Quebec-based New Look Vision Group Inc. has been offering its expertise in high quality eyewear since 1986, and it has now embarked on a new innovative and unique service for customers.
Eyewear App Most Accurate on the Market
The company has launched what it calls a first of its kind in Canada – a precision-enabled eyewear app giving the customer the same level of quality and precise measurement for glasses as they would get in store. It’s the most accurate on the market, and the only retailer in Canada to use it as it was co-developed with Topology in an exclusive partnership to launch to retail, explained New Look.
Antoine Amiel, President and CEO of New Look, said the company has “invested quite a bit in the past two years in our customer journey – customer’s experience”.
“We have a very strong customer journey model to deploy,” he said.
New Look has about 400 locations across Canada coast to coast and in January this year it expanded to the United States where it has 12 stores in Florida currently.
“We have worldwide expansion ambition,” said Amiel.
“Our expansion is essentially by acquisition and therefore it’s more the seller’s timing than the buyer’s timing. It will be when we come across a good opportunity. We’ve been looking at opportunities in Europe for the past five years. Maybe one or two a year.”
The company said the new app makes it easy to try on single-vision glasses with an optician via video appointment, safely from the comfort of their homes. The touchless optical solution is designed with the optician at the centre of the experience and focuses on providing each customer with tailored eyewear that achieves the same quality vision as when bought in a store.
The latest 3D technology is used to scan 20,000 data points on a person’s face, taking ultra-precise measurements and making it the most accurate technology on the market, said New Look, adding that this level of precision helps ensure better fitting frames and optimal comfort, regardless of the size or shape of a person’s face.
People can try on hundreds of frames virtually with the assistance of an optician via live video chat to choose the perfect pair. The glasses are manufactured in the company’s laboratory in Montreal, then shipped straight to the customer’s home.
The service is currently available only in Quebec but there are plans to roll it out elsewhere in the near future.
“It’s basically a very deep scan of the face ear to ear,” said Amiel, adding the detail is unmatched in the market today.
“It enables us to take optical quality measurements – something we’ve never seen. Today, nobody can do that. It’s the same precision as we achieve in our stores.
“We have actually replicated the store experience online. To be noted, the same app, on a bigger screen, on an iPad, is what we use in-store. So it’s really the same experience, the same tool with the same result at the same price.”
Amiel said that in today’s world a feature like this is what customers are looking for in their retail experience.
App Helps with COVID-19 Social Distancing Measures
Especially now with the COVID environment, taking measurements from a distance is ideal for customers concerned about safety. Consumers also are continuing to shift to the online world for their retail experiences. For the company, it allows it to free store capacity.
“Safety, convenience and capacity are the main reasons for us to do that,” added Amiel.
Jean-Michel Maltais, Senior Vice-President, Omni-Channel for New Look, said it’s important to note that the new app the company has launched allows people to buy glasses online to have the same level of quality as when they are bought in stores.
“It’s important to note that until today this has not been possible. The eyewear market is very small online . . . and most of it is contact lense renewals and some glasses without prescriptions . . . The reason it had stayed so small was that the quality was not there,” said Maltais.
“What we do with our application is we provide our optician with instructions to pre-adjust the frame. So when you receive the frame at home it is truly the same quality as you would have got at the store and it’s pre-adjusted so it will be comfortable as well.”
I wonder if they offer glasses with individual nose pads – which are required for smaller Asian noses?
I wonder how they will get this approved by Ontario’s strict dispensing rules