Vision Express
| Type | Private Limited Company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retailing optician |
| Founded | 1988 |
| Headquarters | Lenton, Nottingham, England |
| Number of locations | UK, Jersey, Republic of Ireland |
| Key people | Philip Hyde, Stephen Noble, Jonathan Lawson (directors) |
| Products | Spectacles, contact lenses |
| Revenue |  £190.62m (2010) [1] |
| Operating income | £11.62m (2010) [1] |
| Profit | £8.77m (2010) [1] |
| Owner(s) | HAL Trust (Bermuda) via GrandVision SA (France) [1] |
| Employees | 5,000 apx (inc. Joint Venture Partnerships) |
| Parent | Vision Express Group Ltd |
| Subsidiaries | Abbeyfield V.E. Ltd Vision Express (CLS) Ltd |
| Website | www.visionexpress.com www.visionexpress.ie |
Vision Express is one of the four major operators which dominate 60% of the British optical retail market for spectacles and contact lenses. Vision Express branded stores in total command over 11% of this current market. [1]
The company opened its first store in 1988 at the MetroCentre, Gateshead, quickly followed by a number of other stores. In October 1993 US Shoe Corp Cincinnati sold the seven of its LensCrafters' superstores in the UK to Vision Express. In 1995 the first store operating on a joint venture basis was opened.
The company had grown to over 220 stores across the UK by 2007. In May 2008 Batemans Opticians was acquired which comprised a 75 store chain in the south of England. The majority of these stores have since been rebranded as Vision Express.
There are now over 330 stores throughout the UK, Jersey and the Republic of Ireland.[2] Of these stores approx. 195 are fully company-owned[1] with the remainder being under Joint Venture Partnerships.
Contents |
[edit] Business Structure
Stores are divided into four types: Optical Lab, Superstores, Franchises (owned entirely by the proprietor but under licence to use the Vision Express name and with some access to Grand Vision services) and Joint Venture Partnerships (owned on a 50:50 basis by a manager/proprietor and the Vision Express subsidiary, Abbeyfield V.E. Ltd, and with setup costs subsidised by Vision Express).
The first two types of store which provide a one hour service using both semi-finished lenses (prescription being cut from scratch) and stock lenses. The JV stores tend to provide an overnight service also, with some exceptions. A new One Hour On Demand service has recently been introduced to the company, whereby if a customer would like their spectacles back within the hour they pay a £5 express charge, otherwise the job will be ready the next day. This has been brought in to effect to stagger the amount of jobs any one lab would be expected to carry out at one time.
The headquarters of the Vision Express Group and subsidiaries in the UK is at Lenton, Nottingham.
[edit] Takeover by Grand Vision
Grand Vision acquired Vision Express in 1997. The French parent company Grand Vision has stores under various brands across Europe, and the rest of the world. Its rivals in UK include Specsavers, Boots Opticians and Dollond & Aitchison. Under franchise agreement there is a strong Vision Express brand present also in Latvian and Lithuanian markets. These shops were acquired from GrandVision by Latvian entrepreneurs of "LU Optometrijas Centrs SIA".
[edit] Additional Services
Vision Express stores offers digital retinal photography. This involves making a digital image of the back of the eyes. It allows the optometrist to record in detail the structures of the back of the eye. When a succession of images have been built up over several visits, small changes at the back of the eye can be more easily detected.[citation needed]
[edit] Controversy
In September 2010 it was reported that blog spam comments were appearing online that were trying to promote Vision Express[3] for SEO purposes. The blog spam attempting to promote VisionExpress.com with a link for the keyword "eye test". The Wikipedia page for Vision Express had also been edited to try and promote "eye tests" and "opticians" in the External Links section as promotional links back to the VisionExpress.com website. In both instances, the links would have automatically being tagged with nofollow, which according to Google means the links would have been of little benefit for ranking purposes anyway[4].
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e f Vision Express (UK) Ltd, Annual report and financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2010, approved 19 April 2011.
- ^ "Find your local Vision Express Opticians". http://www.visionexpress.com/opticians/.
- ^ Techwatch: Are Vision Express comment spamming blogs?
- ^ Google: About rel="nofollow"
