Often viewed by ECPs as an unexceptional or niche category, safety Rx (SRx) eyewear is breaking new ground these days with developments in technology that bring more fashion to the category and also make administration of safety programs less of a headache for employers and retailers.

But even as the SRx business got a slight lift the past several years from the steadily improving U.S. economy, another element has become a factor and opened the door to new growth opportunities, as well: a new emphasis on utilizing safety eyewear while working around the home on outdoor projects (lawn care, for example) or inside on certain hobbies (woodworking). The American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and the American Society of Ocular Trauma are now recommending that every household have at least one pair of ANSI-approved protective eyewear for such projects and activities.

These developments have not been missed by a number of eyecare retailers, both national chains and independents, nor by some lens and frame companies that continue to bring new ideas to SRx in an effort to gain share in this market.

“I remain pretty adamant that the demand [for SRx] is stronger than the supply right now,” said Adam Cherry, president of the independent wholesale lab Cherry Optical, Green Bay, Wis. “But providers are struggling with how they can make it something that is worth dealing with.”

For ECPs, who face a myriad of challenges in running their business on a daily basis, it is sometimes easy to overlook the behind-the-scenes headwinds that are helping to drive a solid, and many say steadily growing, SRx category. To capitalize on the safety category, ECPs should consider working either directly or in tandem with a lab partner to contact employers with SRx needs, prepare to meet the needs of the walk-in safety customer and/or utilize safety kits that make promoting SRx as a second pair to the streetwear customer.

The primary driver of SRx growth, of course, is the safety-at-work factor, which accounts for the largest portion of the millions of pairs of safety eyewear sold by ECPs every year.

According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), about 2,000 workers in the U.S. each day sustain a job-related eye injury that requires medical attention. Surprisingly, however, even more eye injuries result from the use or misuse of products at home rather than on the job, NIOSH reported. It is estimated that roughly 60 percent of all product-related eye injuries occur around or inside the home, according to Prevent Blindness America.

The American Optometric Association (AOA) has identified several potential eye hazards found in the workplace, and which should be addressed with workplace eye protection. The potential hazards are:

• Projectiles (dust, concrete, metal, wood and other particles)
• Chemicals (splashes and fumes)
• Radiation (especially visible light, ultraviolet radiation, heat or infrared radiation, and lasers)
• Blood-borne pathogens (hepatitis or HIV) from blood and body fluids

Additionally, AOA noted that some working conditions include multiple eye hazards. Further, health care workers, lab, cleaning staff and other workers may be at risk of acquiring infectious diseases from eye exposure. The proper eye protection takes all hazards into account.

Any injury to the eye potentially can cause some vision loss or even blindness. But most eye injuries are preventable with the use of proper eye protection. Prevention involves being aware of the common causes of injury and knowing how to protect your eyes—at home, at work and at play.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires workers to use eye and face protection whenever there is a reasonable probability of injury that could be prevented by such equipment. Safety eyewear must be OSHA-compliant and approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to meet its eye protection standards.

The Hilco SRx assortment includes the Camo-toned OG-240 model (top) and a blue-and-gray colored model OG225.
For consumers, locating an ECP with SRx capabilities should be simple. Recent research by The Vision Council estimated that roughly two-thirds of independent eyecare practices offer ANSI-rated Z87 safety eyewear.

“It’s a smart business decision that drives new patients, and potentially their families, to the practice,” a spokesperson for Plainville, Mass.-based Hilco said of the SRx opportunity. “What many eye-care professionals may not realize is that for every patient who is part of a mandated safety eyewear program, there are exponentially more who are not.”

Indeed, there are many industries, such as auto, health care, landscaping and others, in which employees would benefit from a safety eyewear program “and gladly purchase it, if only offered the option,” the spokesperson added.

In order to capitalize on the SRx opportunity, Hilco, a major supplier of industrial safety products, created its “Workwear” program, or what the company calls an “optimum solution in supplementing an existing safety program or building one from the ground up.”

For less than $100, a practice can get into a safety program and begin offering affordable, sporty-looking safety eyewear that does not cannibalize fashion eyewear sales,” the Hilco spokesperson noted. “In fact, patients are more willing to upgrade fashion eyewear and lenses when they have a safety eyewear whose sole purpose is to take the abuse of harsh work conditions.”

Shopko Strategy: Make SRx More Inclusive
In addition to seeking a more diverse selection of prescription eyewear, many retailers also want to make their customer base more inclusive and diverse. Shopko Stores have always found SRx to be a key component of its overall business, according to Kirk Lauterback, director of optical services. However, over the course of the past year, the discount chain has made the decision to add safety frame styles and lens options that are practical for everyone.

 
Shopko now sells SRx that is not only inclusive, but functional for
any customer.
“We were not going for any particular trends per say,” Lauterback said. “We wanted to be more inclusive and suitable for everyone—whether they are male or female, younger or older. I thought it was really important that we meet the needs they each had from a fashion and functionality standpoint.”

Shopko operates 363 stores in 24 states throughout the Midwest and Pacific Northwest regions, which allows the company to build a centralized approach to advertising. The retailer also works with many local chamber of commerce groups to contact industrial companies—construction companies, manufacturing facilities and many others. From there, Shopko managers meet with the various companies and determine their exact SRx needs.

According to Lauterback, these meetings look at all factors, from lens needs, frame selection and cost. Ultimately, Shopko creates custom programs for the company’s employees.


Kenmark’s W025 is lightweight and comes in gunmetal for men and maroon for women.
Wolverine for Women
Kenmark Eyewear is also aiming to make their products more inclusive. Though the company’s Wolverine collection has long been a supplier of SRx, Kenmark has also created styles designed with women in mind. “Safety represents a small, but still important portion for our overall business,” said Jason Wehlage, director of product and design. “We want our sales team to be a one-stop shop to the independents and safety eyewear provides us the means to cater to all their patient needs.”

An example of Kenmark’s inclusive approach is their Wolverine style W025, a lightweight, gender neutral metallic frame that can be ordered in gunmetal for men and maroon for women. The company will also release style W036 which will be available in a pink coloration for women.

Kenmark has also moved its SRx into the sports wrap look. Style W035 is a plastic frame that features an injected TR90 top and a sweat bar with rubber for durability and a wrap shape effect on the face. The model also features polycarbonate lenses for impact resistance.


More Than Just Safety Eyewear
Williston Basin Eyecare Associates, an optical center located in the oil-producing region of North Dakota that also serves communities in northeastern Montana, exemplifies the proactivity that’s required to succeed in the SRx category. Though the retailer is in a safety eyewear-dependent community, it still actively promotes its SRx and other services via radio advertising as well as one-hour live radio broadcasts that play in their lobby.

Williston Basin is the only eyecare center in the area that is a VSP insurance member, and its six optometrists are the only professionals of their kind within a 200-mile radius. Employees from large companies, such as Oasis Petroleum, who are required to wear safety eyewear on the job, order their safety eyewear at Williston Basin.

Lori Burczyk poses in front of Wiley X’s safety frames sold in Williston Basin.
“Our optometrists can easily see 70 patients per day,” said Lori Burczyk, optical manager at Williston Basin Eyecare Associates. “There are small rural communities around us that don’t have an optometrist and that’s why we have such a big patient base.”

Because safety eyewear now features up-to-date design elements such as polarized lenses, lightweight frames and face foam for a tighter fit, most patients are now using their SRx for everyday wear as well, she said. “You can now get great street-looking eyewear that’s made of titanium and you can’t even tell the difference. The fashion [and design] of safety eyewear has come so far that a lot of our patients purposefully choose a style that’s easy on the eyes and use it as their street wear also,” Burczyk said.


Greater Accountability Among Employers
Jeff Marcella, district sales manager for industrial safety at Walman Optical, is also optimistic about the safety eyewear category. “I think the overall business is good,” Marcella said, who characterized the sales performance of safety eyewear as “medium-warm.”

He added, “I believe that more and more of my customers (environment health safety managers) are talking about it. And for the eyecare provider, there is a huge opportunity here.” He attributed this increasing interest among industry professionals to an evolution in business thinking over the past few years that has resulted in closer scrutiny of accident and incident rates, and a greater sense of accountability on the part of industrial employers.

“There is a different level [of accountability] that I see in the market, and I have been doing this for a number of years,” Marcella explained. “It’s really nice to see that kind of accountability within companies, they are embracing it.”

Another factor that has helped grow the SRx business for Walman Optical was the introduction of a “home safety kit” earlier this year that ECPs can use to raise awareness of SRx among its everyday eyewear customers. “The eyecare provider can have it out on display where it may prompt some conversation with customers. A majority of the eyecare providers still have their safety frames under the counter and not on display. So it’s hard to present or to bring up a SRx conversation when the frames are not right there, especially for patients,” Marcella said.

The home safety aspect of SRx is one that often is overlooked by ECPs, Marcella said, citing the statistics that about one-half of eye injuries occur in and around the home. While ECPs frequently talk to patients about polarized lenses and/or purchasing a second pair of eyeglasses for everyday wear, they overlook SRx. “If patients are involved with hobbies around the house, or working with a chain saw or grass trimmer, those are all eye hazards that should be considered,” he said.

When it comes to SRx, however, a recent key development has been the sales growth of various wrap frames. “From the standpoint of Walman Optical, I would say over 50 percent of SRx sales today [involve] some kind of wrap frame,” Marcella said. This is another factor that should benefit the independent ECP serving the SRx market, he said, because workers are unlikely to wear SRx with wrap frames as everyday eyewear at home.

Walman Optical also has been at the forefront of introducing digital lenses, especially digital progressives, and blue-light filtering lenses (for those who work under fluorescent lighting or at a computer screen during the work day) into the SRx category. These lens options typically produce better margins for both labs and ECPs.


Eyeing the Growth Opportunity in SRx
Greg Hibbard, senior vice president for supply chain and manufacturing at Spectera Vision Laboratory (a unit of UnitedHealthcare), said the SRx category is “an area that we are interested in exploring.” Spectera works with both big-box traditional eyecare retailers and the nation’s thousands of independent eyecare practitioners, and is able to supply over 98 percent of the lens orders it receives on the same day they are received. The lab also has relationships with many workers’ unions that are part of its member network and which drive work to the lab, Hibbard said.

A Walman Optical home safety kit that ECPs can display on the counter.
“What’s unique about our model is that we don’t have a frame kit, but we do have a lens formulary and a contact lens formulary,” Hibbard said. “But we do not, in our product mix, structurally limit choice. So we are challenged in our manufacturing environment (in Baltimore) to source from virtually every provider and supplier in the industry for frames and contact lenses.” The lab does produce safety eyewear on a daily basis for the providers in its network and has capacity to increase this business.

“We have full safety manufacturing capability here in the Spectera Vision Labs and we’re always interested in new growth opportunities and safety clearly is one that is top of mind,” Hibbard said.


Adding Fashion to Safety Eyewear
Adam Cherry, president of the Green Bay, Wis.-based independent wholesale lab Cherry Optical, agreed that the SRx category has enjoyed an uptick in sales as the economy—and U.S. manufacturing—improved over the past few years. “Safety products are a sign of economic prosperity in this country. The environment in which safety eyewear is being utilized is going to be directly related to employment and the overall economy [across] the country. There are definitely some parallels there,” he said.

SRx also has seen a boost as frame manufacturers put more emphasis on bringing fashion to the category, even as these manufacturers become more responsive to the growing number of women who are working in roles that require SRx, Cherry noted.

“Women make up the majority of the population in this country, and a lot of them are working in settings where safety eyewear and other safety products are required. So having more styles that, first of all, fit properly and, secondly, have enough of a fashion angle that women are going to be more comfortable with or accepting of the product is a positive development,” Cherry said. Several frame manufacturers have created new styles that have “a little bit more of a fashion aspect to them,” he said.

A number of manufacturers have even found a way to overcome the optics issues that the wrapped frames can bring about. “Some manufacturers have come out with frame styles that have that wrap look, but they still allow you to have standard and optically correct base curves in the lenses to ensure that the optical performance is where it needs to be. To see some frame manufacturers adapting to that is a very positive sign,” Cherry explained.

Still, even with style adaptations and growth in the market, the biggest challenge in SRx is getting more ECPs on board with promoting the category. The issue, of course, is that eyecare professionals “have so many other things going on with their practices,” Cherry said, noting such priority functions as third-party billing, contact lens sales and moving into the health care/medical side of the optometry business, among others.

“There is a lot going on for ECPs so when someone says, ‘Let’s talk about safety eyeglasses,’ or ‘You can add safety eyewear as a new specialty within your practice,’ safety eyewear is pretty low on the list,” Cherry said. The challenge is complicated by the prevalence of older SRx programs that have lackluster profit margins for ECPs. The category has been “beaten up and battered for so long with these programs that provide hardly anything as a dispensing fee,” he noted, which now means that SRx has become a market that is disenfranchised.

In its efforts to help ECPs in the SRx business, Cherry has created what it calls the Safety Optix program, a pricing, billing support and branding program that it uses for its own lab but will also allow ECPs to utilize it in their marketing efforts to the industry. This branding is used for various SRx materials, on price lists and authorization forms, and even different communications that Cherry Optical customizes for ECP customers.

Still, Cherry said, ECPs need to have realistic expectations when they make an SRx pitch to manufacturers with safety eyewear needs. “The folks we work with who identify the mid-size to small employers that are locally owned and operated have had very good success in developing SRx programs. The companies purchasing the eyewear are very satisfied with the value and with their ability to control expenses. And the ECP is satisfied with the profit that we are able to help them generate as well,” he said.


Customizing the Customer Approach
Precision Optical Group (POG), a wholesale lab based in Creston, Iowa has a robust SRx business. CEO Mike Tamerius believes the SRx market is in the midst of an upward trajectory, and that some independent labs and ECPs are taking advantage of the growth opportunity. POG has moved to better position itself in the category by establishing a program that will manage the entire administrative piece of the SRx dispensing process for a manufacturer and by establishing a distinct business unit, CRX Safety Optical Labs, for this segment of its business.

“You have to understand the needs of the safety customer and be able to fulfill those needs,” Tamerius said. “Often, I think it’s based on flexibility and being able to customize your approach and to customize the things you do for the safety customer. With all of the manufacturers we work with, we try to standardize as much as possible, but for the most part every contract is a little different and the things we do for them are different, too.”

POG has a wide range of SRx contracts with industrial and manufacturing companies that have as few as five or six employees needing safety eyewear or as many as 20,000 employees in jobs that require SRx, according to Tamerius. The company processes the majority of its SRx orders via its Greenville, S.C., lab.

One of the keys to the SRx business is to keep the program simple for safety directors at manufacturing facilities, especially in terms of pricing and frame options, Tamerius said. POG also has the ability to set up on-site kiosks where employees can order and process their SRx prescriptions, and provides on-site opticians at some of the larger manufacturing facilities where it provides SRx programs.

POG has initiatives that involve reaching out to ECPs in an effort to help the ECPs become more established in safety eyewear. This includes informing ECPs about what the lab believes would be required to do business with manufacturing companies of various sizes and what type of commitments are needed to win the business. “We’re not always right, of course, but we spend a good deal of our time working with ECPs in their own backyard in order to help them,” Tamerius said.

Among the ongoing trends in SRx is the steady increase in the variety of AR and fog-free coatings that are available, with the largest increase coming in fog-free lens applications, Tamerius said. “If you are working on a loading dock, or going in and out of different temperature environments, there is a real risk of fogging. You almost create one more potential issue if you require someone to wear safety glasses and those safety glasses fog up. This is the greatest secret in the optical industry, fog-free lenses. I am amazed that this technology is available and yet it is utilized so infrequently at the ECP level,” Tamerius said.


Mastering the Kiosk Model
Looking for a way to make the dispensing and administrative processes for safety eyewear more efficient, Brad Kirschner kept tossing ideas around in his head. Kirschner, who is now the chief executive of Eyelation, had grown up around the eyecare business (he cut lenses in high school while working in his father’s optometry practice in the Chicago area) and was familiar with the cumbersome effort required for workers to obtain safety eyewear.

“There has to be a better way to do this,” Kirschner recalled telling himself about 10 years ago. “So I came up with this idea for a self-serve kiosk that would be able to take measurements, scan the prescription and manage the benefits for the company as well.” The end goal was to provide a simple, accurate, cost-effective, and 24/7 solution for prescription safety eyewear.

Kirschner launched Eyelation in 2009, introduced the first live kiosk in 2011 in Chicago, and has now grown the company to almost 500 on-site kiosk installations across the U.S. and into parts of Canada. Eyelation also has a strategic sales partnership with frame manufacturer Honeywell Safety Products and other distributors of safety products who are looking for an eyewear partner to fill in their product portfolio.

“It’s been crazy,” Kirschner said of Eyelation’s success and growth. “Before I did this, I was basically managing my dad’s practice and helping out with the family business. But I wanted to do something different and it just worked. We started off with this niche and have been really successful.”

The Eyelation kiosks, which are interactive and self-service, feature a straightforward process: an employee can make a frame selection on the kiosk screen from an assortment already approved by his/her respective company. The employee also scans their doctor’s written prescription at the kiosk and poses for a photo by the Eyelation camera, which accurately records facial measurements, so the SRx can be processed. Once registered at an Eyelation kiosk, workers also can reorder safety eyewear simply by clicking a link in an email they receive or by visiting an authorized website.

“With our kiosk, you have your prescription scanned, but there is still an optician who reviews the order,” Kirschner explained. “It’s not like the kiosk magically does it. When the optician reviews the order, they are able to get the PDs and seg heights and match the glasses using the prescription. This is a big part of why this process has been successful,” said Kirschner. He noted that Eyelation has approximately a 5 percent exchange even with “a very liberal return policy” and that the majority of exchanges are related to personal preference and not fit.

Kirschner is particularly proud of the fact that all of Eyelation’s technology has been developed in-house. “This gives us a ton of flexibility. All of the measurement that we do is very unique. I don’t know of any other existing technology that is self-service and that measures accurately PD and vertical height,” he said.

Eyelation has registered 200,000 users via its SRx platform, which Kirschner said will allow the company “to go in a lot of different directions” in the near future. One of these options is to work from the user base to drive referrals to partner ECP groups, which Eyelation has begun pursuing. “We think this is just the tip of the iceberg for what the potential is,” he said.


Wiley X Brings Diversity to SRx Marketing
For Wiley X, getting customers means making product that is versatile. The company’s safety eyewear is both fashionable for everyday wear, and also meets OSHA standards. “Our approach is to make premium sunwear that also meets on-the-job safety standards,” said Rob Maser, commercial sales director.

Wiley X’s Climate Control series features the company’s patented removable Facial Cavity Seals with soft foam that blocks fine dust, debris, pollen as well as wind and peripheral light. The frames also come with ANSI Z87.1-rated lenses and frames as well as custom Light Adjusting or Filter 8 polarized lenses.

The manufacturer’s WorkSight series is a premium dress wear line that also meets on-the job-safety standards. The ophthalmic frames feature T-Shell lens coating that resists scratching in extreme environments, adjustable wire core temple tips for custom fit as well as removable WorkSight side shields for lateral protection on the job.

When it comes to gaining new customers, Maser urged up and coming ECPs to take a more visible approach to getting customer attention. “They need to always realize the benefit of being proactive in the safety eyewear space. Take your expertise and go into the business community—commercial employers, industrial employers and even fire and police departments—and promote the fact that they can protect workers’ eyes. Employers can be a source of new patients; you reach one employer and you can get hundreds of new patients,” Maser said.