The Supply Chain

“Managing VisionSpring’s supply chain is like walking along the beach at the crest of where waves reach and then recede- our target market is a few feet away but the industry and supply of product continues to rush by and we are forced to straddle both worlds to make the market work.”

                                                                                                                                                                                         Peter Eliassen is VisionSpring’s VP of Sales and Operations and directs the sourcing and design of VisionSpring products. He is a fearless globetrotter, having visited over 65 countries around the world often with a pair of glasses in hand and a camera hanging off his shoulder. He loves venturing out to find new and interesting food, and still hasn’t found anything that can beat Karim’s chicken tikka in India or In N’ Out Burger in the US.

In some ways, VisionSpring is going in the opposite direction of the traditional optical sector. The industry continues to modernize by developing newer materials and introducing fancier, more convenient products for the upper-middle and affluent classes, while VisionSpring seeks to maintain a consistent source of affordable and culturally-relevant products for frontier markets living on $0.50-$8 a day.

While this stark difference might seem obvious, the lack of access to affordable and quality glasses is the primary reason why the developing world poor does not benefit from eyeglasses…a technology that has existed for at least 800 years. Every year I attend vision conferences and trade shows, which is always a funny and challenging experience. As exhibitors demonstrate what’s new and great, I am always the guy asking for what they did 10 years ago. Most people look at me bewildered wondering why I am asking for antiquated products; the few manufacturers that are able to make what VisionSpring needs usually say something like “Oh, we didn’t think anyone would be asking about glass photochromics, we left those all at the factory. Where are you from..New York?” It may seem that VisionSpring is behind the market tide, but in reality we serve our customers most effectively by using proven technology and cost-effective materials that are appropriate for our market’s needs…the real challenge is getting it to them.

Creating the Market Supply

Creating new markets in the developing world requires an understanding of both the needs of the people we serve and the consumer’s capacity to adopt and use our eyeglasses. When VisionSpring enters an under-served market, we offer a small and consistent selection of functional and appropriately-stylish eyeglasses. However, in markets where customers have already become more aware of the value of eyeglasses, their preferences evolve, requiring a much more sophisticated selection of glasses.

We see this consumer evolution across our country portfolio. In Bangladesh where we work with BRAC in rural areas, we provide only two product offerings: single vision and bifocal reading glasses. This is appropriate for the local market because customers have limited access and understanding of the importance and value of eyeglasses, so offering more styles does not help us reach more people in need. Carrying fewer styles is easier on BRAC’s logistics, allowing the in-country team to focus on improving customer awareness and expanding distribution. In El Salvador, where there is generally a higher level of awareness and understanding of the importance and value of eyeglasses, consumer expectations are higher (even for those who have never worn eyeglasses). In sourcing frames for our prescription glasses, we expect to need over 150 frame styles for more-urbanized El Salvador whereas we may only need 7-10 for rural India or Bangladesh.

Product Design Matters

Product portfolios are not just dictated by pure market dynamics; cultural practices play a significant role in VisionSpring’s product design process. For example, many of our customers work both in- and outdoors (i.e. drivers and farmers) so they require shaded lens to protect their eyes from the sun as well reading glasses to see their work clearly. We initially tried to sell reader sunglasses, but finding the appropriate customer segment that only worked or read outside limited the product’s potential. The solution was that these customers needed a photochromic lens that darkened in sunlight but were clear in regular light. The challenge for VisionSpring is that affordable photochromics are just not available from the vast majority of eyeglass manufacturers because manufacturers don’t see this as a growth opportunity with their traditional developed world customers. Some lens suppliers provide plastic or resin photochromic lenses, but the wholesale price point exceeds $5 for just the lens and thus would not be affordable for our customers throughout the world.

We determined that we had to use glass as our photochromic lens material to provide the highest quality at an affordable price point. Glass provides the best visual acuity (vs. plastic lenses), but tends to be heavier and harder to cut and fit in frames. We scoured coastal China for over a year and found only a few glass photochromic suppliers and two lens cutters/edgers to help us fit the lenses in to our frames. After a few iterations with these manufacturers, we have tightened down our requirements and specifications for this much more manual process (our full line of reading glasses uses acrylic lenses, a fully automated cutting process). Though it required many months and iterations, we proved that it is feasible to create a unique product that balances both our consumers’ capacity/willingness to pay and manufacturing/cost constraints.

The Challenges

Though much work in sourcing and eyeglass design focuses on serving the consumer market, maintaining a close relationship with our suppliers is a key priority. In the past few years, the market in China has become much more difficult for eyeglass manufacturers, affecting both VisionSpring and on down the line to our final customer. Here are a few examples:

•Labor Challenges: The strong growth of the Chinese economy means that employees have more options outside the coastal manufacturing towns, especially more in-land. This has meant that factory laborers don’t have to leave their home towns and travel to the east coast for jobs. The result is that our factories are having to pay more to attract and retain employees.

• Government Intervention: The Chinese government consistently looks to advance their manufacturing industries towards higher-end products, such as electronics, so they are finding ways to “encourage” low –tech, labor heavy industries to move up the value chain. For example, last Fall the government started making strategic power cuts throughout the final months of 2010 to force lower-end manufacturers to shut down to save energy. These cuts were blamed on international climate carbon initiatives, but a similar event has taken place in many cities such as Shenzhen in recent years. This policy affected many small frame, nose pad, plating, and other factories, slowing down the production time for most of our products.

• Global Currency & Commodity prices: With the growing strength of the Chinese Renminbi, softening of the US dollar, brass & copper commodity price increases, and wage inflation, we have been fortunate to avoid a price increase for the last two years until just a few months ago- after Chinese New Year, when all business in China resets. In February and March, nearly the entire sector (from large players to middle players like VisionSpring) received a price increase of between 8-15% for eyeglasses. Fortunately, we are pleased with the quality and price of the eyeglasses we are currently sourcing, so we are in a strong position, but continue to evaluate other alternatives.

With the outgoing tide of pressures to modernize, whether from the demand or supply side, VisionSpring will need to address the manufacturing realities in China while focusing on securing a stable source of affordable reading glasses for both mature and frontier markets in the developing world. This makes VisionSpring vulnerable to market dynamics (both customer and government driven) and requires a good amount of effort in securing backup plans to maintain a consistent quality and price for our customers throughout the world. Creating demand in new communities everyday while leveraging the most efficient global supply chain we can design puts us in an exciting and challenging position as the market maker for affordable eyeglasses in the developing world.

Please join us on our journey of providing clear vision and enhanced livelihoods to millions in the years to come – your comments and questions are welcome and donations let us continue our important work.

There are a number of moving parts to making any business work – do you have the right product? Is there a sizable market for your goods? How can you effectively market to your consumer? Like all profit making entities, these questions keep us up at night, but as a social enterprise we face additional challenges, especially since we operate in severely resource constrained environments. Questions like how can we incorporate technology without raising our prices, what are the regulatory or legal barriers we must address, how we bring life-changing care to highly dispersed populations, are also on the top of minds. The Making Markets Work is a new section of our blog in which we give you a front row seat into our lives as a Base of Pyramid social business. We explore the good, the bad, and the ugly of building a market from scratch so that the poor have access to the eyeglasses they need to see.

NEW YORK, March 11, 2011 – VisionSpring is proud to announce a partnership with Ray-Ban to bring greater attention to the need for quality eye care and encourage participation in the global effort to provide more eyewear to those in need. For the next month, people who donate $160 or more to VisionSpring will receive a free pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses.

This offer kicks off today Friday, March 11 at 12am EST.  Tomorrow morning VisionSpring CEO and Founder Dr. Jordan Kassalow is scheduled to appear on Good  Morning America to discuss the organization’s charitable cause (check your local listings for times and channels to watch or DVR the show). The Ray-Ban promotion will last until 11:59pm EST on Monday, April 11.

Individuals can take part in the promotion by donating via the Global Giving online platform at www.globalgiving.org/projects/seewelldowell. The goal of the promotion is to raise at least $250,000, enough to provide 65,000 people in need with eyeglasses to restore their sight, and to raise public awareness of the pressing need for affordable eye care.

“We are very excited to support VisionSpring in its mission to bring affordable eye care to underserved communities around the world,” said Andrea Dorigo, President of Luxottica USA. “This partnership underscores and further expands our commitment to improve vision and provide eyewear for people with the greatest need worldwide.”

“By providing underprivileged people with glasses, we are restoring the productivity and increasing the potential income level of those who need it the most,” said Dr. Kassalow. “Through this partnership, we are giving donors the opportunity to get protection from the sun for their own eyes and share the gift of sight with another person.”

With newly increased productivity from VisionSpring’s quality, attractive eyeglasses, Gadisetti Ramanjaneyulu is dramatically improving his family’s quality of life and opportunity.

When Gadisetti’s former eyeglasses broke, he did not replace them.  They were uncomfortable, unattractive, expensive and could only be purchased at a far-away hosptical.  As a tailor, however, Gadisetti desperately needed to be able to see.

Then a local villager came to his door and told Gadisetti about a VisionSpring campaign. Intrigued, he decided to attend and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of a $4 pair.

With his new VisionSpring reading glasses, Gadisetti can now finish six shirts a day, compared to the three he could previously complete. He can work at night as well, further increasing his productivity. With his increased earnings he has bought himself a sewing machine, enabling him to do complicated projects that he used to have to outsource.

Gadisetti’s home now has a gas stove and a cot to sleep on. Once they are old enough, he says he will now be able to send his two sons to receive a higher education.  Before this change in his life Gadisetti had no savings whatsoever. Thanks to his corrected vision he has started putting money away, giving his family increased security.

Uninformed of the VisionSpring team’s plans to visit, Gadisetti was sitting diligently at his machine as they walked in, glasses perched neatly on his nose, finally able to do his work successfully and in comfort.

Though we work every day to bring eyeglasses to people around the world, even us VisionSpringers forget the value of our sight. So we recently asked the entire staff to document their experience of life with vision impairment. Some us vividly remembered the moment that glasses transformed our lives, while others took off their glasses for an hour and wrote down the challenges they faces in a blurry world.  The stories underscore how important eyesight is to all of us, rich or poor, and why the VisionSpring team works tirelessly to bring eyeglasses to low-income communities around the world.

I have vivid memories of the day I got my first pair of eyeglasses. I was 8 years old and had only ever known blurry chalkboards and street signs.  A was in total shock when I put on the finished frames.  Leaving the store, I walked through the parking lot staring and shouting “Mom! Mom! Everything has an outline around it! Cool!”

My distance vision steadily declined over the next ten years.  By 18 years old I could not see someone’s face if they were more than a few feet away from me.  Needless to say, contact lenses and eyeglasses became as critical to leaving my apartment as clothing.  Yet like most people living in the developed world, I was never particularly aware of the importance of vision correction. I knew to be grateful for vaccines, for having enough to eat, and a roof over my head.  Eyeglasses just never crossed my mind as that kind of a blessing.

Then, two years ago, I came across VisionSpring and learned that hundreds of millions of people around the world lack access to this a basic, life-changing product. I was appalled, but also thrilled because it seemed like here was that rare global issue that had a (relatively) easy, sustainable, and scalable solution.  I applied for an internship and, in an unexpected turn of events, I have been working in eye care ever since.

When the team decided to impair our vision for an hour to see what it was like to live in need of eyeglasses, I knew it would be a huge challenge. As a young woman living and working in a big city, it seemed like there was never an hour that I could do this exercise.   While commuting?  No thanks.  At work?  Yea, right.  On a date?   Um, no.  I have lost contact lenses enough times to know how fully impossible it is for me to function in the world without corrected vision.  And sitting in my apartment in a comfortable haze was not the point.

So instead, I took the time to think back on my life and identify the things I could not have accomplished without eyeglasses:

• Passed secondary school
• Participated in dance classes and performances: my passion growing up
• Been admitted to or attended university
• Gotten a good job
• Traveled on my own
• Easily lived on my own

These are not small things. Indeed these are many of the most important aspects of my life, both past and future.   As I sit here and type this, looking forward to the future – my career and independence, the ability to support a family and pursue my dreams – I am overwhelmed at the power that a $4 pair of eyeglasses makes for each of our customers around the world.  So grateful for my eyeglasses, and for the opportunity to bring this life-changing product to those in need.

I got eyeglasses to fix my minimally blurry distance vision.  I never  imagined how dramatically they would improve my life.

I started getting migraine headaches when I was seventeen years old – a pounding sensation around my eyes, sensitivity to light,  and extreme nausea.  In the beginning they were infrequent, but within a few years they occurred almost weekly. They also increased in severity so that I often had to enclose myself in a dark room for 24-36 hours, not to even mention the four emergency room visits when the pain became truly unbearable.  Besides the obvious frustration of missing class, work and my social life, the situation grew increasingly hopeless as I visited a long line of doctors and tried several medications, none of which provided more than temporary relief.  I thought I would have to accept these severe migraines as a permanent part of my life.

Then, a little over two years ago, I got my eyes checked. I had noticed I was straining to see across the street, but I had never imagined I had any serious eye issues. It turned out I needed a minor correction. I picked out the pair that I wear to this day.

I could not believe how quickly the headaches went away. Almost instantly migraines went from being a weekly part of my life to a very infrequent occurrence. And now when I do get them, they are not nearly as severe or debilitating.  It is hard to imagine that something so basic and so widely available was the answer to my problems for all those years. What’s even more amazing to me now is to think of those millions of people around the world who do not have access to the eyeglasses I did.  It is a painful though, but fuels my fire to come to work every day and figure out the best way to reach the huge number in need.

Over the decades that I have worn them, eyeglasses have become a part of my body. I sometimes sleep with them on my face.

During my childhood I visited many eye doctors trying to find a solution to the photophobia (sensitivity to light) that forced me to keep away from my favorite sport, cricket.  My eyes were often red and irritated, and I had significant discomfort from straining to see. Every time I consulted a doctor, I was put through vigorous eye examinations to be only told that everything is fine with my eyes and nothing much to worry about.

At the age of 20, I met a senior ophthalmologist and explained him how my vision impacted my quality of life.   Finally, I got a prescription, with a slight correction for both distance vision and am astigmatism. The doctor also recommended that I use photochromic lenses (which tint when exposed to the sun).

The next week I received my first pair of eyeglasses. It was so gratifying to be able to  enjoy being out in the sun for the first time.  The prescription that my eye doctor gave me was not strong, but it made all the difference in the world.

Now at age 43, my opthalmologist tells me I do not need to wear my prescription distance eyeglasses anymore because the onset of near vision loss has offset my prior issues.  I continue to wear eye glasses with plain lens with UV protection, however, to address my photophobia.

Given the magic eyeglasses have done for me, I can only imagine the immense benefits of VisionSpring’s eyeglasses for those in similar or greater need.

Our Vision Entrepreneurs (VEs) are an inspiring and diverse group in El Salvador. One fought in the civil war for years, another is a mother of five children and the president of a woman’s association in her small town. Yet another is a single young mother of two children and dreams of finishing her masters in business management. Despite the diversity in their backgrounds, three major themes unify all the VisionSpring El Salvador VEs:

1. They value and depend on the income they receive from selling glasses to support themselves and their families

2. They love being able to set their own schedule. This is particularly valuable for our mothers and university students who can schedule vision campaigns around their class schedule or their children’s needs

3.They have a strong and passionate desire to help those in their community. This is perhaps the most important reason for their long-term success. Without that innate desire to help people, VEs tend to not last very long in the program.

Every month there country-wide team meetings which all local staff attend.  I am always deeply impressed at how the leadership uses these meetings to provide specific, constructive criticism to each and every member of the organization, and welcomes criticism and ideas in return. At the end of the meeting, Country Director Heidy Serpas, shares each Entrepreneur’s sales numbers, running from the lowest to the highest seller. It’s a touching experience to hear the applause and encouragement of the group: the work each VE does is so important, and I’m glad that they take the time to recognize their contribution to their community.

What has been particularly gratifying for me over the last year is the ability to promote from within the organization. With the expansion of our comprehensive eye care program, we have increased the number of full-time staff from 1 person in January 2010 to 21 as of February 2011. Many of these full-time staff started off as Vision Entrepreneurs, including Country Director Heidy Serpas; Chief Optometrist, Jose Escamilla; and our Vision Entrepreneur Supervisors, Nelson Guevara and Noel Hernandez.  This leadership team sees VisionSpring not just as a job, but as a career that allows them to grow both personally and professionally. In the coming years, VisionSpring will work hard to create training and promotional opportunities to ensure that each member of our organization can fulfill their personal goals and create the greatest impact in their communities.

If you happen to be in Eastern Delhi, be on the look out for VisionSpring newest eyeglass outlets.

Taking a page from the successful“pop-up” trend of the developed world, VisionSpring is now supporting our Vision Entrepreneur outreach in India by setting up short-term sales spaces throughout low-income communities in Delhi. Through this program, Vision Entrepreneurs canvass a community in need, educating the local population about the importance of vision care.  VEs encourage customers to get their eye checked at a VisionSpring Experience Center, the pop-up tents that operate nearby on a pre-selected date.  These portable stores are a cost-effective, accessible way to serve communities in need and VisionSpring’s introduction to serving the urban poor in India.

Under the leadership of our new Regional Director of Asia, Pritpal Marjara, VisionSpring is teaching our Vision Entrepreneurs new and innovative ways to communicate the value of our eyeglasses to India’s poor.  Marketing the “experience” of restoring vision through eyeglasses is now a key component of Vision Entrepreneur activities; prior to hosting vision camps in the Experience Centers,  VEs spend several hours talking to the local people about how sight can change their life. This outreach is done on a household level, with VEs going door-to-door to form a personal connection with their customers. The VEs also use traditional social marketing activities such as street theater and group story telling to convey how eyeglasses can transform a person’s life, using examples from our customers’ everyday lives.  You can learn more about the experience of our customers in the field, by reviewing their stories here.

VisionSpring’s approach is different from other optical services in the developing world in many ways.  We provide information on how the right glasses can improve the person’s productivity and quality of life in a way that is accessible to our target population. Our goals are to educate the local population about vision loss, motivate the working poor to address their sight problems, and differentiate our products from the low-quality glasses currently available in markets throughout the country, especially in cities like Delhi.

Congratulations to the VS India team!  We will keep you updated on their progress in serving Delhi and more cities throughout the country.