ALEXANDRIA, Va.—The value of optical retail sales in all categories of vision care products and services (except refractive surgery) was up for the entire 2014 calendar year when compared with the entire 2013 calendar year, according to the latest statistics available from The Vision Council’s VisionWatch report.
Lenses showed the strongest growth of 5.0 percent, followed by examinations, which increased 4.9 percent, and frames, which were up 3.2 percent. The following chart shows the latest dollar value figures available for all optical retail sales in the categories of frames, lenses, contact lenses, sunglasses, over-the-counter readers, examinations, and refractive surgery.
Source: December 2014 VisionWatch, the large scale continuous research study conducted by The Vision Council with approximately 110,000 respondents. *Optical Retail includes dollars spent by U.S. residents 18 and older at all optical locations on the sale of either spectacle lenses (regular Rx and Rx sun), frames, sunglasses (plano only), OTC readers, or revenue earned from refractive surgery or eye examinations. This does not include sunglass clips or retail dollars spent by/for exams for those 17 years of age or younger. Optical retail includes leased optical spaces in department stores, mass merchandisers with optical locations, optical chains, and independents with optical locations.