Launching Oxide Anti-Reflective!

We have now been processing and refining our in-house anti-reflective (anti-glare) for over two months and are proud to announce our new anti-reflective brand OXIDE. Both our blue-blocking and standard green anti-reflective have industry leading Oleophobic and Hydrophobic properties with the addition of an anti-static layer to help keep lenses clean. We can now closely monitor the quality that you’ve come to expect from Encore Vision due to us having control of the processing. Additionally, turn around times on all anti-reflective jobs should improve by about two days.

More info will be coming in the near future.

We are Moving!

Our new building is just a 1/4 Mile South of our current location. More details will be coming shortly, but one of the main factors driving the move will be our ability to offer Anti-reflective coatings in house to further reduce our turn-around time, and improve quality control.

The new address is:

7520 N Market St. Suite #7 Spokane, WA 99217

Mail and package delivery companies will forward packages that are already in transit, and for the following weeks after the move.

In memoriam: Virgil "Smoker" Marchand

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Virgil “Smoker” Marchand, he will be dearly missed. We were truly honored to work with Smoker over the past 13 years and enjoyed incorporating his Native American designs into eyewear. His design contributions allowed us to share his beautiful artwork with tens of thousands of people. In keeping with Smoker's wishes, we will continue to support his family with ongoing royalties from current and upcoming eyewear designs. Please keep his family in your thoughts and prayers.

Our heartfelt condolences,
the Encore Vision family

Compensated Prescriptions & Digital Lens Designs

Compensated lens designs have improved the ability of the laboratory and optician to tailor lenses for each patient and frame. Due to many of our accounts using compensated designs for the first time we want to talk about what is going on and what to expect.

  • Compensated designs take into account how the frame and lenses sit on a patients face, and this nearly always differs from the angle of a phoropter the doctor uses. Due to this, we need to consider the differences and make changes to the refracted prescription so that the patient receives non-distorted vision.

  • The measurements used to calculate the differences are called position of wear measurements (POW). They typically include pantoscoptic tilt, frame wrap angle, back vertex distance, and sometimes near working distance.

  • To improve a patient’s vision with compensated lens designs the optician does not need to take the additional position of wear measurements, but if done, will produce an even more most accurate pair of lenses.

    • Some designs, like as our IOT Universal progressive use default values for pantoscopic tilt, vertex, and frame wrap that is closer to the actual measurements vs the refracted prescription. So even though the POW measurements weren’t done the result is a more accurate lens.

  • When ordering a compensated (most digital lens designs) lens, make sure that you check the prescription measured in a lensometer against the digital lens data on the bottom of your invoice. This is the compensated prescription data the lab cut into the lens for best visual acuity.

    CLICK HERE FOR AN INVOICE EXAMPLE

New Lens Designs & Price Guides!

Beginning February 28th, new lens and frame pricing will go into effect. Please be on the lookout for envelopes in the mail containing the printed copies of your price guides.

In this release, Encore Vision is proud to announce the launch of IOT’s newest progressive lens design— Endless Steady. This design utilizes Digital Ray Path 2 for incredible areas of clear vision across the lens, as well as their patented Steady Methodology that helps reduce the swimming fish bowl feel of progressives. This lens design does this by addressing not only unwanted cylinder power, but also unwanted changes to mean power in lateral areas of the lens. See the link above for more information.

Lens Backorders & Shipping Woes

The optical industry is experiencing unprecedented delays in the delivery of the raw materials used to process lenses here at the lab and we would like to inform you of three sides of the operations that are experiencing problems currently so you can best inform your patients.

  1. Due to ongoing shipping delays, our lens suppliers are experiencing long lead times on the transfer and import of lenses, and it has now begun to affect the daily lens orders here at Encore Vision. We have stocked up on key lenses but certain base curves and add powers have run out sooner than others. This has also started to delay restocks of various frame models that are stuck in production.

  2. Essilor has had production problems with Trivex multi-focals and some unique Transitions products such as 8x35 and round bifocals causing 1+ month delays.

  3. Additionally, one of our main lens vendors, Hoya Optical North America (which includes Vision Ease and Seiko Optical) has had an unexpected network interruption since the 7th of April and have not been able to get their systems back online to ship any lenses. They are estimating that they will be operational and shipping lenses on the 15th, but this is not guaranteed.

Encore Vision will do its best to keep you informed and call with suggestions to avoid order delays. We will also be offering free upgrades to different materials or filters if it will increase the speed of processing your orders.