Frames

Basics of Frame Board Management : Part 1–Analyze Your Inventory

By Susan Rose Ohneck

Marchon Eyewear offers a four-part seminar series on how to assess your frame inventory, how to sell it and how to work with your vendor to optimize profits. Susan Rose Ohneck, Midwest regional manager, is one of a number of Marchon sales personnel who deliver the seminars in optometric offices. In this piece, the first in a four-part series, Ohneck shares pointers from Marchon presentations on inventory analysis. Later installments of this series will offer tips on how to sell the way your patients buy, why you need to automate your frame orders, and why and how to effectively partner with your frame vendor.


Some ODs work with too many vendors to manage well—18 to 45 vendors with four to 50 spaces per vendor, according to Marchon research. For most practices, two main vendors and three to five niche vendors is optimal. For a lot of optometric practices, it’s time to analyze this critical area and cut. The key to profitability is work with fewer frame vendors, and work more effectively to identify the right mix of frames that sell well.

Marchon uses an assessment of current inventory as a frame board management starting point. It starts with an inventory count. With ODs, we discover that they carry more vendors than they realized. This poses a problem. You can’t manage that many vendor partnerships efficiently. You can’t easily work with an unwieldy number of vendors to figure out which frames sell and which don’t. Fewer vendors means the ability to spend time with each vendor rep to calculate which frames you want to continue investing in and which you can let go,

Just understanding the current frame-board status can be challenging. But you have to know your current status so you can transform your boards to get the results you want. Once you know where you stand, take time (even a couple of months if necessary) to think about where you are. Then you can figure out what inventory you want to continue to invest in, and which you’d better nix.

Determine Your Image

In choosing the inventory that you want to have for optimal sales, ask the following questions: What is your image? What frame customers do you want to attract?Do you want to be unique, high-end or trendy? If so, you need to take a methodical approach to carrying a higher inventory. One key factor in deriving that number: How many exams do you do?

Along with numerous other factors outlined in Marchon’s4 Keys of Inventory Management, the number of exams you do should guide number of frames you carry.

Optimal Frames per Numbers
of Eye Exams (per year)
1,000 exams 450-550 frames
2,000 exams 600-700 frames
3,000 exams 700-900 frames
4,000 exams 900-1,200 frames
SOURCE: Marchon

Have the right amount of inventory:You know you’ve hit your sweet spot if you have enough inventory so patients don’t walk, but not so much that you need a fire sale at the end of the year to offload all the unwanted frames on your board.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: How to sell the way your patients buy.

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