Well, what can we say except "Thank you!"
Thank you to all our clients who helped us celebrate our 21st year as Village Optician!
Can you believe we are 21? I know I can't, it only seems like yesterday when Stephen and I were sat making plans for our own practice which then grew to the 4 which make up our little group.
When we look back, I have to say we have evolved from when we first started out. Back then we followed the usual ideas of what an optician should look like, what we should sell, and so on. Our own personal eyewear journeys have helped us evolve into what we are today. Let me explain;
We realised we don't have to be the same as all the other opticians, we get to choose which frame suppliers we work with, we get to choose what to wear rather than the stuffy plain grey suits I used to wear. We get to choose how we speak to our clients, how we serve them, how we make them feel good about wearing glasses. We get to give them a much better experience than they may have had at some of the larger chain opticians.
These changes have made a big difference to how our staff and clients feel about their own eyewear and style. We originally fell into the trap of designer branded eyewear (let's be clear - there is nothing wrong with brands, we all have our favourites that we like to wear, drive, eat and use) but most of these eyewear brands are owned and produced by one or two big eyewear companies with licence agreements whose focus wasn't really on quality but on their own profits by selling as many of these frames as possible - they were everywhere. There was nothing different about them and, by association, us as an opticians who were selling them. You could get the same frames in just about any optician you could think of. The only thing that did make us different was us; our staff, our service, our attention to detail, our eye examinations, and how we treat our clients. These are the things we focused on.
We bravely (well it felt brave at the time) made the change to be different and to work with independent eyewear designers, and what a change it's been!
We now stock frames that really are different, exclusive frames you can only get from us in this area, frames that actually make people feel good about wearing them. They are colourful, bold and different.
We may be a small opticians in the North East of England but we were the first in the UK to stock Tree spectacles and Karavan eyewear.
Not only has our eyewear evolved over these 21 years but our eyecare has too.
We now offer Optomap and OCT scans. These have really revolutionised our eyecare. These scans help us to see more of your eyes than ever before and helps us make far better clinical decisions.
For more information about the scans have a look here for OCT and here for Optomap.
So once again, thank you to all our clients. Without you and your support we won't be where we are today.
We promise to keep doing the best we can for all our clients, and who knows, maybe I'll be writing this again in another 21 years!
