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TAMPA, Fla.—The transactions that led to the launch of Clear Sight Partners (CSP) closed last November, chief executive officer Brian Hauser took the helm in December and in February 2021 a few key executives came on board to further kick-start the process of building a new management services organization. The goal of the new group, which is backed by San Francisco-based investment firm Spanos Barber Jesse & Co. (SBJ), is to become “West Central Florida’s premier destination for fully-integrated ophthalmology, medical optometry and optical retail services.”

The CSP organization was formed around a partnership of five physician-owned Florida vision practices—Pasadena Eye Center, Pasadena Surgery Center, Eye Associates of Pinellas, Gulf Coast Retinal Specialists and Ryczek Eye Associates—and a group of nine Opti-mart optical retail stores. The deal marked investment firm SBJ’s entry into optical.





The optical retail stores were owned by Skip Payne and Scott Payne. All CSP practice shareholders retained significant ownership stakes in the new group, which includes 13 optometrists, 10 ophthalmologists and 16 locations.

One of the people behind CSP’s formation was Richard Sanchez, managing partner of Visibility Management and a veteran of the optical sector who continues to serve as a strategic advisor. According to Hauser, Sanchez was familiar with a few Tampa-area practices that he thought would be a good fit culturally for the new organization.

“That’s a really critical part of our due diligence even now as we are looking at a future pipeline of additional practices to either merge [with] or acquire,” Hauser said. “The cultural fit of those physicians is really critical. This was just a really good mix of physicians who came together, and the five legacy practices have a similar style and a similar approach.”

Hauser, an experienced optical industry executive but just five months into his new role, recalled “a monster two-day planning session” back in December at which the new organization set the foundation with its initial 180-day plan. “I think when we really started to get some traction was early February when we made some key additions to the leadership team,” he added.

Those additions were vice president of human resources Tracy Bittner (about 20 years of HR experience), vice president of finance Chris Brisch (a 25-year career in business finance) and Shanna Tumbleson (15 years of marketing experience). Subsequently, Jessica Cox joined the team as director of growth and integrations operations.

The team is working to integrate five vision care brands into one of the largest vertically integrated vision care providers in the West and Central Florida area.

“During the integration we needed people familiar with experience working in a bigger corporate environment where the emphasis is on operational metrics, planning and forecasting,” Hauser said. “We needed to develop a common language so everyone could see why we were saying certain things.”

Initially, Hauser said CSP is focused on patient growth and process efficiencies. “The whole big planning session we did—with the projects and processes that we’re naturally looking at as we integrate things—is what we believe is going to yield some efficiencies that help us on the cost side,” he said. “And we believe our marketing initiatives will help with some new patient acquisitions.”

Another key has been sharing of best practices across medical and retail. “We’ve been doing a lot of best practices, and it’s been great so far to see the response from the opticians,” he noted. “Now they have an opportunity to talk to colleagues who do things very similar to them but in a different business environment, which has been great from a two-way dialogue perspective and how we can all become better.”





Pace of Acquisitions Going Forward
Clear Sight has not added any new practices to its organization, but Hauser is cautiously optimistic that the second half of 2021 will see new locations join the group. “We have a robust pipeline and we are looking at several [prospective practices],” he said. “We believe that we will probably close on one, if not two, sometime in the Q3 or Q4 time frame,” he added, noting this is a conservative estimate of the time frame.

“We’re not trying to dictate the pace, because this is a big decision for a practice,” he added.

The Primary 2021 Goals
At the top of the list, Hauser said, are two points: building patient growth and identifying process efficiencies. “The whole big planning session we did—with the projects and processes that we’re naturally looking at as we integrate things—is what we believe is going to yield some efficiencies that help us on the cost side,” he said. “And we believe our marketing initiatives will help with some new patient acquisitions.”

Biggest Surprise Since Launch
In the first six months, there have been some “unbelievable record performances in a couple of our locations, particularly a couple of the optical retail locations where we have one physician working two exam rooms,” Hauser said. “We’ve seen the highest monthly performance ever from [one] location in the month of March, which was very encouraging to the point where it’s fueling the thought about building more exam rooms and/or floating more physicians over there until we build our OD physician pipeline and make some new hires.”

He added, “Some of those results have been very surprising, but yet very encouraging.”