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JOHNSON CITY, Tenn.—After practicing ophthalmology for 10 years, Donny Reeves, MD, owner of Reeves Eye Institute in Johnson City, Tenn., decided it was time to add an optical dispensary to his business. At the same time, while working with a web developer to redesign his website, Reeves was led to the decision to launch an online store simultaneously.

“My web developer said I needed to change my website to be ‘responsive,’ or more tailored to new devices, at the same time that we were building our new office,” Reeves told VM. His developer at Glacial Multimedia, a medical website design company that represents ophthalmologists throughout the country, introduced Reeves to MyEyeStore and he was convinced the service could provide a leg up for his new dispensary and draw more patients to his medical practice.

“Our primary business is doing health care, medical and surgical services, and the online store is an ancillary part of our practice,” Reeves said. “We just want to be a step ahead of all the businesses in the area, and to offer this to the community in a cost effective way.”

According to Reeves, having an e-comm store does not compete with his dispensary, but gives him the opportunity to extend and expand upon his services with products he doesn’t necessarily have inventory for in-store. While the brick-and-mortar dispensary will typically carry practical, conservative frames, for example, MyEyeStore provides the opportunity to offer more trendy pieces, along with other products like contact lenses, low vision services and vitamins, online.

“I’m an ophthalmologist, so from that standpoint, my primary interest is not in glasses and contacts but in my medical and surgical services. What I’m trying to do is make the web presence for our practice as big as possible and to really push patients [there] that would not necessarily come to us,” Reeves said. n

- Catherine Wolinski