SmartMoney Magazine on Finding Low-cost Value Prescription Glasses Online

"FOR YEARS I'VE BEEN wondering why eyeglasses cost so much. Even at LensCrafters, which is to eyeglasses what Gap is to clothes, you can easily pay $500 for a few pieces of plastic and screws. The last occasion I went in, I tried on a $250 pair of retro-librarian frames that made me appear real smart. So smart that I asked the sales gentleman why they charge so much. He gave me a comical look. "They're stylish," he huffed. That did it. With a little exploring, I found someone offering a much more cheap option. Seven years ago a New York City optician sold his three Manhattan retail locations to start a cheaper-eyeglasses dot com, one of the growing quantity of discount-eyeglasses Web sites. By typing in your prescription and measurements, you can purchase a decent set of glasses off his site for as little as $28. His secret: He built a lab in the suburban border of Brooklyn. His two Ukrainian assistants, Vladimir and Alex, grind 20 to 50 pairs of eye glasses a day under the incandescent lights, by means of the same equipment you'd discover in the back of an optician's store. Alex is moonlighting from his work making lenses for - you guessed it - LensCrafters.

Of course, the first thing I ask is why frames cost hundreds of dollars at the typical eye glasses store. "I used to order frames for $20 and sell them for $200," he recalls. He actually starts laughing. "Yep. It's mad!"

This confirmed my most awful reservations. Sure, you expect merchants to charge something above wholesale to make a return. A representative clothing store might double its wholesale expenses to come up with a retail price, for example. But some eyewear stores mark up eye glasses as much as 1,000%. That probably explains why bazillionaire Leonardo Del Vecchio, the guy who owns chief chains such as LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut and Pearle Vision, ranks amongst the world's 50 wealthiest men. "Del Vecchio is raking in the money!" says Appelbaum, sounding a tad envious. "He has truckloads of it!"

As shocking as these markups sound, your typical storefront eyewear shop relies on them just to get by. According to Dublin-based research firm Research and Markets, most do less than $500,000 a year in sales, and like any retail operation, a big portion of that goes to pay the rent and sales personnel. If eyewear stores offer a free eye exam, the price of your specs is also footing the bill for the optometrist's $100,000 salary. And if they make your glasses while you wait, you're also paying for $500,000 in in-store lab equipment. When all's said and done, a typical optician makes a 15 to 20% profit on the average sale - about the same margin cheap online eye wear stores enjoy.

LensCrafters, which declined to remark, most likely doesn't have much to fear from web based sellers. Web based eye glasses stores offer such low prices and a 30-day guarantee because a good number individuals are still too scared to order glasses on the Internet. Still, there may be a tiny movement occurring. Eagan, Minn., blogger Ira Mitchell, whose musings about photography and electronics used to attract about 50 readers a day, recently posted an essay titled, "Eyeglass stores are for suckers." Within 24 hours, he says, more than 50,000 readers flocked to his blog to gripe about their own overpriced eye wear and talk about the benefits of ordering on the internet.

Back at the LensCrafters store, I ask the sales man if I can get a concession. He says no, but offers to charge my purchase to a LensCrafters credit card. "You won't have to make any payments for the first three months!" he says. It gradually dawns on me: The eyeglasses are so costly they come with their own financing plan. Maybe it's time to take a $28 gamble with online eyewear as long as it is from a USA registered FDA optical lab! Because there are no certification nor governement safeguards in foreign markets like China, consumers should trust their vision to USA regulated FDA registered labs."

Article Source: http://www.gamblingarticlessite.net

Follow SmartMoney for sources of USA Quality Prescrition cheapest eye wear, and insure your eye wear are USA processed in FDA registered optical labs.

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated