Eyewear in the US

Eyewear in 2021: The big picture

In 2021, eyewear began the first and strongest year of an expected two-year recovery to pre-pandemic sales levels, as sales of sunglasses, spectacles, and contact lenses and solutions contact lenses all registered growth following record low declines in 2020 as a result of COVID-19. Due to lockdowns and other pandemic-related restrictions throughout most of 2020 and the first half of 2021 in most states, optometrists and other eye care professionals were forced to severely limit their service offerings, including in-person eye exams and new contact lens fittings, impeding growth across categories, while increased hygiene requirements and other restrictions to in-store shopping impacted sales in optical shops.

Key trends in 2021

While all have begun to recover in 2021, eyewear saw significant sales declines across categories in 2020. Although consumers’ needs for contact lenses, spectacles, and even sunglasses for medical reasons did not diminish amid the pandemic, restrictions to in-store services at ECP Offices and optical shops prevented many consumers from getting eye exams, thus preventing their subsequent purchases of new eyewear as well.

Competitive landscape

Eyewear in the US remains a very consolidated market, with a limited number of large, multinational companies controlling the remaining top-selling brands within contact lenses, spectacles, and sunglasses. Within contact lenses, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Inc, Alcon Vision LLC and CooperVision Inc, respectively, maintain their top three rankings year on year, and commanded a total market share over 85% in 2020.

Retailing developments

As many consumers’ only available, or otherwise vastly preferred, sales channel for contact lenses, spectacles, and sunglasses much of 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19-related restrictions, growth in eyewear’s e-commerce penetration came not only as brands and retailers accelerated investments in offering virtual eye exams but also a host of other tools to help ease the process of buying prescription and non-prescription eyewear online. These include capabilities such as virtual try-on, which brands and retailers including Warby Parker, Zenni, EyeBuyDirect, and SmartBuyGlasses have all launched on their websites and mobile applications in recent years to replicate the experience of trying-on multiple sunglasses, spectacle frames, and readymade reading glasses while a consumer is at home or on the go.

What next for eyewear?

While a multitude of factors, especially store and optometrist closures, as well as dramatic changes in consumer behaviour and lifestyles, have limited eyewear sales across categories during the COVID-19 pandemic throughout 2020 and 2021, the medical necessities of contact lenses, spectacles, and sunglasses, as well as consumers’ increasing awareness of and concern for eye health and proper eye care in recent years, will aid the category in making a swift recovery over the coming months and years, national and international pandemic restrictions are increasingly lifted. In current value terms, both contact lenses and spectacles are expected to recovery to 2019-level value sales by 2022, with daily disposable (DD) lenses, readymade reading glasses, spectacle frames, and spectacle lenses all expected to recovery completely by that year.