NEW YORK—In a year like no other, against a backdrop of an overall vision care industry retail sales decline due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the collective sales of the VM’s Top 50 U.S. Optical Retailers fared slightly better. In 2020, U.S. total market sales declined about 17 percent to $31.2 billion according to The Vision Council’s VisionWatch market research estimates. Compared to that, the Top 50 U.S. Optical Retailers, according to VM’s report and estimates, saw a decline of 5 percent on average, for the year, and 6 percent, collectively, for the Top 10 Retailers. (The 2021 VM Top 50 Report reflects sales, locations and rankings based on calendar year, ending Dec. 31, 2020.)

Looking more closely at the numbers, however, this year’s overall report and ranking reflected a very mixed range of performance and experiences—from positive to downright tough, across those companies in this year’s VM Top 50.  There were 15 groups whose estimated dollar sales were up while 30 groups' sales were down in 2020 vs. 2019. But sales and company rankings don’t tell the whole story.

All companies, faced with closed offices for an average of two months or longer in some cases—whether in a concentrated geographic market or spanning many states—fought to protect their people and patients and to manage topline sales and operating expenses. Several recovered to post higher sales than in 2020. Acquisitions also continued in the latter part of 2020.

To gain a better understanding of what happened and what lies ahead, VM asked several of the Top 50’s optical retail executives about how they adapted to 2020’s upheaval and what they see coming next. The complete report is titled, "Crafting a Comeback - The Nation's Leading Retailers and ECP Groups Endure the Unprecedented, Rethink Priorities and Shape a New Vision of the Future." The full report can be viewed here.
 
In addition, PDFs of the full 2021 VM Top 50 Report and of the prior year's full report can be found at that link. Also accessible there are the components of the report including comments from several of the Top 50's executives commenting about the learnings of 2020, Snapshots of the VM Top 10 Optical Retailers, the Leading Mass Merchants and Wholesale Clubs' estimated optical sales, overall U.S. market data for the Top 10 and Top 50 and a separate PDF of this year's Top 50 Retailers' Main Chart.