On April 10, Nexus Vision Group hosted a reception at its lab near Columbus, Ohio to celebrate the opening of its new digital lens processing facility. The event was eagerly anticipated by the Nexus management team and the lab’s employees, which had successfully worked through a complex and, at times, difficult startup phase.
“We started Nexus to do free-form,” said Gerry Shaw of Western Carolina Optical, who serves as head of the Nexus Vision Group, a collective consisting of eight independently owned labs located throughout the Southeastern U.S., Nexus services not only its own members’ labs but other labs as well.
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| Inspecting a Satisloh MagnaSpin 2SV coater at Nexus Vision’s open house are (l to r) Pete Mayrand, lab manager at Western Carolina Optical, Bruce Brady, executive director of Optical Synergies, and Juan Pesante, general lab manager of the Nexus Vision Group. |
“Five years ago, when we first looked at digital surfacing, the technology was still in its infancy. When it was finally time to pull trigger, we looked at many machines in action, as well as various LMS systems. Then we did some forecasts of what we’re going to be able to do, looked at click fees and put together a budget for whole project.”
Shaw and his colleagues at Nexus decided to invest in Satisloh digital surfacing equipment and a Santinelli edging system.
“The process of going digital is not plug and play by any means,” Shaw remarked. “It takes a lot of planning time and money to bring it all together when you’re starting from scratch.
Shaw noted that a lot of planning was involved in making sure the lab’s infrastructure was adequate to handle considerable electrical power needs of the machinery. The data management side is equally complex, according to Shaw. “The amount of computing power we need to make all this work was fairly mindboggling,” he said. “I’ve got basically one server handling my lab work, but I also have 15 computers, one for every vendor. The LMS from DVI requires a number of computer with adequate backup. There’s a data line for each piece of equipment running back to the main servers.”
With digital lens production now in full swing, Nexus is benefiting from the improved efficiency.
“The machinery is much more efficient than standard surfacing,” marveled Shaw. “It’s amazing how many jobs you can do.”
Nexus is producing two licensed brands of progressives, Shamir Autograph and Seiko free-form as well as Proprius, a private label brand. With the three lenses positioned at different price points, Nexus is able to offer its accounts a choice of good, better and best.
“We’re able to purchase that lens at a more reasonable click fee, and it provides us with a better margin,” noted Shaw. “Anytime we get a doctor requesting our lens, it makes us feel safer in this economy.”
Nexus’s investment in digital is “a little north of one million dollars,” said Shaw, adding that it’s early to say when the lab will break even. “We’re taking some major risks in a down economy,” he said. “But we’re confident this is an investment in the future.”
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