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Vegas Innovator Series Part II: Tech to Grow Revenue, Capture Lens Sales & Cut Remakes
01:00:48
What happens when you bring together some of the sharpest minds shaping the future of optometry and optical retail? You get an unfiltered conversation that uncovers where innovation meets patient care, where business decisions meet real-world...
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- [00:00]
Renan Naftalovich
Think about it that it's take a very long time to take all the parameters of optical frames on the face of a patient. And many times we are selling a product that cost a few hundred dollars to the patient and then we come in with a pencil or pen and try to find where is the fitting points in the patient and so on. We decided to address this issue by taking actually all the measurements in a very small device and it takes about 20 seconds and you take all the measurement that otherwise will take you about half an hour.
- [00:27]
Dr. Justin Prasad
I've never actually had a device where my opticians are excited about it. They did a trial for and then I think it was taken away. The staff was begging me, please get that back in the office as soon as I've never had a response from staff in 20 years tell me to bring something back.
- [00:41]
Eugene Shotsman
What kind of changes have you guys made to the device in order to make it more responsive to what the optometric community wants?
- [00:46]
Renan Naftalovich
So first things first.
- [00:50]
Steve Druckmann
Industry data shows that if a patient walks in and buys in the practice, let's say they buy 90 day supply, only 20% of those people come back after those 90 days. 80% of those people get that next order online. What were you try and do is identify the patients that walk out the door and we recapture them by co marketing to those people.
- [01:12]
Darren Horndash
We need to be doing more outreach to those patients on a regular basis. It gives them an opportunity to order. It is pure bottom line profit with no cost of goods to us. In fact, the data is demonstrating that today the economic headwinds that we've been facing, patients are buying less boxes at a time.
- [01:25]
Eugene Shotsman
If somebody is trying to consider whether or not Contact's portal is right for that, what are the questions they should ask about their own business that could potentially lead them to you?
- [01:35]
Steve Druckmann
So when talk to doctors, I ask them first question is.
- [01:47]
Eugene Shotsman
Welcome to Power Hour, Optometry's biggest and longest running show. I'm your host, Eugene Shotsman. This episode is part two of our Vision Expo Innovator series from Las Vegas 2025. And this episode is intentionally a little bit different. This is based on the feedback that I got from you all after our last Expo episode. And I didn't just sit down with executives this time, I also talked with their customers. So I tried to channel you, our audience as if you were walking the floor at Expo and you had unfettered access to senior executives at an organization and also their customers asking some key questions yourself. So in this episode you're going to hear from renan Naftalovich and Dr. Justin Persad about Shamir biggest innovations this year, which happen to be the Spark measuring device and some new things they're doing with their driver intelligence lenses. And also you'll hear how this is actually playing out in real practice as we talk about data, which I love. I definitely found that conversation interesting. And then we sit down with executive Steve Druckmann and Darren Horndash from Wisconsin Vision, heartland vision and iboutique. So he runs 38 locations across Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. And Steve Druckmann is from Contacts Portal, which is a newcomer in the space. And they talk about how practices, kind of a new twist on how practices can recapture some of the lost contact lens revenue that's walking out the door. And Darren Horndash is a customer, if I didn't make that clear. And Steve is the executive from this newcomer in the marketplace. So we do go deep enough with the executives to understand the why behind their innovations. But I also push for honest feedback from the end users, from the customers who are putting this technology and products to work every single day. So my hope is that by the end of this episode, you're going to have a clear picture of what's coming, what's working, and whether these industry partners deserve a spot on your radar or not. Full disclosure, the vendors did sponsor this episode, so their information, their links are included in the description. But I'd also really love to hear from you. What do you think of these solutions? Will they help your practice? Would you adopt them? Do you wish that they would do something different? And as always, you can reach out to me@eugene shotsman.com or through the Power Hour website with your questions, your thoughts, your ideas. Please make sure that you're subscribed on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen so that you never miss an episode. And now, here's today's Power Hour, the Innovators edition.
- [04:13]
All right, welcome to the Power Hour Vegas Innovators edition. With me is Renan Naftalovich from Shamir and Dr. Justin Prasad. And I am really curious to hear Renan, what is Shamir unveiling as innovations at Vision Expo west this year?
- [04:30]
Renan Naftalovich
Thank you very much for hosting us. What we evaluate here as we always do, we always have a new technology, especially around AI. In the last 12 years, we actually leading the market with lens design, also equipments and also some coating. What we're talking specifically about this show is about two innovation. One is the spark is actually allowed you to do all the measurement in a Very fast way and very efficient taking the pictures without any jig or anything like that. You're getting a full, full measurement with all the parameters. And the second one is the driver intelligence that we're going to emphasize a lot about driving at night. And I'm sure we will talk about it a little bit more later on, but we're talking about the driver intelligence, how to improve your driving at night.
- [05:15]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay, so we're going to come back to the driving at night component of what you guys are talking about. But this whole spark, for those who don't know what the spark is, it's actually a device that's sitting right in front of us here. But explain for people who are listening what the spark mirror is.
- [05:32]
Renan Naftalovich
So think about it, that it's take a very long time to take all the parameters of optical frames and on the face of a patient. And many times, you know, we are selling a product that cost a few hundred dollars to the patient and then we come in with a pencil or pen and try to find where is the fitting points and the patient and so on. We decided to address this issue a few years ago by taking actually all the measurements in a very small device that it look like basically a computer that you can adjust the heights and then you can have the patient sit naturally in the front of that and it's take about 20 seconds and you take all the measurement that otherwise will take you about half an hour and most of the time you will miss the point. And it's all done with a very sophisticated AI behind the scene. So what we actually getting here is a very accurate device to fit lenses, any type of lenses. Doesn't matter if it's your ME or not. It's not specifically for us any type of measurement in a 22nd and consistent store that start to use it saw a big drop in redo because you don't make mistakes. The machine can do it many, many times. That's the main innovation. Try to make the technology sophisticated enough that every store can use it and also in the right price, a point that it will not be a problem for the doctors to buy it.
- [06:45]
Eugene Shotsman
Well, and I know that one of the challenges that practices always talk about is onboarding new employees, especially in the optical department where people are behind. And as a result that leads to exam only and things where patients walk out the door without buying. So is this something that helps the optical department scale faster?
- [07:02]
Renan Naftalovich
Absolutely, because first of all our sales support is always there. But actually after like five minutes you will figure out how to Use the device when you try to do good fitting, that's a matter of a long time of training people. And you are a lot of time. It's not so successful in the beginning here. You don't need to do anything. It's part of the things. I want to mention one specific account from Texas that actually when we came in with this, this device bought nine of them. And we asked him, why do you buy so many? You don't need so many to the amount of customers. He said, I want in every dispensing table to have exactly the same customer's experience. I don't want anybody to run around the store and try to figure out where. Where should I do the measurement? You're sitting, I'm fitting you, I'm taking your measurement. You're out of the door with the best optical solution.
- [07:51]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay, so the idea is that before the patient starts shopping for glasses, they sit down in front of this device and for how many minutes?
- [08:01]
Renan Naftalovich
It takes 20 seconds.
- [08:02]
Eugene Shotsman
20 seconds. So in 20 seconds, you then have all their perfect measurements. Now, what else can you use? Because you're obviously capturing images of the patient. What else can you use the images of the patient for?
- [08:13]
Renan Naftalovich
So we saw in some cases that actually if the patient give their consent to the storm, actually people can take a picture of all the glasses that you choose, including sunglasses, and the patient usually will not want to buy like four or five pairs. Okay, so you put three. I think I heard it in one of your podcasts, right, that you basically say if you're putting three frame out, people will buy two, and if you offer only one, people will buy maybe zero or one.
- [08:39]
Eugene Shotsman
Right.
- [08:40]
Renan Naftalovich
So the same concept here. You actually can take the measurement with the glasses that I like when I was in the store, and later on you will send it to me and say, hey, it's now start to be the sunglasses season. You need the sunglasses. Here is a coupon for 30% and it says three months after you with the store. And by the way, you don't need to come back. We have already all your measurement. And actually the store in many cases sell the lenses without the patient even need to, because they already have all the information.
- [09:07]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, that's interesting because it does also present a solution to somebody who didn't have time or wants to show, wants to talk to their spouse about a pair of glasses or that kind of thing. So, you know, I think this is a really interesting innovation. I see a lot of buzz the booth. There's a lot of people who are trying the Device, playing with it, what feedback are you getting and what kind of changes have you guys made to the device in order to make it more responsive to what the optometric community wants?
- [09:32]
Renan Naftalovich
So first things first. One of the issue that you have, when you're using any other device, you have to put some kind of a jig or some kind of additional device to take the full measurement. You don't need it here. Okay. So that's one important things. So the patient can sit with a natural posture in the front of the device.
- [09:49]
Eugene Shotsman
No chin rest, no anything, no nothing.
- [09:51]
Renan Naftalovich
You're just asking. Look straight like you do normally. You can adjust the height so it varies. So this is number one. The second thing is the speed. In 22nd, your patient says that's it. Yes, because the machine is doing a lot of the work. The third thing that is really, really important. We don't care what kind of lenses there is inside the glasses. It can be. Sunglasses could be polarized. The only exception is the red, red tint. We cannot do that because there is infrared. We actually taken pictures, including sunglasses. Many people afraid to sell prescription sunglasses because it's hard to take the measurement. So many opticians shy of that and selling that. In the moment you start to use this device, you don't care what it is. Sunglasses, clear glasses, we can take them all. So that's the major three things. It's the speed is actually the sunglasses option and the very accurate measurement, including everything without any device.
- [10:41]
Eugene Shotsman
Interesting. And what do you say to practices that say, well, no, we have master opticians. These people have been measuring patients and fitting patients with glasses for years, and they're really good at it. Why do I need this thing?
- [10:53]
Renan Naftalovich
Okay, so we don't think that this is. I was presenting in one of your seminars recently, and you use a wonderful line that say technology and AI is documented. The people, it's not replacing them. And we feel the same about the spa. Master optician can continue to enjoy what he's doing because his fitting point, this is just helping to take an extra measurement that usually those master optician, we don't have time to take all the panoscopic, vertex distance, panoscopic tilt and so on. Very, very small percentage of the market. Less than half percent. We check it on millions of prescriptions. Less than half percent actually given it to us. We can do better glasses if you give us all the measurement that just help a master optician to be better.
- [11:37]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And you know, the other part of it is you think about the patient experience. If a patient experiences Technology which they now expect, and at least in my opinion, they now expect to see in offices. It becomes a differentiator. If you say this is something that helps me, this is a piece of technology I use that helps me get perfect, more accurate measurements of your face and allows me to perfectly fit these glasses to you. The reality is that the patient's thinking, oh, well, I definitely don't get that experience online or maybe at a big box or something like that. So I think that's really interesting. Dr. Prasad, I want to turn to you because I think that, I guess just to give everybody a little bit of background and some context, tell everybody a little bit about your practice.
- [12:20]
Dr. Justin Prasad
Well, my practice is Long Beach Family Optometry. We've been in business for 20 years. I started the practice in 2005. It has grown. It was a smaller location, maybe 800 square feet. We've grown to just under maybe 3,000 square feet in the same footprint. So I've been in the community a long time. My practice has always been big on innovation, moving forward, evolving the practice constantly. So I take a lot of pride in that. Backbone of my office is my staff. They're, you know, bringing into things like this, like Vision Expo has. It's an investment in my staff in the office. They enjoy it and it just, it helps them to be more educated on what we're doing in the office and helps me with my vision in the office that they're on board with that.
- [13:08]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And then talk a little bit about your patient mix and, you know, maybe some stats about your office. What's your maybe revenue per patient? What are some of the things that you're most proud of in terms of the way that your office operates?
- [13:20]
Dr. Justin Prasad
So revenue for patient, we're probably maybe about 425 per patient. We only use high quality material in my practice as far as progressive lenses, digital, simple vision. So for certain insurances and whatnot, we always start high. And we probably have, I think when I look at our statistics, most of what we do, I think over 90% is digital. We're probably 95, almost 99% AR in our office. So that's just my vision for the office is always making sure that we're on the cutting edge. Yeah.
- [13:59]
Eugene Shotsman
And talk a little bit about the role that technology plays in your office and in your patient experience.
- [14:04]
Dr. Justin Prasad
It's huge for my office. Technology has always been a big component from communicating with our patients. I was one of the first, I think, in my area to really start texting patients. I remember when I first started doing that probably over 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago. Patients would get mad. They're like, wait, what's this guy doing texting me? He's my optometrist.
- [14:28]
Eugene Shotsman
You and me both.
- [14:29]
Dr. Justin Prasad
Yeah, so I adopted that pretty early on and then it just started taking off. And it's been amazing. So even from patient communication to technology we use in the office, I've always been big into my retinal imaging. My EHR softwares just ease of use for my staff and for my patients. And speaking of our newest technology, we actually did bring in the Spark few months ago.
- [14:56]
Eugene Shotsman
I was curious about that was my next question is what is your feedback and what's it done for your practice? And kind of how has this innovation work practically?
- [15:03]
Dr. Justin Prasad
Yeah, we're a primary care office. I mean, we see patients all day. I'm a single doctor, practice have an associate that works other days. But we're kind of your run of the mill, you know, private practice optometrist. And so I have great opticians that take great measurements and whatnot. But I was always looking for ways to take more accurate measurements. And like Renan said, there's was. There's so many devices out there that you have to put a widget or something on the frame. It's very awkward. This literally. They step up to it seconds. It's literally a mirror. Patient looks at themselves. They actually can see the way the frame looks on them. And boom, takes a snapshot with all the measurements. Patients are absolutely wowed by it. They're like, we're done. That's it. That's it. The opticians, it's seamless for them.
- [15:53]
Eugene Shotsman
So actually describe where it fits in your process.
- [15:57]
Dr. Justin Prasad
So when I'm done with the exam, the optician on the handoff, they'll take the patient out. We start talking about lenses first and then once we start talking about lenses, we go into frame. We pick out some frames for the patient on what specifically they need for their lifestyle. And then we go over to the spark device. The patient has a few different frames they even want to try on. And we'll actually encourage them to take multiple pictures, not just one that they're going to purchase. Hey, try on this sunglass. Try on this other frame, just, just so we have it and see what it looks like. And what we like about it too is we could see, save it to their chart. You know, we can always reference it later. And that's been a game changer for us. My staff likes that it's there also Patients that say, maybe they pick up their glasses and like, hey, I didn't choose this color. We have the picture there to show them. Actually, this was confirming you. You actually did. So we've never done anything like that before. I'm taking patients images and then uploading it. So this just makes it so much easier.
- [16:56]
Eugene Shotsman
So what about if patient doesn't get the glasses? You still have the picture, right?
- [17:01]
Dr. Justin Prasad
We still have the picture. And we even tell them we save it to their chart. And we have patients that call us, say, hey, I want to go ahead with that. You don't even need to come back in. We got your measurements done.
- [17:10]
Eugene Shotsman
So that's interesting. And, you know, I could see in a world as a. As a guy who pioneered texting their patients, I could see a world in which you might be able to send some of those pictures to the patients that they didn't buy as a possible innovation too.
- [17:22]
Dr. Justin Prasad
Absolutely, yes.
- [17:23]
Eugene Shotsman
So in. So this is one question that I have is back to the question I asked her. None. Because I get Renan's perspective. I'm curious about yours. Do you get pushback from your staff? Like, are you trying to replace me, doc?
- [17:36]
Dr. Justin Prasad
On some technology I've tried in the past, definitely push back. The staff has to be on board. And I've tried different devices. Being 20 years in practices, in practice, and always trying to bring new measurement tools to the office. Even before the Spark, even Shamir provided us with these little suction cup things to take panto and other things like that, and they've tried to slowly adopt that into our office, but it just drops off this. I've never actually had a device where my opticians are excited about it, and they did a trial for us for, I think, 30 days, and then I think it was taken away. The staff was begging me, please get that back in the office.
- [18:18]
Eugene Shotsman
It was nice.
- [18:19]
Dr. Justin Prasad
I've never had a response from staff in 20 years tell me to bring something back, especially the opticians, because sometimes it's hard. That's their job. Like you said, they don't want to feel like they're being replaced. But I think with AI, with devices like this, it absolutely augments things and streamlines things for them and it makes their job easier.
- [18:37]
Eugene Shotsman
Well, the observation I have is from walking around the show floor, from being in the Innovation Challenge yesterday, from speaking on a lot of different innovation topics, there's a lot of tools being introduced to make the doctor more efficient in clinic. And so the doctor is now able to see more patients, because that's been A big thing, right? You know, OD capacity, OD availability, revenue per hour for an OD has been a problem. And so there's a lot of companies that invested in innovation to make the OD more efficient. Right. Ambient scribes and things, things to speed up the exam and to enhance the experience between the OD and we've talked about this on other shows. The interesting thing here is that when the OD gets more efficient, that means that there's more patients flowing into the optical. And if the optical gets behind, then there's not that much revenue per patient that you can capture if you're only getting the VSB or iMed reimbursement for that exam because the patient didn't want to wait for the next optician to open up. So if this even saves minutes for an optician, and I might say it takes tens of minutes, but even if it saves minutes for an optician, that seems like it adds a lot of value to the practice.
- [19:47]
Dr. Justin Prasad
That's huge. I mean, the time it takes, especially with the opticians taking all the manually, taking panto and faceform and spending all that time. I think I even timed it, it could be seven, eight minutes, sometimes longer if the patient hasn't positioned the frame properly on their face. Here they literally walk up to a screen and it's seconds. The opticians love it because now they've streamlined that process, they can get that job processed on the back end. Everything is much quicker for them, which they love.
- [20:15]
Eugene Shotsman
What about remakes?
- [20:17]
Dr. Justin Prasad
Great point. Again, I think we've had the spark for probably three or four months now. We have not had a remake yet. I think the accuracy is amazing. And not to take away from the opticians, I think they do a great job, but even they admit sometimes the way the patient's positioned or where they have to take the measurements, especially with these new digital lenses that we're doing. Measurements are everything. We need to be accurate on that. But then also the patient expectation when you're using something like the Spark. I've had this digital high tech eye exam that they just had and then to walk out and again dot them with a marker at the end. I think Reynan made reference to that, which I tell my staff all the time. Just something didn't feel right about that. So now to have this instrument that they could just come up, it's a picture. The patients are wow. And especially if we tell them, you know, we're starting to use the buzzwords AI now a lot. Right. And patients are hearing this a lot more so to say we have technology in our office like that is pretty neat.
- [21:15]
Steve Druckmann
Yeah.
- [21:16]
Eugene Shotsman
And we'll come back to your opinion on lens technology. Renan, I want to turn it back over to you. And obviously this is a really important innovation from a hardware standpoint, but you guys are traditionally a lens company. So talk a little bit about some of the lens innovations, and you've mentioned that before, and also how you're supporting practices with these lens innovations.
- [21:36]
Darren Horndash
Okay.
- [21:37]
Renan Naftalovich
So the process started almost 12 years ago when AI was absolutely unknown. Because Shamir is always technology company, they always looking for a way to do things better. We start to look into the options of how we can incorporate AI to be able to do way more design. And that's where we came with the first idea about autograph intelligence. The autograph intelligence actually breaking the modes about how we're doing lenses and what I mean by that. When you're usually doing a design of progressive lenses, you're making a decision, oh, I would like the reading area to be like that. I want the corridor to be like that. Maximum distortion, blah, blah, blah. We want to do all of that. But when you want to start to get more options, like what we did, and what we did is we did a research by age. We actually analyzed about 1300 people. How would they live in their life? But we did it by age. We did it big by group. So if you are 40 years old and 60 years old, we ask you some questions, the same questions. And we was amazed to see how many difference there is between different age group. So we say, okay, so now we know what each age group they like to have. Like, for example, I will tell you something that will sound very obvious. Young people using their phone more than older people. Okay, obvious. It's obvious. But until we actually measure that and we actually check it, we was amazed to see how much is the difference between different ages. So now we want to do a design by age. To be able to do design by age. We automatically increase when we do an irregular progressive answers is about 37,000 options that you can have now multiplied by 12. That's what we decide to do. We're talking about 430,000 different options. To be able to design something like that, you have to use AI tools to help you. Again, augmented what our designer is actually doing. And we managed to do that. We are now in the third generation of photography intelligence. That of course changing all the time because we're doing those so all the time. But then, for example, when we came with the driving lens, that it's a day and night, okay, the sun and the moon. We actually did the same things. We actually put a lot of data points with a driver, professional driver, but also everyday driver. And we tried to figure out how people actually can see. And I was going to give you one example. When we bought a car 20 years ago, the car have basically you're looking straight into the intermedia and down. That's all you did all day long. But now we have the screen in the car. They take you into almost like a computer inside the car. So to be able to simulate how you're going to see through those lenses and what do you need when you're driving? You need a very sophisticated toolster to collect this information, but also process and also recommend you what should be the design. So we're using AI in many different ways. Try to understand what the customers need and then how to design the lenses. And also to be able to come out faster to the market with the needs. So what you're going to see from us, that we can come out to the market with a newer design based on the customer's need, faster than ever. Because we're using AI. For us, AI is part of life. It's not a buzzword in parties.
- [24:50]
Eugene Shotsman
So is the driver intelligence lens like I wear it all day, every day, or is this. Would you say doctors would prescribe a separate lens for when you're in the car?
- [25:01]
Renan Naftalovich
So you have to design it separately. Because in progressive lenses, no matter what, maybe some companies claim you have to do compromise. And the compromise is that if you expand a certain area, you have to give up in another area or to increase the distortion on the lens. So our compromise on the driver intelligence was to expand dramatically the distance and the intermedia so you will drive comfortably. You will be able to see almost edge to edging inside your car. But then we have to shrink the reading area. So if you were looking for general purpose lenses that you will use only for reading computer and so on, driver intelligence will not be your lens. That's why you need to prescribe that as an additional lens. So as a sunglasses or what we see. In many cases the driving at night is the bigger challenge. 48% of people don't like to drive at night because they don't see well. We addressed it with the driver intelligent moon. That is a different lens. That is additional cells for the doctors. But it's actually answer real needs. It's like a computer lens, you know, you cannot do with progressive lens. It's everything you need. Also a Computer lens. Okay. The workspace is a good example for that. The same things. If you're driving at night quite a lot or just even just for a regular day, you need another pair of glasses.
- [26:21]
Eugene Shotsman
So, Justin, what's your reaction to that point that you might have to be prescribing two or three different lenses to a patient? What's your reaction from patients when you do that?
- [26:35]
Dr. Justin Prasad
Yeah, I do that now. I mean, we're at a point in time as far as tech and our visual demands that one pair of glasses, it's hard to fit to do everything. And I always use that analogy with some of my patients with shoes. You know, everybody has 10, 12 pairs of shoes for different things. I never understood why we just have one pair of glasses that can do it all. And we try to do that with progressive, like Shamir intelligence. But that's why I delve into lifestyle a lot with my patients. So are you in front of a screen a lot? That person? I'm automatically telling them, you know, computer progressive or a workspace. They need their everyday progressives, which is the intelligence. And now with driving, you know, I talk to them a lot about glare and patients do. Again, I see patients every day glare. Driving at night is an issue. And to have something like the moon is really neat because we have these displays now that are bright. So patients not just complain of glare of oncoming headlights from the front, from the back, from their rear view mirrors. They're getting it from their screens now, their displays in their cars. So that's how it fits into mine. I've been really prescribed lifestyle. I wear them myself. So I use myself as an example quite a bit that I have multiple pairs of glasses for my visual needs. When I'm at work, my workspace glasses stay on all day. When I am in my everyday life, those workspaces come off. They stay by my computer. My everyday ones go on when I'm sunglasses, same thing. So when I put it like that and that I personally use it, my staff, you know, uses where we have multiple glasses. That way, there's no reason why our patients shouldn't have that.
- [28:11]
Eugene Shotsman
We.
- [28:11]
Dr. Justin Prasad
It's our obligation to tell them what they need. They don't know what they don't know. Right. So they. There's certain demands that they come in with. We are there to fulfill that.
- [28:20]
Eugene Shotsman
And Renan, you guys have a big focus on the whole driving at night campaign. So talk a little bit about what you guys are doing to help practices get the word out about this whole 48%. Because that's a relatively recent statistic, right.
- [28:33]
Renan Naftalovich
That you guys discovered from the last year. Actually what we're doing is we utilize that we are going to drive now earlier in the day because the daylight savings that happen everywhere and there is some state that it's coming faster than others. Okay. My sister live in Seattle, so she getting like 4, 4:30, she already in dark. So when she driving after that it's a problem for her. So many people is like that. What we're doing is we actually build a campaign that every doctors can actually inform day patient with about the issue of driving at night and the glare at night. We're going to create 10 different campaigns that will run for about 10 weeks and we give all the assistance. Doctor, you don't need to do anything. We are actually deploying everything to him. But in the same time we are also going to increase the awareness by using social media mostly around the area of the doctor. So any doctor that sign up for these things will get a lot of attention from us directly to the consumer that hopefully will come to their stores. So we walk in together hand to hand with the doctors to actually send a message to the patient to understand that they have a problem that's coming. And this is driving at night. So our attention is to increase the awareness. So when they come into the office they already know about the problem. So it makes the doctor life much easier because they already know about it. It's increasing the awareness of one of the part of that, as you know, we are partners with Alpine Formula One the team and we're going to do around Austin. We're going to do a big event that we're actually inviting many journalists from many different parts of the world, not just the optical industry, car industry, lifestyle industry lifestyle and so on. And we are actually going to increase the awareness about driving at night. For us it's really important that people will feel safer and feel comfortable to drive at night because that's what will allow us in the end of the day to accomplish everything that we would like to do.
- [30:39]
Eugene Shotsman
Right. And I think solving a patient problem ultimately makes the doctor the hero because you now have another solution for a problem that's becoming more and more prevalent. I agree with the screens at night. I've seen the problem firsthand. And the reality is that if the doctor gets to be the hero, that increases patient retention, that increases the number of frames and lenses that any one doctor can prescribe in a particular patient encounter and certainly hopefully helps the industry grow as well as makes a better outcome for the patient, right? Absolutely.
- [31:14]
Renan Naftalovich
So if I may add one item here, Many of us speaking with our friends and they know with the optical industry, they say the following sentence and you will recognize it in a second. I don't need glasses, only when I'm driving at night. And it's a lot happening with the young people that not necessarily buying glasses, okay? They don't think that they need glasses or they see good enough. Okay. But those people is actually the most problematic because young people, because they have a high level of accommodation, suffering from night myopia, more than even older people. So for us, by increasing the awareness, even for young people that say, hey, I cannot see well at night. Okay, I see well at the day and the scene, but I don't see well at night. By increasing the awareness, we hope to bring more young people into the doctor. So if the doctor is actually sending the message to his patient, and many of them is just young people that came to be tested, oh, we recognize ourselves. Yes, we do have a problem. We don't need glasses normally because during the day we don't have spa, but at night we have this problem. The doctor have a much better chance that those patients will come and ask for the glasses.
- [32:23]
Eugene Shotsman
That's an interesting point, Renan. I know you guys have a big research division. Have you found that that's actually happening with young people right now that don't have, let's say they don't have a prescription?
- [32:32]
Renan Naftalovich
Yes, absolutely. That's one of the reasons why we develop the moon in single vision. Usually we traditionally we're doing more the progressive side. But here it was very, very clear this target market is actually bigger. And we're selling today almost equivalent number between single vision and progressive. When it's coming to the sun and the moon. What surprised us with the regular progressive? You are very special, doctor. By selling a lot of single vision digital, there is still many people that don't sell them. But in the driver, intelligence is almost 50. 50. Almost 50, 50.
- [33:05]
Eugene Shotsman
So what's your comment on that, Justin?
- [33:09]
Dr. Justin Prasad
I think that there's definitely a need for that. I mean, I see patients all the time. Sometimes they are. They come in plano, you know, younger patients. But they do complain of night driving. Again, inundation with glare and screens from again displays and headlights and all that. Their vision's good. So they are like, oh, I can get by. I'm 2020 still. Right, Doc? But I want to still address the issue that they're complaining about, which is night driving. So I think that's why? I've always. We've fit a lot of Shamir lenses. They're very innovative and very progressive and forward thinking because you could just brush that off and have somebody just prescribe minus a quarter for them or minus a half adapter and be done with that single vision lens. But I think addressing that issue with the design of the lens, a digital lens, premium anti glare. I even do this for post LASIK patients that want to be rid of their glasses. I actually recommend to a lot of my LASIK patients, especially those that still come in. Oh, my night driving still bugging me. Three months, six months, a year after Lasik or even a few years. I have an option for you now and they love it. And I just say, keep them in your car, keep them in the case in the car and pull them out when you need them.
- [34:18]
Eugene Shotsman
So fantastic. Well, thank you both for spending some time with the Power Hour today. I think the reality is that there are a lot of things that are super innovative here at the show in Vegas and certainly the innovations you guys are showcasing. Shamir, thank you so much for bringing those to market.
- [34:34]
Renan Naftalovich
Thank you. It's great to be here.
- [34:35]
Eugene Shotsman
All right, Justin, thank you for talking a little bit about your practice and enjoy the rest of the show, guys.
- [34:39]
Dr. Justin Prasad
Thank you so much.
- [34:41]
Eugene Shotsman
All right, welcome to the Power Hour Vegas Innovators edition. So we are here at the booth with the CEO of Contacts Portal and also the CEO of Wisconsin Vision. And I wanted to make sure that everybody got a chance to learn a little bit about some of the innovations that are happening in Vegas today. And Steve, I want to turn it over to you. Tell us about what you're exhibiting. You're a first time exhibitor here at Vision Expo. Talk about what you're exhibiting, what problem it solves, and then we'll talk about Darren's practice and how he's using it.
- [35:16]
Steve Druckmann
Great. Well, thanks for having us. Really good to be here. So Contacts Portal was thought up about a year ago and we provide online contacts, portal sales. That's what our entire business is. And what we wanted to do is try and solve a problem that doctors are seeing every day, which is patients come in, they get a exam for a contact lens exam, and then 50% of those people walk out the door and go online to buy their contact lens.
- [35:52]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay.
- [35:53]
Steve Druckmann
So what we try and do is identify the patients that walk out the door and we recapture them by co marketing to those people. We tap into the ehr, which is their CRM system, and we know who bought in the office and who didn't buy in the office. And we just to target the people that walk out in the office.
- [36:15]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay, so somebody walks out with a pair of trial lenses or somebody just walks out and they didn't buy anything. Annual supply, one box, anything. You guys have a way of retargeting it. Now when you retarget, what happens?
- [36:32]
Steve Druckmann
So what we do is we go in every day and we find those people. And through the ehr, we are actually getting their contact lens prescription and all their the key information. And we start to send marketing messages, emails, texts, things like that. That's co branded from us and the Doctor. So from Context Portal and the Doctor and we give them an amazing first order offer because what we try and do is sign them up for our proprietary subscription program. So we sign them up, let's say that they get a 90 day supply and we give them 50% off that first order. And when they sign up, they're signed up for a subscription, they get a whole account, they can manage that subscription any way they want. And we share 20% of those profits, pure profit, with the doctor.
- [37:22]
Eugene Shotsman
20% of the profit or 20% of the revenue?
- [37:24]
Steve Druckmann
Of the revenue.
- [37:25]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay, so if a patient buys $1,000 worth of contacts, $200 is coming to the practice. Practice.
- [37:31]
Steve Druckmann
And that's pure profit to them. Those are patients that walked out the door, would have gone to a online competitor. And what we're doing is recapturing.
- [37:41]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay, so tell me a little bit more about what patients end up buying and how many patients you're able to re engage. So if you said, you know, we had 100 patients in a practice, 50, you estimated walkout without buying anything. In your experience, when you guys have launched this with other practices, what have you seen in terms of how many patients end up buying?
- [38:05]
Steve Druckmann
Yeah, so you have 100 patients, 50 walk out. So we start marketing to those 50 people and we've seen that we've been able to recapture as much as 25 of those 50 people. So half of those people who walked out that the doctor would not have seen them again for a year and not gotten any of those sales. We're going and we're recapturing the 25 people. So if they had 50 orders that they got in their practice, now they have 75 instead of the 50.
- [38:34]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay, and are you marketing to them as the practice or are you marketing to them as a third party service?
- [38:41]
Steve Druckmann
Yeah, we're marketing to them in a co branded way. So we're contacts, portal. So the, the email and text and everything comes from Contact Port Portal. But we mentioned that the doctor in it as well. So it's like co branded. You just left Dr. Druckmann's office and here's a great offer for you.
- [38:58]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay, great. So Steve, I have questions about how you got into this, but we're going to come back to that momentarily.
- [39:04]
Steve Druckmann
Okay.
- [39:04]
Eugene Shotsman
Darian, tell us a little bit about your practice.
- [39:07]
Darren Horndash
Sure. Wisconsin Vision, Heartland Vision and Iboutique are 38 locations in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. And as we have been and Steven mentioned, we have a portion of those patients that walk out either don't buy buy what their managed care plan provides and allows. And we were looking for a platform and or a tool to reach back out and retarget those patients. So it was an absolute problem solved matter that we found was very essential to bring to the table. First of all, re engaging our patients in a way that we hadn't in the past. So if patients buys a three month supply, our CRM platform today didn't have an opportunity to reach back out to them when they were eligible for their next supply of contact lenses or let's say they bought an annual supply. We wanted to re engage them, make sure they came back for their annual eye exam. So looking at various different platforms was an essential piece of our strategies for this year. We're test testing Contact Lens Portal in six of our locations right now. We just got started by the way, because what we wanted to make sure of is this was in a very efficient process for our team members at store level.
- [40:14]
Eugene Shotsman
Right. So that was actually my question is that what do you guys, how is the experience inside for your team? Because I'm sure that people are listening to this and saying oh great. Another thing we have to do, another tool we have to use on top of the other six, seven pieces of software that we're already using to just do our jobs.
- [40:33]
Darren Horndash
You nailed the head. We wanted to make sure that it was seamless for our team members. So we've taken, we've really been working on this project for almost four or five months. We had to build the APIs and the integration with contact lens portals and our EHR platform. So that process was seamless to our team members because when these platforms first came out, this is in a new concept, it was a separate process and I refused to do that because we knew it would be a fail. So when it's a seamless process and we created the efficiencies at store level for team members, they don't have to do anything else but it re engages our patients, it gives us an opportunity to order. It is pure bottom line profit with no cost of goods to us.
- [41:15]
Eugene Shotsman
So in your practices, is that estimate approximately correct? Roughly what percentage of your patients end up buying contact lens in the store and what percentage of patients walk out the door?
- [41:26]
Darren Horndash
We could fall back on some of the Vision Council data that's out there already. It's at least 30%. It could be as high as 50 depending on locations. You know, we have a higher incidence of contact lens wearers in the Illinois market, which is why we selected iboutique. So we know that maybe it's a larger percentage that walk away from there and find other opportunities online. Unless we already have an online portal on our website. We just needed to be able to redirect people and we needed to have that tool and to find partners to plug in and build this with and co brand with. Made a lot more sense than us building it ourselves.
- [42:01]
Eugene Shotsman
Right, so you guys, and I mean as a large retailer, you guys are a pretty sharp retailer in general. So it's not likely that you made this decision. So it sounds like some of the decisions that you guys tried to go with, what are the biggest decision points that drove which vendor you are going to try to pick or test with and how did you specifically land on contact support?
- [42:26]
Darren Horndash
Absolutely. The willingness to work with us to build those APIs out. I mean that is the key. And unless we were able to do that and that got done, we weren't even going to engage because it just.
- [42:37]
Renan Naftalovich
Would be a fail.
- [42:38]
Darren Horndash
It would be, as you mentioned, at store level, our team members would be.
- [42:41]
Eugene Shotsman
Just frustrated with us because the APIs essentially enable the fact that your team doesn't have to do anything.
- [42:47]
Darren Horndash
Correct.
- [42:47]
Steve Druckmann
And just to jump in here, that's how we designed it, was to make sure that they didn't have anything incremental to do in store. Because when we talk to folks like Darren, they just have so many things going on in the office, they can't take another thing. So we designed it so there's nothing new for them to do.
- [43:05]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, so the idea is that you don't. It's all incremental profit for you guys.
- [43:10]
Darren Horndash
That's correct.
- [43:11]
Eugene Shotsman
You do this right now, you, I mean when you don't do this right now, you're potentially just losing.
- [43:16]
Darren Horndash
It's, it's money loss. It's money out the, literally out the door.
- [43:19]
Eugene Shotsman
Now do you think that those patients are more likely to come back if the if contacts portal is re engaging them?
- [43:25]
Darren Horndash
We believe so. Because Again, what they're, what they're doing is when they're, when that patient is due for their contact lens exam, they're reaching back out and getting them back into our offices on a co branded matter, telling them to come to Dr. Horn, Dash and re have your eye exam. Which gives us another opportunity to sell in store too. Yeah.
- [43:45]
Steve Druckmann
And we can't legally send it out unless we have the script. That's a renewed script after a year. So we're incented to send them back to the doctor to go get an eye exam and that helps the whole entire program recycle.
- [43:59]
Darren Horndash
So it is truly a partnership in that regard. Like we're not poaching each other.
- [44:04]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. So Steve, back to you. What are you finding? Are patients buying more of, I don't know, annual supplies online? Are they, when they're using the commerce program, are they buying monthly? What's the, what's the commerce purchase cycle like?
- [44:20]
Steve Druckmann
Yeah. So what we do is we create a landing page for every single practice before we get started. We talk to them and figure out what are the products that they prescribe the most and that's what we feature. Now most of what we feature end up being three month or six month supply. That's probably the biggest amount. We do monthlies as well. We don't even do annuals because our whole thing is if they're going to sell an annual plan in, in the store, that's probably going to be the best price for them. So they're going to do that, they're going to get the best pricing, all those rebates and things like that. If they don't do that, that's where we really come in and that's where our best price is.
- [44:57]
Eugene Shotsman
So in this case, the rebates don't necessarily apply. And what about managed care, you know, do they, well, how does that work?
- [45:04]
Darren Horndash
So typically a store level, we're engaging them on the managed care platform. That's why they come to us. They're getting their annual eye exam and they know they can use their benefits through our, our, through our brick and mortar locations. But once that expires, once they use it up and it's typically, let's round it up to a three month supply. Once they're, once they've used their benefits, then there's another opportunity to re, engage and retarget them if they're not buying from, from us or for some other platform.
- [45:28]
Steve Druckmann
And so what we do is we provide a really good first offer, 50% off that first offer and that and then we sign them up for in our subscription software. So they're signed up for a subscription and then they can manage it any way they manage it. But then we check prices every week to make sure that our prices are as sharp as when you look across all the e commerce platforms. And that's why it works.
- [45:52]
Eugene Shotsman
So the, so the price. Is the price the same as it would be in the practice?
- [45:57]
Steve Druckmann
No, the price is not. And that's the point. The point is we're getting the sharpest prices because the person that is walking out the door is looking for the best deal online. That's why they're walking out.
- [46:08]
Eugene Shotsman
Right. So that actually addresses one of my other questions is it seems like you're dealing with a different type of consumer. When they didn't buy in the office, they're going to go do research. And what you're doing is you're putting a research tool in their hand and saying our pricing is different and that pricing makes it more available or more competitive with everything else they're going to find.
- [46:28]
Steve Druckmann
Yeah. And the other thing we do ask the practice to do is we create a little handout for the people that walk out the door. And it's another endorsement. They. So the patient walks out the door. As they're walking out, they say, hey, we have a partner called Contacts Portal. And they're gonna, here's some information on them. They're going to be reaching out to you. And it validates that we're partners.
- [46:48]
Eugene Shotsman
Jaron, does it bother you at all that the price is different online than it would be in the store?
- [46:52]
Darren Horndash
Certainly. I mean, Lucas, that does a bother. We've worked through that. Right. In truly working through a partnership, we made sure that there was governors in place so that we, we can re engage those patients. And listen, as a large regional retailer, we make sure our pricing is very competitive to other online platforms to begin with. So we're not, we're not outside of the pricing realm that the contact lens portal is at right now, except for that initial offer, 50%. But keep in mind that patient may not have purchased from us anyway.
- [47:20]
Eugene Shotsman
Right. Well, that's the thing. But even when they give them a discount, so ContactsPortal gives the patient a 50% discount. You still make 20% that discounted. So like, that's better than nothing, right? Well, that's. First of all, that's better than nothing. But it's also like, it sounds like Contact's portal is making the investment and recovering the patient, but you're still making money on that. Investment.
- [47:44]
Darren Horndash
That's correct.
- [47:44]
Eugene Shotsman
That's right.
- [47:45]
Darren Horndash
And it's a long term partnership, long term relationship that all of our patient flows and we work with all the big contact lens manufacturers, all of those available on the portal. So that was very important to us as well.
- [47:57]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay, so Steve, how did you get into this? I mean, is there a history here with the optical industry or what?
- [48:02]
Steve Druckmann
Yeah, so I've been running Vision Path, which is our parent company, and we run e commerce businesses. So that's where I come from. I've been running e commerce businesses for 25 years. So I'm a marketer. I'm a direct marketer and that's my expertise. So I come at it from a different place than some of the other competitors out there who are coming at it from a vision point. I come at it from a patient relationship standpoint, a direct marketing standpoint. I worked for 1-800-Flowers for many years and we had a similar thing where we had a network of florists that were local florists called our Bluenet network. And we created a symbiotic relationship there where 1-800-Flowers was able to send customers to them and they would hand deliver the flowers. 100 flowers couldn't hand deliver flowers. And if a customer came in to a florist and wanted to ship it to Arizona, not there, the florist couldn't do it. So they'd send it to 1-800-FLOWERS-DATESHIP. So similar concept where we would lean into our strengths for each of us and then share the profits together.
- [49:14]
Eugene Shotsman
But it also probably means that you've learned some tricks along the way of what works in e commerce and what. Absolutely.
- [49:20]
Darren Horndash
And I was going to touch on that a little bit. One of the key points in choosing Contacts Portal was their core competency in E commerce. Right. They've had years and years on their team of experience and that was very critical to us.
- [49:32]
Eugene Shotsman
Well, you know, the audience knows that I'm a marketer at heart, which basically means that I'm really curious about what some of the tricks are that you, that you use to get patients to take action. Take action. Now, obviously the discount opera is a big one. Anything else? And.
- [49:48]
Steve Druckmann
Well, the subscription nature of what we do makes it easy for us to continue on. So the industry data shows that if a patient walks in and buys in the practice, let's say they buy a 90 day supply, only 20% of those people come back after those 90 days, 80% of those people get that next order online. Our capture rate in our program is 70%. So we capture 70% of that second, third and fourth order versus the 20% that are coming back in the store. So when you look at the revenue and the profits over a full year period, it's actually more effort for.
- [50:31]
Eugene Shotsman
It's actually a really interesting point. So you're saying, okay, so the first three months of life, for example, they're getting a 50% deal, but they're getting a 50% deal. And now they're locked into a subscription that an online that you're using essentially online commerce knowledge to make sure they maintain that subscription and the practice gets a chance to participate in the revenue.
- [50:54]
Steve Druckmann
Of that of every single order. And from our e commerce business, we created a beautiful portal that our customers love that they can manage that subscription. They can go in, they can change the cadence, they can pull up an order, they can push back an order if they have too many contacts. So it's super easy to use.
- [51:12]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay, so that's great. Now Darren, I want to ask you about this 20% because you get, you're a smart regional retailer, you know your cost of goods. So how does the 20% of the revenue compared to what you would have gotten if somebody bought it in store?
- [51:27]
Darren Horndash
Certainly it's a little bit less. Right. There's no question about it. This is the math problem that we were solving. But we also recognize that 20% of zero when they're not coming to us is still zero. So we could still capture 20% and as the part of the relationship and deal with contact cleanse portal is that patient's ours in perpetuity until you know, it's not a one time shot. When they subscribe, they'll be, they'll be with our patient. And that rev share is always ours.
- [51:57]
Eugene Shotsman
And so it sounds like the retention component is really a big part in it decision making. But the other part of it, which I think is really interesting from my vantage point is that what is the, you know, if you look at for example, an industry standard 30% cost of goods and contacts, you know, again you're getting 30% but maybe on only the first few months.
- [52:18]
Darren Horndash
That's correct.
- [52:19]
Eugene Shotsman
Whereas here you're getting 20% on the full year, potentially over the course of multiple orders.
- [52:25]
Steve Druckmann
Correct. And that's the math for sure.
- [52:27]
Darren Horndash
And you know, in our business model, listen, we have 40% annual supplies. So on the brick and mortar side, we're doing the things that we constantly and consistently have done forever. This is assisting us with that next piece.
- [52:42]
Dr. Justin Prasad
Yeah.
- [52:42]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay, makes sense. So Steve, if somebody is Trying to consider whether or not contacts portal is right for that. What are the questions they should ask about their own business that could potentially lead them to you versus and I mean you're not the only software solution space. That's right. So why would somebody pick you guys versus other people? And what particular thing about a practice would, would make them a perfect, perfect practice for you to work with? Right.
- [53:09]
Steve Druckmann
So when I talk to doctors I ask them first question is what percentage of your patients walk out to go buy online? And that's typically somewhere between around 50%. Let's just say that's the average. The second thing I ask them is how many verifications come into the practice every day from online players. So they get five to 10 a day of and those are verifications where a patient got a contact lens script, went online, they bought it online. In order for that online player to actually execute it, they need to validate the script. So these are their patients that have gone away. Our hope is to target that group and cut that in half, cut it in multiple and so that's the first piece. Now what do we do differently than our competitors? There's a few key tests. One is we heard from doctors, they don't want to pay a monthly fee. This is free to use. There's no fee at all. Number two, they don't want to have to do another. We talked about this. They don't want another system to log into. They don't have to learn something new. We said, okay, what we're going to do is do the work to tap into their ehr so they don't have to do any. Three, we're not dictating what to prescribe. You guys prescribe what you prescribe today. We don't want to tell you what to prescribe. And you try and sell. We want you to be as successful selling into your patients as possible. It's only when that doesn't work and they walk out the door. That's the group of people that we're targeting. So it's all incremental, so free, simple to use. And we know these offices people are busy, the people working in the office are busy. So we said let's not ask them to do more than they have to do.
- [54:57]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay. And Darren, you know, if you're looking at this, if you're, if your fellow practice owners are looking at something like this, obviously you've looked at a lot of other choices and you know, are there any other elements in the decision making that people should consider about their practice?
- [55:15]
Darren Horndash
Yeah, I think again, it's creating that mutual partnership, the understanding. Look at the whole patient journey from your brick and mortar store to when that patient next visits you. Right. And we need to be doing more outreach to those patients on a regular basis to make sure because we know patients stretch their contact lenses. We recognize that in fact the data is demonstrating that today, that with the economy, the economic headwinds that we've been facing, patients are buying less boxes at a time. So we need to be able to re engage them more regularly. Our 40% annual supply sales is great, but will that be encroached by economic headwinds for patients?
- [55:55]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. Interesting. And by the way, when patients are paying for a three month, are they just being charged once or are you guys splitting that up into multiple payments? What are the commerce tricks that you guys are getting the patients to do?
- [56:07]
Steve Druckmann
Yeah, so if they get a three month supply, we charge them for that three months.
- [56:11]
Eugene Shotsman
Months.
- [56:12]
Steve Druckmann
And then when the next one's up, we charge them for the next three months and the next three months. So that's one of the calculations that patients a. It's a lot of money if you get an annual supply. I mean it's hundreds of dollars. So not everyone has that to give all at once. And then you're walking out with boxes and boxes of, of contact lenses. We ship it right to your door. We, we have you get all the ship confirmations, you know exactly when it's coming, comes right to your door and you can move it up, you can move it back. So it's really flexible. So our whole thing is around convenience for the patient.
- [56:43]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay, that's great. And you know, in terms of final thoughts here, Darren, from your perspective, what would need to happen to make your pilot in this With Contacts portal successful? What would you need to see in your practice?
- [56:57]
Darren Horndash
Bottom line, we want to see that rev share coming in. We're problem solving every day with context Portal for the items that are important to us, patient retention, getting them back into our practices, communications, outreach, those are very important pieces of the, of this whole situation keeping us in front of mind for that patient.
- [57:19]
Eugene Shotsman
And Steve, final question for you in terms of roadmap, because obviously you're new, this is the first time that you're exhibiting at Vision Expo and you've got a compelling story and obviously you've got some practices using it. So what are the kinds of things that are on your roadmap for product innovation that can even offer more value to practices long term?
- [57:40]
Steve Druckmann
Absolutely. We have about 30 practices that are live that we're learning every day. When we launched back in March, there were things that they gave us feedback on and that's why you do pilots. And we've been innovating and changing things every day. We also look at our direct marketing. Direct marketers don't just sit on their hands. They look at, look at the communications, look at the language, what things can you do to drive that conversion rate up? So you're doing that. We're doing that every day. So I want to continue to do that and add in bells and whistles so that we can focus on getting more first orders and more retention.
- [58:16]
Eugene Shotsman
And that's the part that I get excited about because as a marketer I'm always curious when people build out software solutions, I'm always curious, well, how often are you testing, changing, adjusting what people are actually seeing, what the end user is actually seeing. And oftentimes software companies build it once it kind of it works. But there's not like this commitment to market testing and constantly innovating, that kind of thing. And you know, again, you're coming from the direct marketer space, which makes it so interesting to say, okay, your job is to get people on the program. And part of getting people on the program is constantly innovating what the consumer stimulus actually looks like. Which, you know, I think is one of the things that impresses me the most about your program.
- [59:01]
Steve Druckmann
Yeah. And it's in our DNA. You got to continue to move and test and continue to drive newness.
- [59:07]
Darren Horndash
The last point I want to add is we've been a challenge for them and Steve will admit that we have been throwing curveballs to them being a sophisticated regional retailer. We think that they have been very responsive, very patient with some of our requests and some of the things. But their team has worked very hard to make sure that what we need to be have addressed for a long term partnership is addressed.
- [59:33]
Steve Druckmann
And I just say that partners like Darren, we've been over backwards for. Because we're only successful if they're successful. So we do everything possible and, and it's great. And we have obviously someone large like Wisconsin Vision and all their stores, but we also have independents and this really works for an independent as well. So we have a bunch of practices that are just single doors and that's really successful for them as well.
- [59:59]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. So I think we've talked about the innovation, we've talked about what you're trying to do for the marketplace, the problem that you're trying to solve. The. Thank you gentlemen very much for joining me on the power hour today. And hopefully if somebody is considering helping themselves and helping this part of the business, the contact lens part of the business, with this E Commerce solution, they have an opportunity to talk to you.
- [60:23]
Steve Druckmann
And look you up and they should go. If they want, they can reach out to me directly, Steve Druckman, or just go to contactsporal.com and put in their information and then we'll contact them right away to. To take them through a demo.
- [60:35]
Eugene Shotsman
Perfect. Thank you, gentlemen.
- [60:36]
Darren Horndash
Thank you.