The future of optics will be shaped by revolutionary decisions
A startup Smart Vision shakes up traditional optician business: Lithuanian startup works as telemedicine innovation. Co-founder and CEO Arūnas Vismantas explains why their solution is diverse and unique: “End-to-end solution reinvents optician business. Their centralised platform connects traditional brick and mortar optics with frames warehouses, lens manufacturers, and fulfillment centers in a seamless manner. This way a customer gets high-end premium prescription eyewear 70% faster, ½ price from traditional optics, and a much more convenient shopping experience”.
For startuplithuania.com A. Vismantas explained that optics is a very old-fashioned, traditional business market. A completely new, more effective business model creates an automated supply chain, futuristic points of sale (POS) design, and centralised system. Customers can order glasses to try at home for free, they can also get unlimited free prescriptions and eye-checks via cloud-based remote eye-check in-store, POS are strategically based to be convenient where people live or work.
At the moment Smart Vision focuses on the Baltics region, there are few big players to make. Startup has started looking for a good idea to focus on: more than half of people are wearing prescription eyewear, so it is easy to realise that the market is massive! In addition, opticians do not innovate as much, but people are actually open-minded to new things. All the decisions are based on market research and are data-driven. As soon as things started to move, investors, lenses manufacturers, frames warehouses supported the idea. And thus SmartVision was born.
“Officially we started back in 2018, but we did a lot of prep work. It was a long way to where we are today. Creating innovation in a medical field without education in it, worked as an advantage for us. Of course, we were wrong a lot of times in our initial stage. But long-term proved that open-minded ideas can be a huge advantage as you are simply not bound by market stereotypes”, – said CEO of Smart Vision.
Startup predominantly focuses on B2C, but also actively develops B2B business model. The typical customers usually are professional women from their early ‘20s to mid-’50s. They appreciate fashionable frames, great prices, but most importantly premium quality. However, the company started from a more male-based audience and attracted a lot of innovators that appreciate new ways of doing things.
