Ocular Sciences, Clear vision

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US

Since it was incorporated in 1985, the strategy of Ocular Sciences has been to manufacture, market and sell a broad line of high quality, competitively priced soft contact lenses. Cynthia Garber talks about the company and its products

Ocular Sciences, Inc. went public in 1996 at $17 per share and as of Feb. 23 of this year there were 24,465,303 shares of common stock outstanding. It is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ exchange and trades under the symbol OCLR.

For the past five years Ocular Sciences, Inc. has reported a phenomenal growth rate of more than 25 percent per year. Headquartered in Concord, CA, the company currently employs approximately 4,000 worldwide. It has distribution centers in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States and manufacturing sites in France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Puerto Rico. Its products are marketed directly to eye-care practitioners using a low cost to serve operating structure.

The products sold by Ocular Sciences are marketed for reusable and disposable wearing regimes. And because soft contact lenses are prescription medical devices, Ocular Sciences focuses on selling its products to eye care professionals to whom wearers can return for follow up care. The names of the lenses manufactured by Ocular include Biomedics 60, Edge III, ProActive, SmartChoice, UltraFlex, Sunsoft, Luncelle, Rythmic, Hydron, and over 200 additional proprietary brands. The company also has an agreement with Procter & Gamble to utilize their Cover Girl brand for the marketing of its colored lenses.

With the exception of its multifocal and daily wear lenses, Ocular Science sells its full range of disposable and reusable products in the United States. However, once adequate production capacity has been added, plans now call for launching the manufacture of multifocal daily wear lenses in 2005 in this country. Ocular Science products are also sold globally—throughout Europe, the Middle East, Canada, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Ocular’s unique lens technology allows the company to make thinner, easier to handle lenses that are more comfortable to wear than those of its leading competitors.

A major focus on research and development at Ocular Sciences has resulted in many new innovations. Just this past June the company introduced the world’s first disposable aspheric contact lens. This lens corrects for spherical aberration in both the lens and the patient’s eye resulting in sharper, crisper vision for the lens wearer. This new product, marketed under the Biomedics Premier brand as well as under other private labels, is currently being launched in the United States and Canada and will be available internationally in the near future.

Industry data estimates that in the United States alone the market for spherical contact lenses is more than $800 million. Since these lenses are worn by more than 80 percent of the 34 million disposable contact lens patients, these new multifocal daily wear lenses prove beneficial not only to the wearer but to the company as well.

Stephen Fanning, president and CEO of Ocular Sciences, is excited about the launch of this new product. In a recent press release he pointed out that this revolutionary technology will provide patients with a new standard in visual clarity. “The positive feedback we have received from our clinical trials and from doctors regarding our new lens’ superior characteristics has been very encouraging,” he said. Fanning added that he believes the momentum generated by the launch of what he calls “the most advanced Aspheric Lens on the market” will have a positive impact on Ocular’s long-term U.S. sales growth.

“According to eye care practitioners that have fitted patients with our new lens, the visual outcomes have been outstanding,” Fanning continued, adding that the new aspheric lens also incorporates patented technology making its edge uniquely rounded, thinner, and more comfortable to wear. “This advantage coupled with the fact that eye care practitioners will likely not have to refit current Biomedics patients in order to start them on a Biomedics 55 Premier regimen should put us in a position to build our market share within the sphere market,” he said.

Ocular Sciences attributes its record of sustained high growth to a number of factors. Among them, that its lens designs and manufacturing technology provide contact lens wearers with better handling and a higher level of comfort than those of other producers; that the branded and marketing strategies implemented by the company encourage wearers to return to a prescribing eye care professional for ongoing ocular care and prescription refills and also to the fact that Ocular Sciences’ manufacturing process allows for scalable, low-cost, and efficient production.

Ocular has also implemented a corporate lean manufacturing program in which all process improvements are done in conjunction with the expansion of the business—so that each year 10 to 50 percent of sales are reinvested back into

the company.

A Webcast announcement was scheduled for July 29, 2004, to note the acquisition of Ocular Sciences by The Cooper Companies. Cooper is a world leader with a specialty niche in the manufacture of contact lenses especially addressing astigmatism, changing color, dry eyes, long-term extended wear and presbyopia. Since A. Thomas Bender, president and CEO of The Cooper Companies, recently reported that specialty lenses account for about one-quarter of the worldwide contact lens market, this announcement should prove beneficial to all involved—the eye practitioner, the contact lens wearer and to all those involved in the company that manufactures and markets the product.

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