By Marge Axelrad and Mark Tosh
Thursday, May 21, 2020 12:30 AM
How does a leader prepare for a never-known-before challenge? Pause. Breathe. Rely on colleagues. Get the real facts. Make a plan. Be prepared to change it. Do the right thing for your team, your employees, your company, your patients. As we examine the 2019 year past, VM asked a few of our Top 2020 U.S. Optical Retailer executive leaders about the pandemic and what it could mean for the future.
- The Editors
By Marge Axelrad and Mark Tosh
Monday, May 18, 2020 12:29 AM
NEW YORK— Calendar sales of optical services and products at retail were healthy. In a market that grew to nearly $37.5 billion in the U.S., according to The Vision Council’s VisionWatch tracking, sales grew at a nice pace over the prior year, for all ECPs, regional and national companies. Business was solid, for companies large and small.
By Marge Axelrad and Mark Tosh
Monday, May 18, 2020 12:28 AM
NEW YORK—Comparable to prior VM Top 50 reports, there was a concentration of sales among the 2020 VM Top 50 U.S. Optical Retailers, accounting for an estimated $15.7 billion of a $37.5 billion total U.S. market for the 12 months ending Dec. 2019. The Top 10 optical retailers collectively comprise 85.4 percent of the Top 50’s collective U.S. optical retail sales, meaning that retail groups ranked numbers 11 through 50 comprise just under 15 percent of that remaining Top 50 group.
By Staff
Monday, May 18, 2020 12:25 AM
NEW YORK—It was a good year in 2019 for the mass market retailer segment of the optical business, and one that might be hard to match in 2020 as shopping in big-box stores work to overcome the fallout and impact of the coronavirus.
By Staff
Monday, May 13, 2019 12:35 AM
NEW YORK—Even as the general retail market was buffeted by disruption in 2018, the U.S. optical retail sector held its own, even managing to show growth of 2 percent to 3 percent for the calendar year. But while the sales story remained fairly constant, there was a reshaping of the business composition of many leading optical retailers, as the run of acquisitions and consolidation that began at the beginning of the decade continued apace.
By Marge Axelrad and Mark Tosh
Monday, May 13, 2019 12:30 AM
NEW YORK—New attitudes among consumers toward purchasing in general and the rise of digital exploration and purchasing may have upended the general retail marketplace last year with many store closures and reorgs. But as the U.S. economy held its own, the optical industry’s total sales rose just slightly and remained stable.
By Marge Axelrad and Mark Tosh
Monday, May 13, 2019 12:29 AM
NEW YORK—New attitudes among consumers toward purchasing in general and the rise of digital exploration and purchasing may have upended the general retail marketplace last year with many store closures and reorgs. But as the U.S. economy held its own, the optical industry’s total sales rose just slightly and remained stable.
By Marge Axelrad and Mark Tosh
Monday, May 13, 2019 12:28 AM
NEW YORK—There was a higher concentration of sales among the 2019 VM Top 50 U.S. Optical Retailers, which assesses estimates of 12 months of calendar sales for the year ending Dec. 2018. The Top 10 optical retailers collectively comprise 87.5 percent of the Top 50 U.S. optical retail sales. That equated to a collective-estimated $12.6 billion out of the market’s total optical retail sales of $35.7 billion, as reported by VisionWatch/The Vision Council.
By Marge Axelrad
Monday, May 13, 2019 12:25 AM
NEW YORK—Most notable among the mass merchants involved in optical, there was significant sales growth at Target Optical, which opened only two new stores but saw sales rise by more than 15 percent for the 2018 calendar year. Costco also had a solid growth year, with 12 new stores and a sales increase.
By Staff
Friday, April 5, 2019 12:15 AM
NEW YORK—The deadline to be considered for the 2019 VM Top 50 Optical Retailers Report has been extended to Monday, April 8 at 11:59 p.m. EST.
Vision Monday is once again surveying optical retailers and large regional ECP groups across the U.S. to be considered for inclusion in the 2019 Annual Top U.S. Optical Retailers Report. Results from the survey will be published in the May 2019 digital and print issue of
Vision Monday and posted on
Vision Monday.com.
By Staff
Friday, March 29, 2019 12:15 AM
NEW YORK—
Vision Monday is once again surveying optical retailers and large regional ECP groups across the U.S. to be considered for inclusion in the 2019 Annual Top U.S. Optical Retailers Report. Results from the survey will be published in the May 2019 digital and print issue of
Vision Monday and posted on
Vision Monday.com. The survey and final report is based on revenues for the calendar year ending Dec. 31, 2018. The survey asks for your total revenues, including sales from both company-owned and franchised stores (if applicable), managed vision care revenues, online sales, and any share of affiliated doctors’ fees or laser-surgery fees that companies receive.