Private Label vs Quality

         The worldwide economical recession has affected the consumer principles and their preferences. The buying power of many millions of people is reduced and they have increased their preferences to lower price products. In the past the quality was almost same with brand loyalty. Nowadays, the quality has "divorced" from the brand awareness.

         In the eyewear market, as a mainly fashionable industry, the brand awareness is a big deal! Despite the economical recession the high brands have kept their connection to the high quality. The problem in that case is the price. The big players of the market, like Luxottica & Safilo, are running a more controlled production program in order not to flood the market with many expensive products and decrease their inventory turnover. Stock models for sunglasses, especially for Luxottica, are difficult to be found.

        The optician and in general the optical shop is called to buy Ray Ban in same price in wholesale and sell in a lower price due to low price demand. In order to raise the profit the private label products are more in the first place of their minds. But is private label good in quality?

        In this case the optician and the wholesaler has to be very careful. Chinese production most of the time is out of the box in quality control. The product genre is very important, especially the quality control and production. CE and made in EU or made in EU member is very important.

       The only barrier to this decision is the common mistake of the consumer to believe that Private Label products lack of quality. In this situation the optician first of all should be convinced 100% of the quality of the product. After that everything is easy, as the optician is the expert to suggest to his customer.

       Private label services in high quality products is the direct future of the eyewear market.

Angel Destounis is Financial Manager in Nea Optiki S.A.

Nea Optiki S.A. is providing high quality and flexible solutions about private label products in the industry of eyewear, sunglasses and optical frames.