CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

CLEARLY: Organizing For

Omni channel Retailing

TEAM : 10
 Introduction

Clearly is an online retailer of contact 
lenses, eyeglasses and sunglasses. The company is a 
subsidiary of French company Essilor, and is headquartered 
in Vancouver, British Columbia. They are one of the largest 
online contact lens retailers in North America, and the 
largest seller of prescription eyeglasses online in the world.
 Products
• Clearly, then known as Coastal Contacts, 
initially exclusively sold contact lenses on 
their storefronts. As of 2017, the online store 
sells around 100 types of contacts, including 
daily and extended wear lenses, and colored 
contact lenses.
• In 2008, the company began selling 
eyeglasses and sunglasses. As of 2017, they 
sell glasses from over 100 brands. In 2012, 
they sold more than one million pairs of 
eyeglasses, making them the largest online 
seller of eyeglasses in the world.
Time Line
2000 2006 2014

Founded as Coastal Acquired 2 more French lens

Contacts by Roger companies manufacturer Essilor ac
Hardy quired Coastal.com

Raised $6 mn and
expanded into
the UK and parts of
Europe and Acquired a
mail order contact lens (Revenue increased to Clearly Contacts re-
business LensWay $140 million) branded itself as Clearly

2004 2009 2015

 Question 1: How can Clearly achieve its sales objective?
Objective: To Increase the online sales beyond the current 4% of industry sales, i.e., bringing the remaining
96% (10.46 million) of the consumers online and achieving sales of $500 million by 2018, profitably.

To achieve this sales objective, it was mandatory for Clearly to collaborate with independent ECPs.

Strengths of ECPs Limitations of ECPs

• Independent Eye Care Practitioners (ECPs) held about
50% of the market share for overall vision care.
• ECPs were the first point of contact for the eyewear
consumers in the optical ecosystem, conducting eye
examinations and providing prescriptions. They
enjoyed consumer trust and were preferred for end to
end service solution by the first time customers. ECPs
also served as the primary distribution channel for the
industry, accounting for 73%of the eye care patients
by volume, world-wide.
• ECPs lacked online capabilities and had an inherent
inability to scale up given their conventional business
model.
• Independent ECPs were a fragmented lot and even
though collectively, as a group, they dominated the
market share, individually most were struggling
financially with respect to competition from mass
merchandisers like Walmart and Costco, which were
leveraging their scale to offer lower prices and an
efficient retail ambience.

• ECPs’ primary advantage were the depths of their

relationships with the individual patients and high
overall customer satisfaction rate, being able to
leverage the critical touch-and-feel experience to
customers.
Continued…
Clearly needs to partner with ECPs under a model that would establish a win-win situation for both the
parties. If ECPs are allowed to function as independent service providers in terms of eye-examinations and
prescriptions, but housing and retailing Clearly eyewear products and serving Clearly’s online customers on
walk-in visits.

Win for Clearly: Access to an elaborate network of physical ECP outlets leveraging touch-and-feel
experience and enjoying superior customer trust.
Win for ECPs: Access to Clearly’s exhaustive online and database capabilities to attract guaranteed new age
tech-savvy customers who demand online flexibility

Clearly could develop its products and further refine its marketing communication to better serve
and suit its core target demographic as observed from the results and findings of Environics
Reasearch. For example, it could launch promotional campaigns in social and culture centric events
like Operas and music concerts.
 Question 2: How do Clearly's multiple channels compare
with respect to foot traffic and sales-
Previous case :
• There was lack of standardization and integration among the various platforms, in-spite
of high potential customer acquisition via online platform was very low (96%
unexplored)
• The retailers were unaware about the buying behavior of their shoppers and failed to
identify the elements that triggered the same
• Independent ECP’s (largely fragmented) were soaring high as they provided in-depth
relation with individual patients and later up selled the product line
• Consumers when purchasing optical products are more concerned about the functional
benefit which they were getting from ECP’s and Clearly’s was focusing more on the
visual appeal of the product, so this gave ECP’s an upper hand and which had an
compounding effect on footprint and sales
 continued
Post introduction of multi channel – Do it the Omni way
• The company introduced itself into the Omni channel field by establishing 3 store fronts (Manila,
Tokyo and Vancouver)
• By introducing various strategies to integrate and authenticate the multi channel platform ,Clearly
experienced a rise in the footprint and sales- 60% of the customers walking into stores were firs
time visitors
• Hessel introduced services keeping in mind his target group which were the urban, younger lot with
89% internet users
• Efforts w.r.t collaboration with ECP’s was a cardinal step as it bought together both the functional
benefits as well as visual appeal. It also covered up the loop holes in plain ECP model- scalability.
• Hence, when customers spotted that the storefronts were providing them with services like getting
their glasses cleaned, defects correction and fit adjusted by the associates , the sales shoot up.
Question 3: Did customers who used multiple channels shop more
frequently and /or make more purchase?Were these customers
more profitable than those who used the online channel alone?

Yes customer who uses multiple channel are more frequent in making purchase and
are more profitable reason being the customer can do web rooming where it can
make the purchase online but at the same time can visit the physical store to get the
opinion, touch and feel of the product and get the in hand experience. They also get
the benefit of price comparison.
As in the case we can the example of Amazon and even Clearly who are opening
storefront to enhance the customer experience and customer engagement. Which
helped them to increase their sales and profits.
Question 4: Are there any synergies between Clearly’s online and
Brick-And-Mortar stories? If so, what evidence can you provide of
such synergies?
Reading from the data analysis done
No, there are no synergies created between Clearly’s online & Brick and Mortar stores
Other Perspective-
• The data shows that these stores did not create any synergy, however, the motive of these stores
was to increase the customer interaction which earlier only happened when a patient visited ECP’s
• Inferring from Exhibit 6, it is evident that they were able to achieve this motive of theirs, which
earlier was vested with only ECP’s
• The company tried creating a win-win situation for themselves as well as the ECP’s by :
i. Linking of the business platform of individual ECP’s with customers from Clearly’s digital platform
ii. Clearly will also give ECP’s access to its ongoing innovations in optical technology
iii. Clearly would provide turnkey solutions to individual ECP’s
Thank You