NEW YORK— The Fourth of July holiday had little negative impact on national optical sales last week (June 28-July 4), in part due to the Federal holiday falling on Monday, July 5, which is not included in this week’s Tracker for Week 27 of 2020. In fact, the national average for gross revenue at ECP locations increased by 1 index point when comparing last week with the previous week. With the July 4th holiday falling within Week 27 during the past two years, this places this year’s gross revenue level well above where it was last year during the pandemic at this time as well as well above where it was during the same time period of 2019.

Like gross revenue, contact lens sales also increased last week (by 3 index points for this category), while all other service/product categories–exams/refractions, lens pairs, and frame units –decreased equally at a rate of 2 index points. This brings all optical sales categories equal to or above the levels they achieved at the same time periods during the last two years (both of which included the July 4th holiday).

With gross revenue and contact lenses showing increases last week when compared with the previous week, and all other categories declining, gross revenue continues to be the only category performing at sales rates above an average week in 2019, while all other categories remain below that index level.

Jobson Optical Research selected 1,500 optical locations that have been operating and reporting their sales to its partners, GPN and ABB Analytics, since 2019. The index has been rebased to an average week in 2019. Going forward, this new index base will be used as an arbitrary benchmark and assigned a value of 100.
 
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