Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry

Anecdotally, my my op seems to be compensated by dehydration and I haven't had any inclination to drink alcohol in many years, beyond a novelty (good) beer (ale) and I still notice when tired and poorly hydrated.

I searched for the services that I have learned somehow will measure individual and high accuracy prescriptions, for the custom Zeiss and Nikon lenses I found a few years ago in the catalogue websites and became obsessed with, due to the fact that I have been frustrated by astigmatism for all my life. And because I greatly prefer to wear over size frames, so I have as wide atc of corrected vision as I believe possible. The result is usually atrocious : pavements rear up and bite me, the distortion moves my measure by inches and I trip... But I eventually accommodate for the effect... I feel like this is a overhead I'd rather not task my brain with.

Esssilor seems to hold a virtual monopoly... Nikon and Zeiss and Schneider exist, but in that order in very rapidly declining proportion. Corning, via Serengeti, also are worth noting.

I have accustomed to the impression that you have to really know a great connection to even benefit from a reasonable selection of lenses.

This is a atrocious state of any market in a free economy and democracy.

Something has to be wrong.

I naturally accept the fact that I may be wrong in my assumptions or understanding. But I don't seek answers for justification. I seek a solution. Frankly I'm prepared to back the first optometrist to propose to me any solution, part or whole, online, tech or steam powered, even retail. (at least serious feasibility, I'm negotiating for a lease easily, specifically in fact for double duty as, a smart central London showroom)

I remember Harrods would furnish one with the Zeiss individual custom lenses. The Nikon optometrist was a North London address. I found just the two possibilities, one of each brand.

We all absorb vastly greater optical information than the majority of the working population, so why is the whole subject not done and dusted long ago?

We also always (we being everyone in the online fora I've encountered over the years) obsess about the budget options, whilst we are probably better off paying more attention to the cost and quality of the frames we wear, which are incredibly unpredictable in my experience of three decades of paying the same amount regardless, year in year out... Only drugs are maintained in such orderly and unchanged nominal prices. (which keeps me thinking that the market is controlled). At least, I have reglazed far fewer frames than I now think reasonable for the expenditure involved in that component. (a recent,lost, Balmain frames, the brand recently resurrected, I thought, hopefully, would last for a few years longer than others I've tried. Previous beautiful hand finished in Japan acetate frames were to combust in a fireball, with the lightest touch by my soldering iron. Barton Perreira, the make. The nicest I've worn, pity the fireball only extinguished when the oxygen was depleted in my tiny workroom. 30s i think the contact lasted but only the first one most oblique, I should have thought about spray retardant as well as common sense)

Our eyes are the most worked physical tools we possess and yet I am not convinced that the vast majority of us are truly concerned as much as we should be for their corrective care.

Why is there nothing like a optician's mall / supermarket / showroom like you can browse just as you do along department store displays or supermarkets aisles?

Every customer is a potential multiple sales repeat customer.

I think people are as bad as we are with changing banks. It's too much unknown combined with a collision with ignorance in which manner we prefer not to learn too much.

A good optician, selling a £300/$500 spectacle frame, ought to be presenting a smorgasbord of benefits and features. I've not once been actively sold anything by a opticians rep. I have definitely felt a bit like I was imposing, the times I have been insistent about perusing a catalogue. I mean the catalogue intended for the retailer, not the customer. Sometimes it is the same, but when not, you can avail your selection process with so much better information, ime.

This should be all laid out, on lecturns, in front of the displays.

Heck, I have not even seen consideration for good quality illumination or any realistically presented mirrors, like you are used to at home. The experience is a disorientating penance.

I want to challenge the notion, furthermore, that the budget market is in any way divorced from the high end and boutique /deluxe sales. Everyone I know who is willing to spend the sums demanded by the "top" brands, buys multiple pairs of sensible and affordable spectacles, often simultaneously. Nobody who has a selection of designer frames ever rushes out with the nearest to hand. That's what your sensible ones are for. In every room and the bathroom (different coatings for the condensation!)

So much difficulty presents to anyone seeking quality budget spectacles, the chances are that retailing the "low end" will attract the highest spending clientele. Retail locations can decide the potential. Retail experience can secure the loyalty that consistent upselling requires.

Imagine I created my perfect optician store.

Why is it again that I have never been actively sold to even by the optician where I once loyally purchased over priced eyewear?

Again, I have time suspect the market is rigged.

Only rigged markets can't offer any more commission opportunities by which a business can compete.

(this is the fate of the print publishing sector i founded my company to challenge. The result is countless publications without any sales force. I wish I was kidding. Gear for the sell side trader, right? Nah. Rigged by the buy side. By immutable commission levels. The result is a degrading torpor, where once a vibrant industry linked professionals and sectors and provided affordable effective advertising for specialist firms. My third assault on this travesty is imminent..I am on the first break /sabattical I have allowed myself a since '96, looking for hedges to leverage advertising efficiency in goods and products and possibly services. Print is not a restriction on the media planning for the leverage to be applied.)

Who would not peruse a comprehensive store of spectacled, even for the visual sensory enjoyment, if you only had a neat way to weigh your choices and feel your ultimate decision is better informed as the result? (I genuinely want a online shopping tool I can trust to contain my personal data safely. Bing is not quite enough, but I never imagined that I'd champion Microsoft for protecting my rights, even relatively so.)

I trained to be a salesman, to counter my introversion when I was first in work. This led to my founding my company, because I couldn't avoid the inverse correlation between salesmanship and analytical skills. My media sector was suppressed despite resistance from the most incredible sales talents I knew in my formative years. I can't believe that you'd need much to suppress the kind of sales talents in my local optician...

Anti know what you can model, from a range of measurements from a prescription to the shape of your head, to extrapolate the kind of pre sales metrics and assurance that buyers will actually want to make use of? If so, what if I worked out how to provide the rest of the components necessary to trade in earnest?

I'm not actually pitching anything like this now, but I am convinced that someone needs to think not too dissimilarity from my line of questioning.

If you perchance, however, have been intrigued by the force of the problem pressing on the bridge of your nose, i certainly will be delighted to show you how the rest of my thinking goes, because what I have been really doing for the past year, is pursuing a idea of a hacker space for bricks and mortar retail. With real real estate retail experimental opportunity. The press will not be quiet about the death of the high street. I'm convinced that the problems lies with the way retail is done. And ZIRP or NIRP on the market for premises. But I have a replicable hack for the real estate situation and believe that hack can sustain the kind of entrepreneurial hacker space I really want to create. The kind that turns tinkering into technology, teaching, and time tested traditional trading. (or, if my late confounder could chime in, I am trying to make the customers I need to sell my discount advertising to, if I'm selling any.. There's truth in my channeling that there. At least for case studies I can analyse the heck out of. Otherwise impossible in the real world, and highly valuable potential data for econometrics to support the lobbying I see necessary to awake the market I grew up trying to enliven ..)

Because people can go long periods of time between exams/pairs as adults, it's possible they keep their cash prices low to convince the uninsured to step in the door.