Institute a Frame Board Plan-a-Gram

     Frames don't sell if they are not visible. During the course of helping a patient, five or more frames may come off the board. Too often, these sit in a pile-joined by still more frames throughout the day-until staff has spare time to return them. This situation can be avoided by developing a logical frame board plan-a-gram.

     In our main office, we have 13 frame display boards, each designated by a roman numeral. The 13 locations are organized by category: sunglasses, unisex (the most popular category), men's metals, women's metals, and so forth. Only two boards are categorized by price. (To compete with lower-end product lines, we have a Specs for Less™ board featuring complete sets of frame and lenses for $89 [ single vision], $99 [bifocal] and $149 [progressive lenses]. To cover the high end of the market, another board is devoted to the most expensive and "Unique and Unusual" frames.) Each frame board is further divided into five lettered columns and 14 arabic-numbered rows, rather like a bingo card. The grid is used to give each position a unique numerical identification (III-B-12, for example). The frame belonging at that position carries that number on its SKU price tag, attached to the frame.

     With this identification system, it is a simple matter to replace frames on the display racks immediately after a patient encounter. This system works extremely well for practices with more than one optical shop. If all shops are organized according to the same system, staff can move from shop to shop without missing a beat, and inventory control is greatly enhanced.