BATAVIA, Ohio—On Oct. 21, 2021, customers converged at R&D Optical Lab’s new facility here for an open house. Most of the 20-plus eyecare professionals and staff who attended the event were from the greater Cincinnati area, with some coming from as far as Dayton, Ohio.

The open house provided an opportunity for R&D Optical’s customers to see the new 6,000 square foot facility with state-of-the-art equipment such as a Fusion coating unit, Schneider digital surfacing equipment, the top AR machine from Leybold Optics and a new anti-fog coating machine. Personalized small group lab tours were led by experienced lab technicians.



“It’s a great way for our customers to interact with all of our people, educate them about how their practices can add value, save money and/or grow revenue, like with our current VSP Promotion or carrying Chemistrie Clip products, while getting an up-close look at the process of quality lenses being produced in our lab,” said lab president and founder, Ronald Cooke Jr.

While the primary focus was to showcase the new R&D Lab, the event also featured two informational sessions. At the first session, Cooke announced that R&D had been named a VSP contract lab and had launched a promotion to help customers save money when using R&D to process VSP jobs over three consecutive months.

The second session featured Dave Eichelberger and Casey Cloonan from Eyenavision, who explained how Chemistrie Clips can answer a patient’s needs for sunglasses, computer, and activity-specific eyewear.

Marcy James-Parks, an optician with Dr. Steven Shadwick and Associates in Middletown, Ohio, summed up the open house, saying, “It was a great opportunity to meet fellow opticians and to share ideas on better accommodating our patients going forward. Plus, R&D lab personnel gave us an interesting behind-the-scenes look of their new lab. All in all, it was truly a great experience bringing both sides of the process together while helping us to understand the inner workings of an optical lab that we are usually not privy to.”