At the opening of a new For Eyes location near Baltimore last month are (L to R) chief executive officer Jose Costa, store manager/director Dr. Karl Malicdem, a longtime Maryland resident, and state Delegate Joe Cluster (R-Baltimore County).
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MIRAMAR, Fla.—Amid its plans to open 20 new corporate locations this year, For Eyes will make a big push into Southern California with six new locations, and also add new stores in a few existing markets over the next six months as it charts a course for rapid expansion, according to chief executive officer Jose Costa. The six California stores, which will operate in between Los Angeles and San Diego, will open over the September-December time period, he said. “[California] is going to be a big growth opportunity for us in both 2018 and 2019,” Costa told VMAIL in a recent interview. “We like doing business in California and we are going to add a lot more stores in the months to come.”

Costa, in an earlier interview with VMAIL, provided a high-level view of the planned expansion in 2018, and also noted that the retailer expects to open five franchised For Eyes locations this year.

For Eyes, the U.S. unit of GrandVision N.V., (EURONEXT: GVNV) began 2018 with 108 retail locations across 11 states. (GrandVision acquired For Eyes in late 2015.) Its expansion plans in 2018 include moving into the state of Wisconsin with the initial For Eyes store in the Milwaukee market, and also adding stores in existing markets in Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, Costa said. “All of that region in the Mid-Atlantic is going to be a big growth area for us,” he added.

Costa credited a new store layout with a “revised footprint, which is a little bit smaller, with optimized inventory and a lot more technology in the exam lanes” as a factor in the move to ramp up expansion efforts. “We can bring a good value offering to the local market,” he said. The retailer offers frames at a broad level of prices, beginning with a value offering at $49 and increasing to the $300 price point for higher-end designer frames.


The grand opening of For Eyes’ new Baltimore-area location drew a large crowd, many of whom checked out the store’s frame selection and the Solaris sunglass board. Solaris is GrandVision’s proprietary sunglass business segment.
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In addition to mapping out expansion plans, Costa has been busy adding new executives to the For Eyes senior management team. Over the past few months, three new executives have come on board. They are: Dr. Magda Nogueras, who was named vice president of professional relations; interim chief marketing officer Sherry Lay (formerly of Visionworks); and Lisa Fisher, who joined the company as vice president of human resources. Nogueras has previous industry experience with LensCrafters and Pearle Vision.

Costa noted that all the sites for 2018 locations have been secured, the leases are signed, and the construction phase is on the schedule. “We’re going to average probably [a store opening] every other week, or every two to three weeks until the end of the year,” he said.

The first of the company’s new stores this year opened in the Baltimore-White Marsh market in late June, and two additional stores are opening this summer in Maryland, where For Eyes has 10 existing locations. “It’s a very good market for us to do business and to continue to grow,” Costa said.

The retailer’s expansion plan is supported by a “very good real estate team,” and an “analytics tool” that For Eyes is using to identify optimal new-store locations, Costa said. The analytics program considers 100 variables and is updated with operating results from existing locations in order to improve future modeling efforts.

The primary states in which For Eyes operates currently are Illinois and Florida, both of which are home to about 30 stores. The company was founded in Philadelphia in 1972.

Costa noted that, in some ways, the For Eyes business is still going through a transition to its new ownership. “It takes time,” he said. “Even though GrandVision acquired the business 2½ years ago, we are still transitioning some legacy issues that we inherited…. It took us a couple of months to get our house in order. We have a great team and we are setting the foundation for very aggressive growth.”