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ProFit Optix Launches Industry’s First ‘Virtual Lab’

Globalization outsourcing is key to low cost structure

September 22, 2008 1:00 AM

 
Alan Yuster
BOCA RATON, Fla.--ProFit Optix, a Boca Raton-based optical technology startup company, is emerging with a new line of value-priced, free-form progressive lenses sourced through an alternative distribution system that lets eyecare professionals take advantage of lower manufacturing and distribution costs. Positioning itself as a “virtual lab,” the five-month-old company eschews the bricks and mortar infrastructure of conventional optical laboratories in favor of a streamlined, vertically integrated business model. Using proprietary software, international manufacturing partners, an online ordering system and value pricing, ProFit claims it can cut turnaround time on Rx orders and deliver quality progressive lenses to eyecare practitioners at significantly lower costs than its competitors.

“Our mission statement ‘Our vision is value,’ explains what ProFit Optix is all about,” said Alan Yuster, an optical industry veteran who serves as ProFit’s chief operating officer and is a partner in the company. “We’re delivering premium free-form PALs to the U.S. market at a cost that is 30 to 40 percent lower than most currently available free-form designs.

“Our virtual lab uses a globalization outsourcing model used in other industries,” noted Yuster, citing the dental laboratory industry as an example. “How can we bring the most up-to-date lens designs to market and keep pushing price down? Because we have minimal staff and minimal infrastructure. The demands on our margins are very different than for traditional labs. We hope to be the most efficient, cost-effective way for ECPs to source any free-form lens design worldwide.”

ProFit’s Web site, www.profitoptix.com, allows ECPs to order lenses directly from ophthalmic laboratories in lower cost labor markets such as China, Singapore, Taiwan and Eastern Europe and Central Europe. The labs use Federal Express and other courier services to ship finished Rxs to Profit’s headquarters in Boca Raton, where the lenses are inspected for quality before being redistributed to accounts. Lenses often arrive at ProFit within five days of being ordered, according to Yuster.

“We’re partnering with factories that have the best machinery, the best AR, the most up to date of everything and trying to reposition the value of those products at the wholesale level,” he said. “Any partner we deal with has to be DIN, ISO and ANSI compliant. In Boca Raton, we do statistical sampling, Rx quality and impact resistance testing. The only corners being cut are our margins here, and we’re passing the savings on to the ECPs,” Yuster remarked. ProFit offers a choice of four free-form progressive designs: Calligraphy, an adjustable corridor lens; Bravo, a one-fit lens; Architect, an office/work lens; and Kidz, for children. A wide range of lens indexes, coatings, and photochromic and polarized lens materials is available.

“These are internationally recognized designs from major international lens companies that have licensed our factory partners to use their formulations and some of the manufacturing processes,” said Yuster.

In addition, ProFit has contracted with several major lens manufacturers to market their products. At press time, ProFit’s list of approved suppliers and brands included Carl Zeiss Vision’s AO Easy HD, SOLA HDV, SOLAOne HD, SOLA Compact Ultra HD, Carl Zeiss Individual and Individual Short; Excelite’s F-16 and F-18; Rodenstock’s Multigressiv MyView and Impression and Signet Armorlite’s Kodak Unique. ProFit expects to add other manufacturer’s products soon, Yuster said.

To manage ProFit’s relationships with its factories and manufacturing partners, Yuster draws on more than 25 years experience in optical management and operations. Previously with Optische Werke G. Rodenstock Germany for three years as director of international sales-Americas and for 10 years as vice-president of Rodenstock USA, Yuster was responsible for strategic initiatives and planning as well as administration, sales, marketing, and profit and loss. He was instrumental in launching the first plastic aspheric Cosmolit lenses and the first aspheric/atoric progressive lens, Multigressive from Rodenstock North America. Yuster also served eight years as national sales manager for Younger Optics.

Asked if lens manufacturers were concerned that ProFit would undercut the prices of their own wholesale labs and partner labs, Yuster replied, “We’re being considered and treated by those companies as a virtual lab. They’re not giving us any terms or conditions that are different than other lab. We’re not changing their margins or profitability, we’re just making their products easier to order and more competitive in the market.”

ProFit also has signed distribution agreements with a number of major U.S. buying groups, including Block Buying Group, Premiere Vision, The Buyers Edge, The Alliance, Optical Resources, Combine Optical Group, Alfred J. Villavecchia Buying Group, Padro F. Corp. and Optical Synergies.

Although ProFit is competing with conventional wholesale labs, Yuster hopes to do business with labs that want to offer free-form lenses but do not want to invest in free-form surfacing equipment.

The company has hired a national sales manager, Glenna Glenn, and a regional sales manager, Tom Lyon, who will work with wholesale labs. ■

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