NEW YORK—It’s been a busy two years since Eric Leonard became president of Essilor of America. Since arriving at EOA’s Dallas headquarters fresh from a four-year stint as head of Essilor Europe, the veteran executive has deftly guided the company’s growth in key segments of the optical market.

Among the most important moves Essilor has recently made is its entry into the optometric sector. In 2015, it acquired Vision Source and Professional Eyecare Resource Cooperative (PERC)/Infinity Vision Alliance (IVA), which collectively have over 7,300 independent optometrist members. In April, 2016, Essilor acquired Opti-Port, an alliance of eyecare providers who operate over 400 offices throughout the U.S. As the major supplier to these groups, Essilor can leverage supply chain efficiencies to help them grow their practices and compete more effectively.

In the wholesale sector, Essilor continues to expand through strategic acquisitions of independent prescription labs, most recently U.S. Optical, one of the largest in the industry.

The company has also grown its core spectacle lens business, adding new products such as Eyezen, a new concept in single vision lenses, and Smart Blue Filter, a treatment that protects wearers against harmful blue light.

Pumping up its consumer profile, Essilor has promoted its Varilux, XPerio, Transitions and Eyezen brands through an omni-channel marketing approach that utilizes advertising, public relations, social media and point-of-sale materials.

Essilor also reaches consumers through the Essilor Vision Foundation, which provides eyewear and eyecare to millions of underserved Americans. The company has raised the public’s awareness about eyecare as a founding partner and major supporter of the Think About Your Eyes campaign.

Leonard’s diverse business background has equipped him the knowledge and experience to guide Essilor of America through its current expansion phase and beyond. After studying engineering at university, Leonard started his career in 1990 as purchasing manager for PSA Peugeot Citroen.

He then worked for The Boston Consulting Group before joining Essilor International as chief sourcing officer, a position he held from 2002 to 2005. Leonard served as executive director of Transitions Optical from 2004 to 2005, general manager for Essilor France from 2005 to 2010, and president of Essilor Europe from 2010 to 2014.

On a visit to Vision Monday’s headquarters in New York in July, Leonard offered his perspective on how Essilor of America is meeting the needs of its customers with better service, improved supply chain efficiencies, new marketing and distribution methods and innovative technologies. Wearing a blue button down shirt, a sweater draped around his shoulders, khakis and blue and gray frames with Transitions lenses, the 50-year-old Frenchman looked more like a college professor than a corporate executive. During a wide ranging discussion with VM’s Andrew Karp, he gave thoughtful, detailed answers to questions and offered insightful comments about market trends.

The interview has been condensed and edited.

Vision Monday: Historically, Essilor has always been a spectacle lens company. But today the company is involved in many sectors of the optical market. How would you describe the business Essilor is in today?

Eric Leonard: We’re in more or less the same business, with more or less the same objectives. At the core, our mission is basically more or less unchanged since 1849, when the company was created, which is helping people see better.

Of course, it would be very dangerous to expect that by doing exactly the same things over and over we’ll continue to be successful. We are adapting ourselves to the evolution of the market to what we see is moving, what is going on in the market, and it pushes us to do things in a little bit different way.

VM: Yes, but Essilor has become more multi-dimensional. For example, it has recently acquired doctor alliances, and through them is providing doctors with the tools to grow their practices. It has also expanded the consumer-facing part of its business.

EL: Our business is to provide the best optical solution for our clients. Essilor has always been about innovation and partnership. The way we have always done business is by creating very strong partnerships with eyecare professionals on a worldwide basis. We see the demands of our clients evolving and we try to adapt to these evolving demands.

When you are talking about the alliances, we have been working with them since their inception, in fact. The relationship has changed a little bit because we wanted to go one step further and be in a position where we could invest more in order to develop more sophisticated solutions for them that require larger investment. The fact that we have a long-term relationship is helping us to do it.

I spend a lot of my time in the field meeting eyecare professionals in different places. I don’t think the relationship we have with them has changed. For me, it looks very much the same as it did five or 10 years ago. We are trying to understand their needs, how they see their market evolving, what they are expecting from us, what we are doing well, and what we are not doing so well.

But the type of solutions we want to develop are more sophisticated than they used to be because the market is more competitive and has evolved quite a bit. It’s clear we need to address those changes in terms of marketing and going direct to the consumer. If we are not connecting with the consumer to help them know about our products and support our brands we are not doing our job properly for the ECP.

The digitalization of the economy is putting a lot of pressure on us to change how we service our clients. In my day to day job, though, a lot of my focus remains the same. It’s about how we can deliver our products faster, it’s about how we can improve the quality of our product, it’s about how we can launch new, innovative products. That’s really the core of what we’re doing, and its 90 percent of what the company is working on.

VM: What’s an example of how this more sophisticated approach to serving client needs is taking shape?

EL: There are several examples. One is the supply chain part. We are trying to offer a faster, easier to use frame and lens solution. We are developing partnerships with frame manufacturers, the leading ones as well as smaller ones. We are relatively agnostic in terms of frames because we are not active in this field. So we are looking at how we can make this supply chain better.

We have an inventory of frames in some of our labs. We work with the frame vendors in order to keep the frame on display in the offices. And so when a consumer selects the frame, it will stay on the board, and we will deliver the full job to the clients. By doing so, there are two main advantages. It’s much faster; we can deliver the product in a couple of days. And by not removing the frame from your display, you are keeping the best frames available for your client. So you can sell the best seller several times.

We have a big, new distribution center in Lewisville, Texas. It’s actually more than a distribution center. We have products from 22 different vendors under one roof and have the possibility of shipping frames and lenses together to the ECP, which is easier to manage and reduces shipping costs.

We are also improving our labs, reducing turnaround time by over 20 percent. We will continue to work on this. We are going to develop a new offering for a very fast lab. We believe the market is looking for this. We’re making sure this will happen.

We’re also spending a lot of time on quality. We have developed new processes, and a new quality lab in Dallas, to make sure that the quality of our lens designs will be controlled. Digital design is fantastic, but it is much more difficult to control than semi-finished. We have a state-of-the-art facility to make sure the processes and control is done. We get lenses from all our labs on a daily basis, to make sure all the processes are meeting our quality standards. We are investing a lot of time on improving our service. We’ll introduce 24-hour delivery in 2017.

VM: When you talk about the digitalization of the economy, what are you referring to? Online, manufacturing?

EL: It’s pretty broad, but one of the key elements is the digitalization of the relationship with the consumer. It opens new opportunities. It changes the competitive dynamics. It can go from how to develop the right solution to help our client to communicate with their consumers. Or it can be our direct communications to consumers to support our key brands.

Or it can be a solution on the contact lens side, where we have this new product, CLX [a contact lens ordering, managing and marketing system] which makes it very easy for the consumer to refill their prescription. I think it could be a major support for the ECP to get back the market share they should have in selling contact lenses. They’ve lost a lot of ground here, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t get it back.

VM: Many ECPs have embraced the idea of marketing their own services and products online, sometimes with help from Essilor. But many see online retailers as competition, and Essilor has taken a stake in some major online suppliers. How does Essilor help ECP customers navigate this complex landscape?

EL: What we are seeing with the internet is that some people get very emotional about it, and they say ‘It’s killing my business. It’s not the way things should be done. I do not like it.’ I can understand this kind of reaction.

But on the other side, the internet will continue to be there. And when you look at what has happened in other industries, retailers have learned to see how they can leverage the internet and how they can compete with it. In order to leverage it, you cannot stay with this emotional reaction. You have to say, ‘How am I going to use it?’

It has changed the way people are behaving and shopping. So we’ve developed programs to teach people how to use social media and how to develop their online rating. I wouldn’t say everyone has to have an offering to sell online product, but everyone has to have an active presence online to communicate with consumers.

VM: You’ve said that the connection between brick and click is stronger here in the U.S. and that’s connected to the value and the need for the eye exam.

EL: What I mean is there’s a very big advantage for optometrists in the U.S. and the importance of the eye exam, which is quite unique when you look at it on a worldwide basis. And it’s thanks to the fantastic job that the The American Optometric Association (AOA) has done over many years and all the effort that has been put into it to make sure that people have a comprehensive eye exam on a regular basis.

It’s very important from a health point of view. And you have to go to a brick-and-mortar location for an exam. So if you go there, then it’s very easy to purchase there. It’s just a matter of having the right offer to make sure you do it in the store. So the benefits of online could be more on the repurchase. Once you have done it once, we know that people do not purchase very often in a practice outside the eye exam. But many people come back to the practice for their next exam.

So we see a huge opportunity that is often underestimated to grow the size of the market in volume. We see on the internet side that people are buying an average of 1.3 or 1.4 pair a year online, when they purchase 0.4 pair a year in the store. So we see this opportunity to start the process, you are in-store, you buy your first pair in-store, then you buy your second pair online, then you are back in-store. People want it, people need it. For sun Rx, for example, it’s obvious.

VM: What is Essilor doing to move this opportunity forward on the sunglass side?

EL: One of our key targets is to develop the sun Rx market, which should be much bigger. There are different elements that are required. The first one is that you need to have sunglasses on display in the dispensary. Right now, it’s often very limited. We need to help and convince ECPs that’s it’s meaningful to have this product.

The second element is a question of price sensitivity. We know that sun Rx is expensive to manufacture but people are not ready to spend generally as much on it because they are going to use it less, and they can lose it. We are building a solution to make it, on our side, more affordable. But what really matters is to make sure it’s more affordable on the consumer level.

You see in our Power of Vision promotion, we multiply the value by three if the consumer buys Transitions, Crizal, Varilux or Eyezen and an Xperio product or tinted product. When we do these kinds of things, we see sun Rx increase by 40 percent to 50 percent, although that is based on a small number. It’s working.

We see when we are focusing on some of our clients who build a dedicated program, you can collectively move up to 20 percent. When they get their first pair of sun Rx, they love it. It’s a very large opportunity. It’s not that difficult to execute. You need to develop it, work on a plan in your store, and have the right price point.

VM: Let’s talk about Eyezen, which is has been on the market for about a year. It’s a unique, single vision product and the way Essilor has marketed it online and distributed it directly to consumers is different for the company. Essilor recently introduced Eyezen Plus, which includes Smart Blue Filter and is available exclusively through ECPs. How are these new products being received by ECPs and consumers?

EL: We have been amazed how these products have been received by ECPs and consumers on a worldwide basis. It’s moving extremely fast. For us, it’s probably been the most important innovation in the single vision world, the pre-presbyopes, in many years. It’s a great differentiator for the practices that are pushing it. We have so many testimonials from people who say ‘It’s made my life so much better.’

We have a bigger mission for this product. We think it will be the standout solution for single vision. We don’t know how many years it’s going to take. It’s a question of changing the habits, especially at the dispensing level. We price it at a level that is extremely reasonable in order to develop this high conversion. We see in markets outside of the U.S, some markets are already at 20 percent. In the U.S., it’s a little less, because it takes time to train everybody.

We have a multi-channel strategy for Eyezen. In order to introduce something really big we need different channels. On one side, we have exclusive products for independent eyecare professionals with this Smart Blue Filter technology, which is very nice from a cosmetic standpoint, it’s perfectly white and transparent. And you have a range of products, so as a professional you can offer something really unique that can only be done in-store.

VM: Essilor recently acquired the consumer-facing website All About Vision. What’s the strategy behind this acquisition?

EL: We have several initiatives in this area. One is the Vision Impact Institute, which is gathering all the information about the impact of vision on society. We have an involvement in Think About Your Eyes, in order to convince the consumer to have an eye exam. And now we have All About Vision, which provides the consumer with access to all the right information from the right professionals.

Some of the information you get on the internet is not reliable. But the information All About Vision provides is very trustworthy and comes from leading optometrists in the U.S. We think it really makes a lot of sense for us to continue to push this information. It will remain completely unbranded and will be completely independent from an editorial point of view.

VM: Many consumers think eyewear is too expensive, and that has opened the door for Warby Parker and other companies that tap into consumers’ dissatisfaction. Warby Parker initially offered $95 frames. Now they’re offering a frame and progressive lens package for $295.

Essilor has always promoted premium products at considerably high price points. How is Essilor helping the independent ECP to address this kind of competition, and influence consumer attitudes about what is a reasonable value for eyewear?

EL: Even if we are really known for our top products, our top brands, our objective is really to have offerings at all price points. We are developing marketing techniques in order to explain to the consumer why it’s meaningful to them to spend a little bit more money in order to have the right products. We know that our products are made using high technology which has a cost. We want to make sure it’s easy for the consumer to understand why it’s worth it to spend more money.

We know one of the more difficult targets is the Millennials. When you are young, you do not believe something can go wrong with your eyes, and you care more about the fashion. Warby Parker has been very successful at putting together these elements.

I think an ECP can really compete with the price of Warby Parker if they choose to do it. They can offer Eyezen or other products from us. However, a lot of ECPs tell us, ‘It’s not the market I want to serve.’

VM: Let’s talk about your background. When you went to work for Essilor 14 years ago, one of your first jobs was chief sourcing officer.

EL: Actually, I was a consultant to Essilor first, working for Boston Consulting Group. The last project I worked on was how to improve overall purchasing and sourcing. They liked it and asked me to join the company.

VM: To what extent were you able to draw on your experience with supply chain management in your current role?

EL: It helped quite a bit. It was an amazing position from which to understand the company. Because purchasing is involved in a very wide array of decisions from marketing, manufacturing, supply chain, technology, everything is somewhat related.

Among the projects that I worked on when I was in charge of purchasing, part of it was about relationship with companies like Satisloh, part of it was around supply chain, how to make it more efficient, and how we can add external resources to make it much faster. Part of it was relationships with big companies to develop better products. Even if we are a large company, a lot of what we are doing requires external relationships with suppliers.

VM: You ran Essilor Europe before coming to the U.S. What differences and similarities did you find in running the two companies?

EL: Our definition of Europe is 27 countries, so what is difficult and also very interesting is when you manage 27 different countries with 27 different regulations. When you have one country that has managed care but in another one you don’t, or in one country retail is dominant but in another independents have 97 percent of the market, you are facing a variety of situations. You see what is working and what isn’t working. You know solutions that work very well work in one country and absolutely won’t work in another country.

It was a great help for me when I arrived in the U.S., because the U.S. is one market. Although the New York market is different than the California market, there are a lot of commonalities. I always add some kind of reference point from my previous experience. It’s like a library of experience and examples that are useful. At the end of the day, everything is customized. The U.S. market is unique. We try to adapt.

We’ve added an integrated supply chain, increased our consumer engagement and implemented an omni-channel strategy. But the core remains critical for us. What’s most important is our mission, our engagement, and making sure we are grounded. It’s not about numbers or theories, it’s about what’s happening in the field, and the engagement of Essilor employees. The participation of our employees is what’s made us successful.

We are very proud of our low turnover. We conducted an employee survey and found that 85 percent of people are very satisfied to work for Essilor. You still see the same faces at Essilor for many years. People enter into the company from very different backgrounds, but they stay. That’s because of the culture of the company. You need to have a stable work force in order to serve your clients.

In order to continue to be successful, we need to change. But we need to keep the fundamentals.