Shona Opdahl, Brian Bachman, Charlotte Kessler, Jeff MacPherson and Stephen McIntosh. Providing Rx safety eyewear, business-to-business Photos by Shawn Fulton. Safety Eyewear represents the culmination of many years of thought, a couple of years of planning, and now 12 months of very strong operations,” says Stephen McIntosh, President. “We some time ago identified a hole in the prescription eyewear industry that you could drive a truck through, and that hole was the provision of approved Rx safety eyewear in a business-to-business context.” F.O. Safety Eyewear is one operating company within the Factory Optical/Optiks International/Eyecandy Optiks group of companies. Head office for the operation is in Regina, and its digital lens manufacturing function is performed in the Company’s wholly owned state-of-the-art digital lens fabrication facility. Having this lab has been a “game changer,” according to McIntosh. “To add Rx safety lenses to a manufacturing process that already process upwards of 250,000 lenses a year affords us the ability to leverage these efficiencies and economies of scale, and price our safety lenses accordingly.” Further developments have been the appointment of Jeff MacPherson as Chief Operating Officer, and Charlotte Kessler as the full time Vice President of Business Development, attainment of industry standard PICS designation, and the addition of latestgeneration specialized lens-edging equipment, dedicated to the cutting of Rx safety lenses. Furthermore, a commitment to what the group feels is the single finest line of safety frame available— WileyX—out of California has enabled F.O. Safety Eyewear to successfully roll-out its proprietary “Sealed and Close Fitting Eyewear Program.” WileyX The adoption of the WileyX safety frame line as a complement to the Canadian gold standard OnGuard line and, together, representative of their core frame line, is in itself an interesting story. “Without boring anyone with the details, we came across this line at a U.S. tradeshow, were immediately impressed by its pedigree as the frame of choice for the U.S. military, and, unbeknownst to the company, had it approved for Canadian safety eyewear application. Fast forward to today, and we are by far the largest distributor of this line in Canada.” The manifest of these efforts is a client list today numbering 60 significant operations, with companies as small as a dozen employees, up to companies with employment complements in the thousands. “We have deliberately constructed our marketing program for F.O. Safety Eyewear to be flexible. Virtually every contract we have is customized as we early on recognized that no two companies share the identical needs,” notes McIntosh. With a retail chain of 15 wholly owned stores in Western Canada today and growing, the group is well positioned to service a large number of its clients’ employees through its own distribution network. Where it is not geographically possible to do this, “we send Licensed Opticians trained in safety fitting and dispensing wherever our clients require. We rent apartments where necessary and put our people onsite full time, when asked.” There are a number of organizations, according to McIntosh, that appear to dabble in Rx safety eyewear, but none that embrace it the way F.O. Safety Eyewear Inc. has. “I think that the traction that we have generated in this initiative speaks volumes to not only the effectiveness of our specific program, but to the unfulfilled need out there. Our VP Business Development would be better equipped to answer this, but I’m not sure that once a company has listened to what we have to offer, the price and flexibility with which we offer it at, anyone has said no. We just attended a convention in Vancouver last month, and our expectation is for another 20 corporate clients from that alone.” Making a mark in the West The Factory Optical and Optiks International group continues to make its mark in Western Canada—today it’s in the early stages of constructing two more “super-opticals” in downtown Vancouver. Their destiny, however, would appear to be more diverse than that. With the roll out F.O. Safety Eyewear Inc., their mantra “that you really can be all things to all people” seems to be realistic. Their success to date is well documented by their designation by Quantum Shift ™ as one of the 40 most promising private companies in Canada in 2009, and more recently by their inclusion in the bestselling book That’ll Never Work, published earlier this year. To learn more about F.O. Safety Eyewear Inc., find them on the Web at www.fosafetyeyewear.ca, or contact Charlotte Kessler, Vice President of Business Development toll free at 1-855-5273661, or by email at [email protected]. BR F.O. Safety Eyewear Inc. #6 - 1713 Ross Ave. E, Regina SK p: 306.775.2355 e: [email protected] www.factoryoptical.ca
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