Insights From Our Editors

Does Your Practice Have Frame Database Technology?

April 29, 2015

The busier the practice, the more likely it is to own frame database technology, findings from The Vision Council’s November 2014 Eye Care Professional Report suggest. About half of the respondents to the report’s survey possessed a frames database at their practice. Practices that dispensed more than 10 lens jobs per day were more likely to say they have a frames database (59.6 percent), compared to the 42.2 percent of practices that dispense less than six jobs per day and have a frames database at their location.

Effective management of your frame board is essential to optical profitability and practice success. Approximately 20 percent of the revenue collected from patients comes from the sale of frames. In a $1 million practice, that equates to $200,000. This is an area, that in most practices, needs attention to improve its performance.

If your frames are not being managed effectively, then, according to a Marchon-published report, you are going to have the following problems:

• Your best-selling styles will not always be in stock
• You will have excessive back stock
• You will have more returns and exchanges
• Your frame purchasing will not be based on what actually sells
• Your staff will be tied up with frame vendors for hours viewing frames to purchase instead of having the vendors do in-house training on how to sell the frames, merchandising, or simply keeping product clean and adjusted for patients

The items in the above list are all unnecessary problems, and an incredible waste of staff time dealing with those problems. Let’s take this week to make this area of our practice better. Here are the beginning steps of a frame board management system.

1) Evaluate your current frame board for number of frames and product mix.
a. Divide the frames into the following categories: men’s, women’s and unisex.
b. Subdivide the frames by price points (eg: <$100, $100-$149, $150-$199, etc).

2) Determine the ideal number of frames and product mix based on the number of frames in each category you sold last year and by your practice demographics.

3) Make a strategic decision to either have a static frame board, or to do the opposite, which is to sell off the frame board. If you decide to sell off the frame board, the biggest mistake to avoid is not having your best-selling styles in stock.

4) Select four to 10 frame vendors for your practice based on the following criteria: product selection, product availability, product guarantees, point-of-purchase and marketing materials, staff education and co-op programs.

5) To maximize your purchasing power, choose one or two primary vendors to provide 60-80 percent of your frame product.

6) Use merchandising principles to display your frames. Remember that eye level is prime real estate for your frame boards.

7) Get all vendor agreements and policies in writing.

8) Review your frame sales no later than every quarter. At that time, re-mix your frames as needed.

Since our goal is to make this part of our practice successful, here are five more rules for effective management of your frame board.

1) Show enough commonly recognized brand names that the patient feels they are in the right place to purchase. Merchandise these brand names so a patient standing at the entrance to your optical can easily see the recognizable brand names.

2) Balance the above rule with: don’t put a frame line on your board that the patient can go down the street and buy less expensively.

3) Go with fewer frame brands, but go deeper on each brand.

4) The minimum number of frames you should carry in one brand line is a single frame board column (the average frame board has 14 frames in one column).

5) Aim for a minimum of a three times turnover per frame brand line (eg: if you are showing 30 frames of one brand line, you should expect to sell 3 x 30 = 90 frames in that one frame line over the course of a year.) Non-performing frame brands should be replaced.

Your action plan for this week is to review your frame board management system. Follow the ideas above to make it more effective and efficient.

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