The Essilor ANZ road show has officially launched two new, innovative lens products (Crizal Sapphire and Varilux X) and introduced the new Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) chief operating officer, Pierre Longerna - all with a dose of glitz, glamour, news and celebration.

Essilor dollars and marketing support

Essilor Plus offers a private and secure resource portal, including a KPI (key performance indicator) dashboard, to show the practice owner where they need to focus; lots of marketing collateral to help the practice owner market their business better; and 75 white papers covering a host of different clinical areas, such as myopia and blue light.

Essilor’s latest practice staff motivator is “Essilor dollars”. Platinum partner practice owners can nominate staff to receive say 100 or 200 Essilor dollars, which they can use to purchase prizes in quarterly, online auctions.

Essilor has also arranged partnerships with a number of online and traditional marketing and PR agencies to provide discounted support to platinum partners who wish to improve their marketing strategy and activities, she said.

That Luxottica question!

Essilor ANZ’s new chief operating officer, Pierre Longerna, tackled elephant in the room at the Auckland, New Zealand even:, Essilor’s impending merger with the internationally-dominant frames supplier and corporate store owner, Luxottica.

Longerna was impressive, sharing his optimism for the future of the independent optometry sector, which he said was destined for greater growth given today’s growing and aging populations. He supported his colleagues’ calls for independent practice owners to differentiate themselves; not on price or fashion so much, as those are well covered by both the older and the emerging chains, but on vision care and service.

As for the merger, nothing will change, he stressed, at least for three years and probably much longer. “Essilor will remain Essilor and Luxottica will remain Luxottica… We don’t share commercial information… and we will maintain our respective cultures.

“We are going to take time to see what it means for a frame supplier to join forces with a lens supplier… and we will be looking for something more sophisticated than a lens and a frame.”

Though the US, Europe and many other countries have approved the merger a few, such as China, are still going through the formalities, but Longerna said he expects the deal to be fully approved soon.

“To grow takes two things: strong partnerships and innovation. And we will continue to bring new innovations to grow the industry together.”