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Founded in 2008, PERC is a doctor alliance designed to ensure member practices improve their bottom line by harnessing collective buying power to negotiate advantageous terms with vendors. The group’s no charge, risk-free membership model is open to all private practices. A low-burden to entry setup has unlocked rapid growth for PERC Alliance, with more than 600 member locations added in just the last year. The PERC Alliance community now consists of almost 7,500 member locations, according to the alliance’s executives.



(L to R) Jason Lake, OD, Cristin Sullivan, Jeffry Gerson, OD



“From prolonged labor market challenges to inflationary pressure to supply chain issues, our members have faced many challenges over these past years, all of which create difficulty in normal operation of a business and the related profitability,” said Jason Lake, OD, PERC general manager.

“To ensure our members succeeded in spite of the challenges, PERC Alliance made it a priority to enhance member engagement and provide valuable opportunities for learning and growth. To achieve this goal, the organization committed to reinvigorating peer-to-peer education and laid the groundwork for soon-to-launch study groups and our new Accelerator Program. These groups will provide a platform for members to come together and tackle emerging challenges and knowledge sharing.

“With lingering supply chain issues, PERC Frame Advantage was a critical asset for PERC Alliance members in 2022,” Dr. Lake said. “The program effectively addressed the challenges faced by the industry by improving board management and product inventory. The result was a decrease in back orders and an efficient and streamlined management process, ensuring our participating members experienced a stable supply chain with enhanced profitability.”

A challenging economic environment may be looming on the horizon in 2023 and PERC members will again be looking to the alliance to help navigate them through potentially unsettled waters.

“More difficult economic conditions could reshape the market in 2023, with practices across the industry finding ways to navigate with tighter margins due to inflation and increased staff wages,” said Dr. Lake. “Our members are looking to build upon the cultures of excellence they established ahead of the pandemic and know that staff training, excellent customer service and practice culture will set them apart from their competition and enable their continued growth despite what could be challenging conditions.”





According to Cristin Sullivan, director of business development at PERC Alliance, “our number one goal is to give members a competitive advantage by helping maximize their bottom line and securing for them the best cost of goods on the best products in the industry that can be obtained in a no or low cost alliance. In addition to savings advantages, we are launching and enhancing three other key programs.”

Those programs include PERC’s Accelerator Program, which is designed to help members maximize growth and sustainability in their offices. Also on tap is PERC Advantage, a static frame board system. In 2023, the alliance will launch PERC Advantange+. The program offers the same profitability-increasing board management system, with expanded frame assortments including high-end luxury frames and profitable premium fashion frames. Also coming is the PERC Pinnacle Practices program.

Jeffry Gerson, OD, PERC medical director and key advisor leader, said, “To ensure we continue exchanging best practices that can help set our members apart, we are building our PERC Pinnacle Practices program (P3 program). Within this program, we are forming peer study groups for select members who desire to collaborate and tackle the toughest challenges and offer insights into driving success that can be leveraged and shared with our entire member base.”

Member engagement is also a key area for PERC in 2023. “Clear in our agenda this year is a growing focus on driving member engagement to create member wide success,” said Dr. Lake. “To that end, we have added senior marketing manager Cassidy Johns to lead our marketing team to enhance member experience and PERC Alliance engagement.”

PERC is a part of Essilor of America, which is a division of EssilorLuxottica.