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The Eye Consortium (TEC), a new, fast-growing alliance for independent-minded eyecare and optical practices, was launched in early 2019 with a philosophy centered around creating a community of like-minded business people on the provider side paired with a curated, specialized group of vendors who want to see independent eyecare continue to grow and thrive. The founders—Matt Alpert, OD, and Robert Chu, OD—have experience working in various roles across the eyecare industry and came up with the idea for their new alliance out of a small study group they had initiated.

The goal of The Eye Consortium, in part, is to help practices maintain a unique environment for their patients, while increasing profitability. The founders note that after years of watching profits erode and dispensaries become commoditized, “a novel approach is imperative. Practice differentiation and the patient experience are keys to an independent and profitable practice.”

To support this effort, The Eye Consortium said it has aggregated a group of the best-in-class, independent players in in the industry, with membership currently at roughly 1,000 providers, which includes, ODs, ophthalmologists and dispensary-only optical offices.

The Eye Consortium has created “a comprehensive suite of products and services” for practices to use to increase profitability and yet remain independent. “We aim to ease the pain points that make running a practice difficult and time-consuming,” Alpert and Chu noted. “Creating a community of like-minded business people allows us to curate a specialized group of vendors, focus on maintaining your unique environment, and increasing your profitability.”





One of the elements that make The Eye Consortium unique is that it has established “a totally independent, non-competitive relationship for the vendor partners,” Alpert said. As a result, there is only one vendor per category, which permits the vendor partner to feel “really secure in the relationship” with the group. This factor, he noted, is one of the reasons for the group’s fast growth. Some of the initial core vendor partners are: Zeiss, Lafont, Modo, Capri and EdgePro by GPN. Additional partners and new categories are expected to be announced soon.

The new group’s entry comes as many independent practices faced shutdowns and reduction in hours and patient visits during the height of the pandemic, but it also was a time of increased evaluation of business processes and procedures.

In the midst of the pandemic, many doctors were “looking for different or fresh options, and working smarter-not-harder options,” Chu told Vision Monday in a recent interview. “We feel that our suite of solutions enables that. With fewer patients coming through the door, doctors had to make the most of every opportunity as practitioners.”

“Everybody kind of dug in and looked introspectively at their practice and how they ran their business,” Alpert added “But when you’re busy, it’s really hard to implement things. I think [the pandemic] gave us the opportunity to really look at what was important and to get into the implementation of some of the things we had on the back burner, such as patient experience.” He noted, too that elevating the patient experience is one of the areas The Eye Consortium is addressing with its members.

Alpert attributes the group’s success to the experience the founders have working in different organizations across the industry, including their roles as practitioners. “We were practicing optometrists for many years, and we had had membership in other alliance groups.” What seemed clear and what presented an opportunity, he said, was to create an organization where both sides [providers and partners] were in a position to benefit.

“The vendors who were participating in these groups were really not playing offense and growing, they were playing defense to keep the business they already had. Having been on the vendor side, I didn’t like the feel of that,” he explained.

Other elements that make The Eye Consortium different is its focus on “creating a basket” of services and products that cover all the categories an office might need, and its effort to refrain from partnering with companies that compete against independent optometry. “There is so much homogenization in practices today and their appearance,” Alpert said. “So we created a basket of services for those people who really want to be independent and who want to differentiate from the other groups.”

The group’s messaging around loyalty to vendor partners has resonated and supports the “win-win” philosophy that is at the core of the partnerships, Chu said, which contributed to the group’s tripling in size in a short time.

The “cherry on top of the sundae,” Alpert noted, is that because The Eye Consortium offers its vendor partners exclusivity, it can negotiate better terms. “If we’re going to give you the right to be our premium-tier frame vendor, that deal has to be better than you are offering anybody else,” he noted.