Daysoft Undercuts Tesco and Asda with Consumer Web Site

Archives Admin · #1 (**permalink**) 04-20-2006, 12:29 PM

The headline price for the lenses direct to consumers beats the current best supermarket price by a third. Daysoft's price includes delivery, a no-quibble money back guarantee, and a free four-day trial at £12.99 for 36 pairs of lenses.

The company's independent practice customers will receive a rebate of £5 per wearer month for any lenses bought online by their customers equating to £60 a year for patients lost to the web.

Daysoft Ron HamiltonDaysoft, formerly known as Provis, has gone direct following a positive reaction to a trial website in the US. Feedback from users there showed that its daily disposable products could successfully replace nearly all other makes of contact lens and that Daysoft can retail its lenses at a price low enough to make solutions uneconomic.

Chairman Ron Hamilton said changes to the UK contact lens market necessitated the move. The launch of its 58 per cent water content lens last year and a new edge design has allowed the Blantyre-based company to compete with all the major players on lens comfort, he said.

Target audience for the new website and Daysoft lenses were monthly lens users and those who surfed the web looking for best prices.

'We are trying to bring people back into the fold who are looking to the independents for better prices,' he said. 'We are keeping ourselves, the optician and the patient in a single system. The person who might have been lost to a supermarket, pharmacy or internet middle man will be retained and provide benefit to the independent practice.'

The Daysoft website has a lens comparison chart that matches most contact lens products with a suitable Daysoft replacement. Practices are identified when the patient inputs their prescription details, and director of profession services Malcolm Louch is on call to answer any clinical questions patients may have.

'We don't supply Specsavers or D&A so they won't get a rebate,' said Hamilton. 'The prices are 30 per cent below the supermarkets and we can supply anyone who now buys from D&A, Specsavers or a supermarket. The only people who could beat these prices are our own independent customers if they wanted to.'

Hamilton said he had no intention of starting a price war and he hoped the independent sector would see the move in a positive light.

'It's a competitive world out there and we are quite game to be in that competitive world. If we stay doing the same as Johnson & Johnson and CIBA Vision we are dead.'

Louch estimated the cost of contact lens solutions at £7 a month, making the total for monthly lenses higher than the cost of Daysoft daily disposables. He said dailies were now well established as being the safest contact lens modality and provided optimum convenience for patients. The last barrier to win over monthly wearers was cost.

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Daysoft Undercuts Tesco and Asda with Consumer Web Site

Contact Lenses