production, and the other one this guy goes out and sells to other labs around the country. Um but then you know you got to polish, so he they built cylinder machines. And so the first cylinder machines they built together. And then this guy went and started his own equipment company and and did that. And my grandfather always had a close relationship testing out equipment. He was real big on getting new stuff and testing it out. So I guess that is why when there's new technology, I embrace it, I look to see where you can improve it, and and and that, and that's kind of a cultural mindset for my family. My dad did exactly the same thing when my grandfather, so my grandfather sold that lab, or sold his piece of that lab to his partners, and he went to work for a company called Lee Optical, and the lab was Daltex. Lee Optical had 240 locations uh in its heyday, and probably one of the largest wholesale labs in the country. They actually, you know, when it comes to marketing, they're very innovative. They they were the first laboratory to have a full color catalog. So how cool. Yeah, that was really kind of cool. So you'd see the frames and stuff. He had his own frame company with a gentleman and they, you know, sold their frames. And I don't know if you know this, most most opticians don't know this. But originally there were five patterns. That was it. When they would make a frame, they would take one of those five patterns and they would modify the the look of the frame around those five patterns. And they were metal patterns. But anyway, go ahead. Sorry. There's and I can and I could keep going for, I mean, I'm I'm 60 something years old, you know, I've been doing this all my life. I could go for hours, but I know you've only got an hour.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

So question I had you hit on one part of it. A few styles, spools of sizes. Which had great implications to expand the industry into new markets quickly. Um but you talked about Lee Optical having 240 locations. Is this a lab connected to a dispensary?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

So this was a large hotel lab, uh multiple floor multiple floors. I think it was a three-story, but by the time I I showed up, it was in a three or four-story building. Um they had conveyor belts. They were one of the first labs to have conveyor a conveyor system.

unknown 7:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Yeah, when I was when I was four, I think, uh they sent me one of the guys sent me up the conveyor to crawl up the conveyor and shag the trays and lenses that had fallen. And then my dad walked in the room and almost had a heart attack. And yeah, yeah, that was a facial expression. Made me get down, and needless to say, the employees who were laughing at me, which I didn't know I was four years old, um, yeah, they got they got in a little trouble, I think. But um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

But their job got done.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Well, yeah. You cleaned up all that debris that was around the but it was a wholesale lab, it was a ho independent wholesale lab that was was uh called Daltex. And then Lee Optical was the retail division. So they were actually two companies with common ownership.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Where are those 240 locations? How far away?

SPEAKER_00 8:35

They're closed, they're out of business. This is a long time ago. No, I mean like multiple states all over the country.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Uh now my dad, uh, when my grandfather sold out his piece or retired to uh and sold it to his partner, when my grandfather left, uh my dad stayed for a little while and he ran the stores in California. We moved to California for six six months. And my dad's like, no, I don't want to, I don't like the direction the company's going in. I'm gonna start my own. So my dad moved back to Dallas. Uh we hadn't sold our house yet, thank goodness. For me as a kid, you know, going back home was nice.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

It was kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

Yeah. Um but uh he started a sunglass shop that did prescriptions. It was called Sunglass World. And that was it was kind of cool, and that was his thing, and him and my mom ran it together. Uh but he uh my grandfather's partner, his nephew, uh my grandfather's partner and my dad, and another guy got together and said, you know what, let's let's recreate the chain, let's not do wholesale work, let's do all our own lab work. Uh one guy already had five or six stores. Uh dad and and the other partner opens a few stores, and they just started opening stores and creating Royal, which um when we uh sold to uh US Vision, which is now Reefra Refact, Refrac, whatever. Um when we sold to them, we had 670 locations in 42 states and two laboratories. So that was the 80s? Uh 70s and 80s, yeah. Yeah. Um trying to remember when in the 70s, because you know, that's my elementary school years.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Well I was in second grade in 1970.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

So did Royal Optical have a single spell you had two. Two central labs, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Uh well, we started out with one central lab in Dallas. Okay. Uh when we got to a certain size, we found that it wasn't impossible, but it was becoming very cumbersome. We had opened up uh inside the penny stores in California and a couple of other places, because we had pri previously tried to stay away from licensed states.

SPEAKER_02 11:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Um, but we opened a bunch of stores in California and a few other places. So we opened a lab in Denver. And the lab in Denver did close to a thousand jobs a day.

unknown 11:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Uh the lab in Dallas uh was anywhere from 2000 to I think at our peak, we were over 4,000 jobs a day. And that's the lab I grew up in.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Well, and again. And the score huge lab in Dallas. Let's go back a little bit to your grandfather and can connect Bill Benedict into this story a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Bill Bill is Uncle Bill to me. Uh, because he's always been family. His family's my family. Not biologically, but but I mean, we're really close, and they I would do anything for them, and I know if I picked up the phone, vice versa. I mean, we're very close. Um the way the story goes for my grandfather is that there's this guy who's knocking on the door, knocking on the door, trying to get in to get a job, and they you know, you know, go away, go away, go away. We we're good. Uh and my grandfather and a couple of his buddies are walking out of the lab uh to go to lunch, and Bill's right there, knock, knock, knock. And Bill's like, I really want a job. I hear this is where I can learn the business. I really want to. My grandfather reaches in the door, grabs a broom, hands it to Bill, and says, See this area right here? We're gonna go eat. When we come back, this has got to be spotless clean. And if it is, I'll give you a job. Thinking that, you know, the kid'll give up. It's a menial job. He's not gonna, he's not gonna do the menial task, right? My grandfather comes back, it's spotless. I mean, in the corners it's spotless. Between the cracks, it's spotless. It is just, I mean, uh, short of hosing it down with a pressure washer, I mean, it was beautiful. And my grandfather basically in his mind is like, this guy will do any, will, will do any task, and he will do an awesome job. This is the kind of person I want. Come on in, you got a job. And my grandfather, uh, you know, uh, even according to Bill, helped him uh train him on the optical business. Um, but my grandfather got the opportunity while he was there to sell out and go to Dell Tex and become a partner in Dell Tex. So he left and and Bill had his life. And there's a book that you can buy that will tell you all about Bill's life.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

It's actually good. It's it's actually really entertaining, by the way. Not that I'm peddling his book, it's just a good book.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

In my initial season, I did interview Bob Hillman, who was part of that at the lab level, helping them, helping them plug in what they were doing, and then connecting his versions of it in in New Jersey. And then when he did New Jersey, this guy outside taking a bunch of pictures goes back to Cincinnati with Dean Butler, late 70s, he launches lens scratchers.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Well, and Dean, and Dean and my dad were friends, and it was funny. Dean goes uh was out of town and he was coming back in town uh in between one of his projects, and my dad had an appointment he had to make, and so my dad was trying to pedal me off on Dean, and uh Dean's like, no, it's okay. I can find something to do. I don't need your kid to show me around. Keep your over there. Yeah, Dean's a good guy, but he's another good guy. I mean, that's the and that's the other thing. I I I started, and and I'm gonna jump ahead pretty far real quick, just to make a point. I started a laboratory later in my life, um, you know, 10 years ago, uh 11 years ago. Um, and uh I started that lab and I was coming up with a name and I called it My Friends Lab. And the reason that I did is because in this time period we're talking about, everybody was friends. You could be competitors. Uh uh the the guys who owned uh uh Texas State Optical, okay. They uh I ran that for a while too, by the way. But the guys, the guys who had owned Texas State Optical at the time had a small piece of Caesar's Palace. And they would invite their friends, they would invite their competitors and friends to come hang out and party. And you know, everybody got along. It's not like it is now where it's so divisive and people are so trying to let me get your business. No, let me earn business from the doctors that are out there. There's plenty of new ones. Let me find people who like what I do. That was the that was the mentality when I was a kid, not the mentality of there's X number of people, this is the percentage we have to get. We must go, go, go. You know, so it's very different now. So that's I bring up my friend's lab only because I came up with it because that's that's what it was when I was a kid. Everybody was friends. I mean, there was a lab, there was a lab in Dallas, a wholesale lab in Dallas that caught fire. And my dad started to do all their lab work for a while. And I'm like, you know, I'm I'm in my teens, so I'm working a little bit in finance and and you know, and also in the lab just to get to know the whole business. And uh I'm like, Dad, this are we gonna send this guy a bill? He goes, for what? I said, for all this lab work. And he goes, no. If this has happened to us, he would take care of us. I'm like, we're doing all this for free. Yeah, and I'm sure it wasn't, and I'm sure it wasn't free.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

But the but but but the way that it was done, it was not a it was a hey, you know, we need this. Anytime we'd ask for anything from him after he reopened, no problem. You got it. I mean, it was that was the attitude. Matter of fact, I was going through family photos and I saw photos of a bunch of my dad's competition on a cruise together. And I'm like, Dad, these were your competition. And he goes, Yeah, there's your grandfather, and but your mom and I couldn't go, but yeah, they all they all used to vacation together. You don't see that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

That's like no, you don't. There's a there's a paying forward philosophy in a moment. And that, you know, it is a different mindset.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Yeah, but I don't see that anymore. Do you?

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Well, not personally. You know, I I have heard pretty tremendous stories about a few people in mega places. Um certainly were they stuck to their convictions. Even though they were assimilated. They're assimilating.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Well, I was gonna say, if you if if you go to if you go to ho if you go to Hoya right now, a lot of the ex uh Luxotica employees are running Hoya.

unknown 18:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Right. It can't be easy.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_01 18:57

To have massive sized uh goals that they that they get, you know. I I remember learning in my first five years in the industry that the company that I was avant-garde lost owned everything. It wasn't even 1990. So they weren't shy about it. They had a very flamboyant calendar at that time. Everybody wanted one. You know, they were shy about wanting to own the luxury part, but it is ironic that the luxury part is separated most succinctly, you know, in terms of the frame line business right now.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Well, one of the things I learned when I had my own stores, I had five Couture stores. One of the things that I learned was uh the consumer perception of luxury and the actual luxury products are two very diverse things.

unknown 20:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Uh there are brands out there that pay a lot of money for the brand name, and they don't spend much of anything on the frame. Uh the quality of the frame is not not necessarily there. Then there's companies that will give you a super fine frame. Great, I mean, it's made like like jewelry, like it used to be. I mean, I mean that's that's another quick thing. Let me let me take a let me have an ADD moment, if you don't mind. Here's my ADD moment. If you ever go into a jeweler and you're an optician, you'll see that uh they use very much the same tools. And the reason they use the same tools is jewelers were the ones who made glasses. The if you look at the original material, it was gold, it was silver, it was, you know, uh plastics were made out of a material that when shaved was highly flammable. Like grandfather. I'll tell you about that. That's another story. Anyway, that I don't want to do an ADD on an ADD moment. Anyway, the so but my point is that there are people out there who are still making eyewear like jewelry, where it will be, I mean, when I had my stores, I looked for that kind of product. I looked for the kind of product that that the frame would last a patient. Because what I wanted for my patients is I wanted them to build a wardrobe. Yes, this year your insurance will only get reimburse you for one pair. That's great. Next year you'll pay for the lenses to replace when you're it with your RX changes, but we'll get you another frame and we'll build you a wardrobe so that or you can buy a wardrobe now. That was my second pair of sale, you know. Uh yeah, let's let's let's let's get you let let's get you through a year. Let's get you through to your next insurance. People used to come back earlier more than More often than not, because but I'm I I look at a lot of product and we have it it's almost like the product is now designed to last a year to two years, which is the warranty that they give. Okay. Scratch coating lasts for about a year to two years. That's that's it used to be let's make the best product we can that's gonna fit the best. I mean, here I am. I'm okay, so my glasses stop right here, right? Longest temple, longest temples I can find. I mean, I have yours in the back of my head. But but the the the issue is we used to sell frames to fit the patient. So you would get the front and that would take care of whatever you needed. And then you'd buy a temple, and the temple was whatever length you needed, right? And you'd have two or three temple lengths.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Back when it wasn't a surgical three-hour procedure to pull a temple cover off and put a new one on.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

I mean it used to be easy.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Well, and it's still it's still not on some, it's still not hard. You can take it off, you can clip it, you can make it shorter. It's always better to make it a little bit longer, but you know what? That extra couple of ounces of nickel silver, which is what or Monell or whatever, which is what they make costume jewelry out of. Your glasses, by the way, everybody, are made out of costume jewelry parts.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Anyway, um that should that should be a frame line.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Well, call costume jewelry?

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Yeah, absolutely. Well just melt it all.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Anyway.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Show it in the right in the design.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Yeah, just to have it all molten weird.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Anyway, so semi-molten.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

But but, you know, let's let's go let's get back to wherever wherever it was we were when we s when I took you off track. I apologize.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Well, you were connecting you know, the other profession of jewelry deeply into ICAR and how you had looked for that. But there is a lot of similarities, and it's very clear where they separate to historically.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

It's kind of interesting that this was a a thought process that your father and grandfather had to think of whatever market they were going into, or maybe considered it, or maybe looked for in it, or um, but we're just as guilty as an as an industry, my family's just as guilty uh for making uh uh making some of this uh enhancing the mediocrity of iwear. And the reason I say that is I was at a uh we were going to open some stores in a region, multiple stores, and we need a regional manager and we needed managers, and we were gonna do interviews and all of that, and we're sitting at a Denny's, and the the waitress was just the sweetest, nicest, very attentive, seemed super bright, offered her a job to manage a store. She didn't know anything about optics, but we hired her, and we tried to stay out of states that that didn't have a that weren't licensed states. So we ended up now, now, that gave me the incentive to put together a whole training program uh for Royal. So you used to there used to be three binders and you had to go through each binder to get, you know, to get promoted. But that's one of the things that we did for mediocrity. We would pull people and train them instead of uh trying to uh have people go through the educational process and be an optician.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

Well, one of the recurring themes, like it or not, that happens in these interviews is that many of us joined iWare iCare, excuse me, by default. Um good, bad, or ugly. You know, that was the way that I was or has been, and even like you were talking about somebody who is good with a customer service skill or whatnot, and they were bringing them in.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

And and and Peter, to your point, it is easier to find the right personality to be a good optician than it is to find an optician who has the right personality.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

Or even a lab tech. Well, it's different too.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Yeah, I the the thing is is that it goes back to the whole Bill Benedict conversation. It's hard to find somebody who pays attention to the details and makes sure that they are repetitively done in a way that gives you the right uh the right result. Right. Uh uh I uh very recently I was working for Identity Optical. Okay, they've been pre recently purchased by Slore uh and uh Kepler stores, they're still Kepler stores, they kind of split.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Anyway, um one of the things that I found was is the I've I've always thought that if you pay people more, you're still you've still got the same people. Okay at the laboratory level.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

At the retail level, you want to pay people more because the product you're selling is expensive, and if it's more than they can afford, they're gonna have a hard time selling it. Okay Well, I was wrong. I was very wrong. Uh we raised the minimum payment and raised everybody's salary at identity, and suddenly the people that were there took more of an interest in the quality of the work, the quality of the lab's work. The when you ask them to do something, um, it wasn't immediately, you know, gruffness back. I only make blah blah blah. Why do you expect me to do that? That it was never that. It was, well, okay, but why are we doing that? And they really started to take an interest in the quality and the throughput. And so as as an industry, we tend to underpay. Uh, I mean, you and I both know that the markups on not Couture, okay, Couture is like a little more than Keystone, you know, maybe two, three times. Where when it's the less expensive stuff, it's like five times, six times. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Okay. But but the thing is, is, is we pay people in dollars, not in percentages. So if I'm buying a cheaper product and I mark it up six times, I still may only make 40 bucks. 50 bucks. Well, that person who's sitting there, if I only have three people come in and sell, it's 150 bucks. If I'm paying $15 an hour and we're out in 10 hours, I made nothing. Matter of fact, I lost money because I've got to pay the their, you know, the government's part of their tax. Okay? Right. Um so I'm not trying to be unfair, but what I am saying is that in order to get the quality of product that people believe is there, they have to pay a little more.

SPEAKER_02 29:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

I mean, it's just, or we need to charge more. We need to do better on what we charge.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

I I don't know it market for market, but I see more interest in opticians opening their own boutiques. And again, I don't know if it's a I don't know what's driving the surge of interest, but I'm guessing that it's not without any research. So, you know, opticians having Yeah it is.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

And the reason I say that could be true. And the reason I say it is, is it's it's to open an optical shop, if you've got some nice furniture pieces and you go and you spend, you know, you find a place that you can get into for $1,500 a month, you know you're gonna make you know you can make that and pay your electric bill. And if it's you who's working, I can build my business and I can buy these frames, uh, the lesser expensive frames. It's only a few thousand dollars, ten, fifteen thousand dollars to fill it up with decent stuff. What else do I need? I don't need a lot to open a store.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

You bring a really good point into play. Um I can think of two functioning, making money auditions that don't even have a website in Philadelphia here.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Don't need I find that in you don't need one. My dad, my dad taught me the best way to pick a location. Okay, stand where you want to be, okay? Put your hand on your wallet, hold your glasses like this, and turn around 180 degrees. And as long as within two to three miles, that's your customer base. Right. That's your location.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

So let's say you turn and all of that is fields and barns and whatever, and you turn over here and you know it's it's starter homes, you know, you're probably not in a great place.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Well, yeah, you gotta get out of there.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

You know, you gotta be you gotta be whatever the town is. You got you know, is there a lot of traffic on the road? Is it the kind of traffic that you want? Are there people who are walking in the shopping center? What's the draw in the in the strip center you may be in? What's the other draw that's in there? I mean, we used to love to be next to grocery stores. Okay, we'd find the busiest grocery store we could, and we'd put a store right next door, or at least within walking distance.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

You know, traffic.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Yeah. If somebody gets out of the car and walks by, and then the other thing that we did in our couture stores is we actually hired window dressers from ladies' clothing stores to come and dress our windows. So we had moving parts and trains that would go around. People would walk back and forth to see our windows that we would change every six to eight weeks. If you're not creating your own traffic and you're not in a location where there is traffic, you may as well, you know, you may as well take that lighter out of your pocket, take the coins out of your power or the cash out of your pocket, and just you know, light it up.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

It's the truth. We'll definitely see it.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

I mean, there's a town, there's a town not too far from here uh that does concerts in the square and all that kind of stuff, and they've got tons of traffic and great restaurants. And there's a jeweler there that asked me if I would open an optical shop next to him. I'm like, I'm not I'm not paying for it. If you want, I'll come office there and I'll just I'll sell and dispense for you a couple days a week.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

That's just it. It's there's it's a lane he's not interested in. But people are still asking him about it, which is just crazy.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Well, it's not even that. It's it's it's that it ticks every box. There's always people walking there. There's restaurants that people come from all around to go to. It has a concert on the square. We used to we used to do fundraisers and build and put tents in the in the parking lot in front of our store and do fundraisers. So people would be walking around in their night in their nice dresses and jewelry and all of that. And we do a fundraiser in the store. And you know, 20% of everything sold would go to whatever. And then we also had a silent auction and we did all did a regular old fundraiser. And so now all of a sudden we've got all the people from the Heart Association or from the Cancer Group or whatever, you know, they're in my store. Those are the people I want, the people who have cash to burn are who I want in my store. So why would I not why would I not do what is important to them?

SPEAKER_01 34:39

Well, there was just a discussion on auditions on Facebook about multi-vendor trunk show. And you know, I know you're talking a benefit, but in the same vein, it can work quite well. Maybe not for every vendor. Depends on who's there.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

The the the to be the most successful at that, and there's guys in in uh Louisiana who do this. Today is your day, Mr. Preck. This is your day. You get Sunday, and I'm gonna get this frame company Monday, and I'm gonna get this frame company Tuesday, I'm gonna get this frame company Wednesday, and you have a trunk show week, and you bring in six or seven of your best vendors, and you market it for the whole week and list who it is, and you know what? Then you know what you're gonna carry because if I don't get enough of a draw from your frame line on on Sunday, then I might not carry your product because you're not enough of a draw into my store.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

It gives you specifically who to email, text, bang.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

If you if you wanna if you wanna do that, I mean that you know you can.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

When you know what of in your client base, the other thing is wearing that for Ablein, and you're gonna be there Tuesday.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

How many of it how many of us watch television streaming? Everybody these days, right?

SPEAKER_03 36:10

Pretty much everybody.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Um there are still people who pay their cable bill and and like watching commercials, I get that. But on the on the streaming platforms, there are still ways to advertise, and it's really inexpensive. And you could actually run TV spots on streaming deals in the neighborhoods you want, specific to a neighborhood. And in it, and it's amazing. I mean, I'm watching I'm watching these uh uh telephone game companies buying it, buying all that up because they're not that expensive.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

You know, people just need to change, and this goes back to our original conversation, our original comment. Uh, and maybe we didn't, maybe this hasn't been recorded, maybe this was before we were talking. What seems to be the hardest, let me see, let me rephrase this. What makes people successful in our business is when they are willing to adapt to how the consumer is shopping or looking for eyewear. Nobody has to worry about someone else coming into the market and taking their business. What they need to worry about is not making the change in a timely manner, in the way that it needs to be, in order to one, maintain, but not maintain necessarily that customer, but to maintain that volume so that they can grow and build on top of it. I mean, the one thing that that I find really hysterical about our business, there is still a huge push for progressives. Okay? Progressives are and were designed for my generation. Okay? So baby boomers are coming, it's this huge group of people. Let's focus and market to that group because they're coming. Okay. We're here, we're dying, we're, you know, it's they're gone. What money and what focus is being put on to the next crowd? You know, the generation alphabet. Okay. Generation alphabets, alphabet soup generation, which is you know, X, Y, Z, Q, P, D, Q, whatever. Right. Uh what are we doing for them? They're mainly still single vision wearers. Are we coming up with technology for the things that they enjoy? Are we spending time and effort and money on um night driving glasses or uh a polarized lens that gives them it teach them about polarized lenses? Because we all know once you wear polarized, you're polarized forever. Or most people are. Um, but you know, are we are we coming out with that really great polarizer? Are we coming out with mirrors? Because they love mirrors, because you know, that's a fashion statement. Are we coming up with an easy way to touch them and reach them and make them that single vision pair of glasses? No. We're still focused on what's the best progressive. How am I going to get an OC height accurately? Uh well, you're using a four millimeter dot from someone who's five feet tall and a guy who's six feet tall, and you're kind of close-ish. Come on. Let's let's refocus as an industry and give the consumer what they want. And that's not what we're doing. We're not giving the whole reason Warby Parker and Zenny and all of those uh became popular was because that alphabet soup generation, that group, they want to be able to buy a pair of glasses to wear with an outfit to go to that concert.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

And they want to do it for under a hundred bucks.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

And they'll get it.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

All day long. All day long. That part of our industry isn't growing because it's not a thing. Are there still people out there that we're trying to hang on to that will buy the traditional way? Yeah. They're my age, and we're dying. So we can either we can either take our our industry and push it towards that, or we can leapfrog over where they are now, okay, which is I want to be able to get something cool that I can wear that's gonna last me a few years. We can leapfrog that and we can start worrying about Meta. Meta's great, technology's fun, all that's fantastic. It's gonna get a whole lot better. I mean, I'm I'm I'm real deep into developing a new product that that's gonna be super cool, but the product doesn't matter as much as the technology that's behind it. And the problem is we're listening to the technology companies, and we're not allowing, we're not setting up the dynamic for the wearables to where the optician can make a living. They're selling it. There's well, they're selling it like it's um uh like it's uh um we're selling it like it is uh going into a Best Buy. Best Buy buys something, they keystone it, you know, they've got their whole, you know, we take a hit, blah, blah, blah. Uh you can't do that in an optical shop. I may get three people one day, I may get seven people another day, I may get two people one day, I may get ten people another day. Right. It's not consistent. You need that extra margin in order to be able to keep your door open. They're taking that margin away from the optician. And they keep saying, well, y'all can make it on your lenses. That's not how we do business. If I've got to touch it, unless you're gonna give me a warranty that says anything that goes wrong with it, you're gonna pay for and give me another frame, which they're not. They're saying it's your problem. If you break it, it's your problem.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

It's giving the independent optician working for a doc or themselves. It gives them the opportunity to stand on a set of ethics about controlled data, a lot of other issues, too. Right, which is can become part of the equation when prescription glasses are going into the any meta I wear.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things we're working on. When you look at Meta and you look at some of the other guys that are out there, uh they presently are using the large language models uh that are out there that take whatever data you give and take, they're taking that to uh to train the large language model.

SPEAKER_02 43:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:17

One of the things that we're working on uh in the product we will be coming out with uh is siloing that data, that conversation to the user, just to the user. Now, they'll have to pay for that privacy.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

If they want to use the large language model version that everybody else is using, great, you'll have that and and and it'll be much less expensive. But if you want to have your own, it's gonna cost a little more. But one thing I've learned from my parents, my grandfather and my father, I should say, is that I'm not gonna come out with a product until the product has the ability to give people um a quality version of what's Out there. And right now, everything is a little big, it's a little bulky, it's a little heavy, uh, it doesn't last very long. The heads-up display. Well, the heads-up display is um uh the one there are a few that are coming, going to be coming out that are full color. Uh but right now there's like a green screen, which to me reminds me of the 80s. You know, the the the the monitors that were green. And you could you you remember that video games were where you read, I walked forward three steps and banged in my face into a wall. Oh, there's a door to my right. Take one step to the right. Yeah. Anyway, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

You sound like a bad DM. Figure out what DM is, people.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

Um Dungeon Dungeon Master, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

There we go. Oh, you gave it away. But we're talking about tech that we like and didn't like, and and how you you you take a cool name where you find silver linings. It's gonna work, you know.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Um matches the beard.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Well well, you hit a lot of those right there, because even in the things that are off base, there's opportunity to connect in other ways and and and and and and keep the the sanctity of the information in the in in the right places. Um I want to hit because I will forget this completely. When I asked about tech that you liked, you mentioned a two-headed coburn generator. Yeah. I I only work with a 113 with coolant, not not oil. Um, but talk talk about that. I had heard about it. I never used it. Supposed to be spectacular.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

It it was great and it sped things up, but it just like everything else in new technology, it always needed a little bit of work. You talked about oil and coolant, so I have to tell you this story. I'm really that when you get to a certain age, your life is about telling stories. So I apologize to anybody who's listening to the.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

No, no, these are good.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

But but I'm sitting across so the the guy who ran the lens department for us, his son and I were about the same age, and they put us both on the generators facing each other. And we had generator oil in the middle, you know, the little bath of oil. And uh we were gonna do a race to see who could surface the most lenses. And I mean, I'm just cooking and he's cooking, and I'm a little bit ahead, and he's gonna get ahead, he's gonna get ahead of me, and he doesn't realize that he put in a photochromic lens and he takes off a little bit too much. That oil does catch fire. Boom! He had a beard, I did not, from here to here, no hair, all gone. And flash blind, and they had to race him off to, you know, had to race him off to the hospital. He was fine. His hair grew back. Um but yeah, I there were there were some fun things that happened in the lab. I mean, one summer, now now uh one of the things that I did like about uh working in a lab every summer and and every vacation was one summer um I uh would take two cylinder machines off the line and we would break them down, change out all the parts that needed to be changed out that they weren't almost new. We repainted the case, we sandblasted and repainted the cases, and we'd put them back in line, make sure that they were, you know, calibrated, there were, there was enough throw and all this stuff. Uh and then we'd grab two more and do that. So I got to spend a whole summer tearing down and rebuilding uh cylinder machines. I mean, I think we had we had like 18 of them. I mean, it was a lot of them. But my point is that I got a chance to do everything in a lab. I tore down um edgers, I tore down generators and rebuilt them. Uh we used to have to, when it was all glass, we would chemically treat the glass. Of course, everybody thought it'd be really funny because I used to get there at five to empty it and reload it. And then at night before I'd leave, I'd I'd load it. Well, they thought they'd be really funny and load the baskets and put a plastic lens in there. Well, plastic will catch fire.

unknown 48:30

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 48:31

So I'm sitting here with these long, you know, asbestos gloves putting it in, lowering it down and closing the thing, and boom! Uh, yeah, they love to jack around with the owner's kid. They had a blast.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

I I worked for a window time in the late 90s. I ran the lab, uh, Clark Appler Lover, which was a five location at that time in old school opticians, Baltimore area. And Tom Appler told me a story. Yeah, they were the shenanigans that you're talking about. And and the guy smoked a cigar after lunch, and he's he's generating and he puts a load in there. You know? And he's talking to someone else, and the guy goes, You put one in there? I did too, and they turn, boom, and this whole cigar just blows right out of the guy's mouth. It's like, oh my god. So much for safety.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

We I was gonna say, we had fun. We did have fun. The uh yeah, no, uh so uh back in the old days they used to make uh uh frames weren't made out of cellulose acetate, which is a plant materi-based plastic. Uh it was made out of a different type of acetate uh that was flammable. And so my grandfather and his uh partner Julie, uh guy, um are sitting there chatting, and there's and everybody smoked in the lab back then, right? You had an asteroid next to you, everybody smoked. Uh anyways, somebody flicked it over into the pile of duh of shavings, and they almost burnt down the whole frame factory. So yeah, I mean, you know, there's always there's always some story that's out there that's fun. But I re I do remember also um when standards began, okay, the Optical Manufacturers Association was uh working on ANSI standards. Okay. Uh we are a self-regulated, mostly self-regulated, except in safety uh industry. Right. So we were coming up with the OSHA standards, and one of the one of our competitors stands up and goes, why do we need all of this? Everything that comes out of my factory is perfect out of my laboratory is perfect. And I I remember I was 12, I remember looking up at my dad and I go, Dad, is he fucking stupid? Pardon me, by the way. I don't know if you have to bleep this stuff or not, but you know, it's what YouTube says. Yeah. But I mean it was like it's like, are you gotta be kidding me? There's no way.

SPEAKER_01 51:18

That's the ego. Jeez.

SPEAKER_00 51:22

I I I I hope you're right. But but what I see more prevalent is instead of us as an industry trying to educate the consumer, we do our best to keep the consumer in the dark so that they have to take what we're giving them. One of the things you and I have talked about multiple times over the last few years is we would love to be able to afford, number one, because we do have to get paid in order to live, uh, but be able to afford to create consumer education when it comes to eyewear. Um and we talked about building an AI to do it, and we've talked about other stuff as well, but but I think our industry is afraid to teach the consumer. You know, when they were talking, when instead of talking about the advantages of anti-reflective coding, it was about CRAZAL. It was just branding. So we have no problem branding, we have no problem naming something, uh Verilux. You know, we have no problem saying that you know Verilux is the same thing as Kleenex, it's just a brand name. There are there's equally as good a product out there, uh, if some even better. Um, but my point is that or the sad point is um I really think that people would find what we do fascinating. I've never done a lab tour or a factory tour when I was making frames because I ran a frame factory for five years. Um, you know, I I I've never taken anyone on a tour where they weren't stunned at what goes into making a pair of glasses.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

Well, we're not gonna go deep down this in this conversation, in this podcast. But you and I have that unique opportunity to plug all those things in in Philadelphia. And that's gonna be an exciting project. The problem is it's just 27. It's not gonna be in 26 and all likely.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

Well, and it and I'm still looking forward to being able to do it, but you know, it's some again, we've got to be able to afford to do it because um I'm I'm I'm finished doing things for free. So not not that this isn't not that you're paying me for this because you're not.

SPEAKER_01 54:05

No. Well, what uh what I want to end on is a product that that I've seen and I'm eager to get my hands on. But talk about what Eagle Eyes is bringing to the mix right now.

SPEAKER_00 54:23

Well, Eagle Eyes has been a sunglass company for decades. And they have had unique products that have superior technology over almost anything. And and as a matter of fact, back in the Royal days, we had a similar product that we sold a ton of uh when it comes to the blue blue blocking lens, not a blue filtering lens, which is what everybody else is selling, but a blue blocking lens, one that takes the entire takes almost the entire spectrum of blue and filters it out, okay? Uh instead of trying to tweak which one it needs to be, which they also have, by the way. Um but they also found the chemistry of the eye of an eagle and what increases the acuity and ability for an eagle to see like it does. Okay? They don't that yeah. And they've put that into a lens. They have uh created a UV filtering lens that uh that NASA used, and it's the only NASA certified uh lens product that's out there. And all of that has been sold as Plano product. And they now are going to uh uh start launching to the world uh the ability to put to make this into prescription eyewear. They still have their great collection of sunglasses and and and you know we've all seen the the glasses that that uh elder folks put over their their glasses to have as sunglasses. Problem is is is that the temple is is blocked. On these, they actually have a lens there that you can have peripheral vision. They have clip-ons where you can have uh night night vision uh clip-on, you can have uh your computer vision clip-on, and you can have your sunglass, your high-end polarized um product uh clip-on. So now you buy one pair of glasses, put your script in it, and you have clips that give you all the filtration and/or I mean their selection, and they've got the the regular fun stuff, the pilots and the aviators and the and the wraps and all that kind of stuff. They have all of that as well.

SPEAKER_01 56:42

So yeah, the interchangeable clip, you know, and I immediately think of uh a driving lens and then the sun lens and then then the blue light protection people asking about. It it that's fascinating to me. Especially it's all right there, prescription behind it. It it brings all the needs into a single place.

SPEAKER_00 57:04

So I invented a custom clip on. Uh, got a patent, all that other stuff, went out and sold it in the world. One of the things that was really critical that I wanted that I want to bring up now, just because I think it's important for people to know backside AR on a clip, AR coding on your lens. And the reason is is in between you don't want the light bouncing back and forth and creating additional reflections. So when you do when you do if you buy these and you put your prescription in the in the frame, make sure that it has AR coding because the lenses in the clips do.

unknown 57:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 57:46

But you should.

SPEAKER_00 57:47

Yeah, it's it's just a really cool thing. And and I'm I'm as you know, I'm starting to work with them. So uh and and I'm just loving, you know, the tech. It it's not all brand new tech, but it is tech that is still superior to the new stuff that's coming out. So that's important. You know, it's it doesn't have to be new to be the best.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

Well, it's got improved options. Yeah. You talked about the side on the on the fitovers, all those options, you know, on front. On front of the frame. It that I won't even try to get into explaining it. It but the links will definitely be in the show notes. Um is there any piece of wisdom you'd like to leave to us as we approach an hour here?

SPEAKER_00 58:41

Um I do want to say that that that we're all entitled to our opinions uh as to what's going on. I have been doing this for a little while, so I I have mine have grown from my personal experience. But that the one thing that I think our industry needs more than anything is that camaraderie and the ability for us to reach out to each other and work with each other and kind of get back to that. Because uh to compete for the well-being of others just doesn't sound right, does it? If we are working together in unison for the well-being of others, that kind of makes more sense. So I would like to invite really our entire industry to start working together to improve the experience and the well-being of our patients.

SPEAKER_01 59:45

And take that message to the masses. This is you talked about this on this podcast, your father translating that directly with a colleague who had a fire. Um those are proud moments to talk about in our dis history and in our lineage. It doesn't mean that we need to ignore or reinvent the wheel, but be there for one another and start coming together. All the three O's. But kind of start with opticianry, and then they're gonna bring everything else around that. And it's happening now.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:27

But I think the responsibility for delivery of eyewear needs to stay with the optician. I think that when you start to reach over into other people's uh part of the profession, your motivations are different. My motivation as an optician is doctor, you need to see more people so I can sell more glasses. No. Truth of the matter is, doctor, you need to give your patient the best service and quality and health care that you can. That's your job. You make your decision on who you want to be. But when it comes to glasses, let me make sure that I have the best quality frames, the best quality lenses, the best service. And I'll make sure that you, because this is your building and you're taking the risks, I'll make sure that you make a living. And that this I mean, most of the people excuse me, most of the doctors that I have consulted for. Right. Most of them that I have consulted for, almost 50% of their revenue comes out of the dispensary.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:41

But the optician doesn't get that respect. So we need to, we need to, it needs to be a back and forth. It needs to be a partnership.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:48

Completely. You all talk about opticians. You talk to opticians. What's the deal?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:03

But we are upticians. We are up, but we but we are optics. Yeah, we are opticians. You know what? It's like it's it's kind of like uh going to another country and saying to somebody, by the way, you need to carry an American flag. No, you don't. You do whatever you want. You do your you do you, and I'll do me. But if I can benefit you, and this goes back to the original comment I made, if I can benefit you and I can work with you and I can help you, then that's what we all need to do. We all need to figure out a way where we can help each other. But not but not take that ability away from someone else to help me, or vice versa. Me help them.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:51

Pay it forward.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:53

Uh pay it sideways. Shake hands, be friends.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:59

It it's there.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:01

And you know, it just becom it just needs to be more, it just needs to be more prevalent. It needs to really be more of a a way of of living, not not yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

The coming together is happening, and I think to a degree, the more presence we have, the more presence of all good and bad and ugly we'll have. But we'll focus on the good. And it's gonna it's gonna work out well.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:26

I will t I will tell you, one of two things is going to happen. It is either going to happen uh with us uh participating, or it's going to happen on its own because the consumer will go where it is the most comfortable for them to um not just learn, to get what they're looking for. You know, the the one thing that our industry forgets, because we're so tied into it, the one thing we forget is that all we really are to a patient is I can't see really well, I need to go to the eye doctor. And imagine a to-do list, we're one line on a to-do list. Go to the eye doctor because they want to see better. We've got all this other stuff that we put around. Just let me see. Get me some glasses that look good on me, and let me see.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:28

It's the truth. Self-import to be there.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

Self-importance is self-importance gets in our way occasionally.