Specsavers sees benefits of fresh approach

Specsavers managing director Graeme Edmond in an ad for the company. Photo / Richard Robinson

The battle of the eyewear chains is heating up with Specsavers about to open its 50th store and rival OPSM owner Luxottica announcing it has just bought a 12-outlet chain and an online contact lens supplier.

Specsavers is claiming more than a quarter of the market, having sold 440,000 pairs of glasses since opening in New Zealand just over two years ago.

Luxottica - which owns Budget Eyewear and Sunglass Hut as well as OPSM - now has 110 stores.

Both companies say they have plans for further growth in this country as the number of independently owned optical eyewear outlets declines.

Luxottica, an Italian-owned company, would not comment on market share.

But it is targeting both ends of the optical market with OPSM, which has been around for about 15 years, and new brand, Budget Eyewear, which started with 10 stores and is now up to 23.

Luxottica's announcement last week of its acquisition of MySight Optometrists and Visions Specialists Group of 12 practices, and LensDirect, follows last year's purchases of 14 optical stores and the website www.contacts2go.co.nz.

Chris Beer, chief executive of Luxottica Asia Pacific, said New Zealand was an important market for the group and it was focused on developing its key retail brands here both organically and through acquisition.

"We're methodically going around executing our strategy. There's no question that the retail environment has been tough but we understand how economic cycles work."

Roy Morgan research supplied by Specsavers shows the company had 26.2 per cent of the market as at October last year.

A survey of 737 glasses wearers over six months showed that of other leading suppliers, OPSM had 13.9 per cent of the market and Visique 13.2 per cent. Specsavers says its entry into the market in November 2008 could not have been better timed.

"We came in right at the time internationally it was quite a severe recession," said managing director Graeme Edmond.

The 50th Specsavers store opens this month in Hamilton, and the chain aims to open another 10 around the country.

Mr Edmond was aware of criticism from other optometrists about the quality of Specsavers' work.

"When you do radically change the shape of the market and when you do impact your competitors it's not surprising they make these sort of comments. Virtually all of our optometrists come from opposition.

"We haven't lost a single optometrist the other way."

He said Specsavers shot to leadership in New Zealand faster than in any other country.

The brand had entered 10 countries since being established in Britain in 1984 and "nowhere has it seen such an instantaneous and overwhelming response as it experienced in New Zealand".

Retail analyst Tim Morris, managing director of Coriolis Research, said Specsavers had revolutionised the market.