Back to: 7: Finishing: The Optician’s Edge
Do not be afraid to shop around for a lab. With reliable overnight services, you may even choose a lab hundreds or even thousands of miles away from your location. A lab that is in a different time zone can even work in your favor. You may also use different labs for different types of lenses.
You need a wholesale lab – A wholesale lab needs you.
As part of our ongoing desire to connect you with experts in the field, the next two lessons were co-authored by Janet Benjamin, President of Laramy-K Optical.
Janet has over 40 years of optical customer service experience! If she isn’t an expert at “The Lab Relationship,” then no one is.
She says, “I think the word “partner” is over-used these days. It seems everyone wants to be your partner in business. I’m not sure I agree that the company you buy a case of cloths from once a year is really a strategic business partner. However, your primary wholesale lab is. It is certainly how we see our relationship when dealing with our long-term, successful accounts. Your wholesale lab should not be a faceless, corporate giant.”
You will need a “go-to” person to resolve problems and answer questions.
In fact, you will never be more frustrated in your business life than when trying to deal with a wholesale lab where you cannot find a single person who is willing to help you solve a problem. Remember, if you deal with insurance companies, you don’t always have a choice about which lab you will use.
We know most of our accounts not by their account number but by their personal names. We send birthday cards, Christmas cards, and we even have pictures of them and their clients wearing our products. We see many of our customers as long-term friends.
Unlike most labs today, we actually like to talking with people and having them call us to place orders.”
John here: The lab we used where I worked was a huge company. However, I still knew my customer service representative (CSR) by her name, Glenda. And I even met her in person during an open house event.
I used to bring flowers to the CSR at the local lab that had to deal with my students calling in jobs.
During one start-up, we sent 30 lunchtime pizzas to a lab as an introduction.
Why?
Why is the relationship important?
When I write that your relationship with your wholesale lab can make or break your business, I am not kidding around. The jobs that require a wholesale lab’s special abilities are the ones that drive high-dollar sales. You need a lab that sends you work that shows their pride in their products. Janet says, “We see our job not as making the optician happy but making their client or customer happy. We see our product as serving the person who actually wears it, not the person who sells it.”
When your wholesale lab consistently provides you with high quality products, accurate prescriptions, and realistic turn-around times, then your sales of these high-dollar items remains strong. You will make money.
However, the reverse is also true. If your wholesale lab starts sending you failing products, prescriptions that are off, and has turn-around times of weeks instead of days, you will find those high-dollar sales dropping off. You will lose money.
Wholesale vs. Retail vs. Wholesale vs. Retail
Just like you, your wholesale lab is in business to make money. Just like you, they are always walking the fine line between the wholesale costs of their goods and the retail price they can sell it for. Just like you, they buy, mark-up and resell their goods and services at a profit. Just like you, they are watching the bottom line and trying new product lines and services.
Just as is so for you, sometimes these new things work – sometimes they don’t.
You know, just like when you added that crazy, new, expensive, one-off, line that just didn’t sell. 😉
What can I expect (what SHOULD) I expect from my lab?
This is not an easy question to answer. It will depend mostly on the volume of business that you do with them.
However, the lab should be invested in your success, so at the very least you should expect:
- Help understanding difficult prescriptions, prism and progressives
- Education on the products they are selling you
- POP or Point-of-Purchase items for advertising in the store
- Selling tools like handouts, brochures and dispensing mats
- Limited number of vouchers for lenses so those selling the products are wearing the products
- Wholesale pricing guidelines including packages, deals and any discounts
- Easy access to a CSR and usually an area lab representative as well.
- A limited remake policy
What to look for when choosing a lab.
- Consistent quality over time.
- A go-to person who really has answers to your questions.
- Open and honest pricing. No gimmicks, freebies, and smoke-and-mirror sales nonsense.
- Consistent turn around times. That is consistent – not the fastest – not the slowest – just consistent so you know what to tell your customer.
- Consistent personnel. If you get a different CSR every time you call, that might be a problem.
- Consistent consistency! Get it?
What not to look for when choosing a lab.
Gimmick pricing. Any sales that are driven by “spiffs” or kickbacks are a questionable practice. You have all heard the saying, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” If you can earn expensive lab or preliminary testing equipment by selling a certain lens, at a certain volume, you can be sure that the price of that equipment is built into the overall price you are paying for the lens. It is not “free” with your earned points.
Janet says, “Bullet point three above really gets me wound up! You should never be choosing a lens because it is the flavor of the month. You should never give a moment’s thought to which lens you are choosing except ‘which one is best for my customer.’ Trying to save a dollar at the possible expense of customer satisfaction is pretty short-sighted.”
John here, “This is an easy one! Avoid any lab that is trying to be extreme at anything. You don’t want a lab where the entire focus is on being the cheapest, the fastest, the biggest, or that offers the best rewards points program. A good lab lets their work speak for them.”
Red-Flags when dealing with a lab.
Even the best labs can have bad spells (trust me on this). Keep your eyes and ears open, and if your lab starts sending you garbage, do something about it.
Janet says, “Start by calling the owner or manager and expressing your concerns. If you can, have job invoices or work orders with specifics. If that doesn’t resolve your issue, then you need to look for a new lab. Business is business, and you have to have confidence in the work you are receiving.”
If your favorite customer service rep leaves and the new one doesn’t seem to care about you, then switch labs.
Repeatedly lost jobs, lost frames or lost lenses.
Price Lists
OK Super Crazy Important Stuff Here So Read Carefully!
Price lists from the lab are your wholesale amounts – the amount you will be charged. I have never found a lab that will suggest your retail pricing. That is up to you, and is best done by doing a little market research.
Lab price lists will often have tiered columns showing maximum and minimum discounts.
Be sure you are reading the correct column. If you don’t know which column you should be reading, then find out.
If a lab pricing guide is confusing, then make one that works for you. You will not make much money marking up product from the wrong wholesale price. This is very serious, especially for a newbie. I have actually seen high-end proprietary sunglasses sold at wholesale because a newbie read the wrong column. Since you include salary and business operating expenses in profit this job actually LOST money. It did not even break even.
If you have tiered columns, cross out the ones that don’t apply to you.
Here I go again: Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
By the way, Laramy-K doesn’t offer tiered pricing of any kind. Our smallest customers pay the same for their lenses as our largest customers do. Talk about an easy price list to understand! Again, no gimmicks here!
Janet says, “Many labs do second-pair discounts. Take advantage of them for your customers and your business, too. If the second pair is sold later, say within the sixty-day allowance, then be sure you have the original invoice number for the CSR.”
Does size really matter?
Well, yes it does. Years ago a small independent lab, even a true “one-man shop,” could provide everything you might need. Sadly, with the sophisticated coatings and lens processing techniques of today, your lab probably needs to be at least “medium-sized.” You can work a one-man shop, but it is getting harder every day. A modern lens will come from a small factory system with multiple employees.
The Frame – Blame – Game
Laramy-K is primarily an uncut lens only lab. We don’t do much finishing work so we don’t receive and return frames. [Most of our customers prefer doing their own in-house fishing work.] However, you will often need to send a frame to the lab. Be sure you have a way of tracking that frame! If you are sending it from your store and are using a pre-printed label, be sure that you make a copy of the label and set it in the customer tray. If you can prove that someone at the lab signed for the package, then you can charge them for a lost frame. If you are drop-shipping, be sure to write the confirmation number on the job order. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
More of this in the next lesson.
Placing job orders that is not warning you about stuff.
😉