The FINANCIAL — "Men in Georgia buy more expensive spectacles than women although women update their collections more frequently," said Mzia Phkhaladze, General Manager of Kenari Optics, one of the largest optics stores in Tbilisi.
Kenari was established in November 2004 and is now represented by 3 branches in Tbilisi. The company is planning to open up new branches in Tbilisi and Batumi next year.
The company is partnered with world known companies like French Essilor and contact lenses Ciba Vision. Kenari salon has a full collection of spectacles for any season and any customer price segment.
The word Kenari is used as an expression of high quality – a beautiful, elegant thing in Shota Rustaveli's "The Knight in the panther's skin".
"Our company strategy is to tailor our products to all segments of the market with easy-to-wear light glasses. The minimum price of optic frames start at 14 GEL and go up to 1,199 GEL – for Dupon frames, however there is the least demand for them in Georgia due to the price being so high. We do have a variety of brands in the 100-150 GEL price range which is now and has always been the most demanded in terms of sales figures. These are German Eschenbach, Hampri and Brendel with the best offers for our company in terms of price and different sub-brands.
According to Phkhaladze, the most demanded brand is Silhouette priced as 349 GEL per frames and sunglasses – 419-450 GEL. "This is a type of spectacle with top-notch quality and those who try this spectacle won't want to try another brand thereafter," she said.
"Talking about growth, I would like to say that demand for 100 GEL spectacles is always high and is growing each season. As for winter of course demand will go up for sun-snow glasses which are also characterized by the high quality of the brands such as ADIDAS, Zero +, all of them between 100-259 GEL.
General growth in sales starts from March and goes up throughout summer, due to the popularity of sunglasses during that season, whilst for lenses demand is unchanging. Hence 60% of sales can be attributed to the summer and the rest to the other seasons."
The annual turnover of Kenari is 1.5 million GEL. Phkhaladze says that during the global crisis the company did have a huge drop in sales – 20-30%.
"Kenari recovered from the crisis soon after the war in 2008 as we don't have any liabilities with banks or credits, so have maintained our niche in the market with a growing number of customers in Georgia," she said.
As well as spectacles, Kenari has special ophthalmologic mini clinics in every branch, where clients can go through eye inspection and then choose the appropriate lenses.
"Even if there are no relevant lenses in our reserves then we can contact our partner company in France to provide us with the needed ones, so as to ensure that our clients are fully satisfied. As for our ophthalmologists I can assure you that their qualifications are high. A doctor's consultation and related inspection procedure costs 10-30 GEL depending on the complexity of it," she said. "On foreign optics markets the number of internet sales has surged drastically and we're going to follow this by adding an online cart tool to our website in the coming days.
In terms of our Georgian customers, our buyers mainly live in Tbilisi, so there's not much need to fully focus on this direction as it's possible for people to go directly to a Kenari store, choose any design and get ophthalmologic advice as well."
"We run an advertising campaign quarterly and 20-25% of overall turnover is spent on ads. We target mainly magazines for our ads, as well as various newspapers, and last and most importantly -our direct advertising to our clients. The latter includes issuing of informational booklets and then our reps speaking to various organizations, schools, ministries, banks, and others."
"We have staff of 25 people with average salaries of 500 GEL for sales reps and higher for those who are financial managers, in the marketing department, and ophthalmologists – all of them being highly qualified."
Q. Do you offer discounts on optics and if so, on which types of spectacles?
A. Here at Kenari we are constantly having new actions. In terms of discounts in particular, I'd say we have 15-50% sales depending on the brand. At the same time it should be noted that those actions aren't only for old brands but also for very famous brands from recent collections as well.
In our store now we have special brands presented, exclusive 2011 model samples of John Galiano and Tom Ford from Paris' world exhibition, held 1 October. Hence optics lovers can find them easily. In addition we'll be having sales of those two brands in March and April next year.
Q. Has anything changed in the technologies of making lenses/optics en masse? And what new trends are there in this sector?
A. Technologies in optics are constantly changing as in other spheres. Changes mainly occur in the weight of spectacles and materials used in optics – the latter in which titanium/aluminium usage has surged due to their lightness.
Anti-ultraviolet ray spectacles boosted in popularity especially in Georgia as out of 360 days a year approximately 250 are sunny. Hence technologies go along with such conditions as well as the rising demand in modern and lighter designs.
Q. Which countries does Kenari import glasses from?
A. We import the famous brand Alisoni from Italy, which has 30 different directions/brands and also from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. I have to add that we are exclusive dealers of those brands and some brands even cost far less here than let's say in France, for instance Tom Ford. France has a different system, as there is a distributor office and the
optics' store owners go to those offices to choose the collection.
Q. What kind of spectacles do you have for people permanently working with a computer during the day and what advice would you give them?
A. People who spend their day sitting in front of a computer/TV screen increase their exposure to eye stress. In such cases it's vital to have anti-reflex cover lenses as a fast pace screen further aggravates our vision and fatigue. In our network we have quality lenses for such a purpose which cost 60-90 GEL.
In addition there are special anti-fatigue glasses in Kenari which are individually ordered from Paris depending on eye parameters, priced 150 GEL.
Q. Which coloured lenses are purchased by Georgians? And also what is the division of men/women buying optics?
A. Georgians adore green and blue colour lenses. In terms of sunglasses women purchase them more, as women frequently renew their collections. As for men they're more likely to buy high quality glasses here at Kenari, where they happily pay the price for the good quality.
Q. Kenari has been on the market in Georgia for a long time. What has conditioned your success and what are your values?
A. We've always strived for excellence and thus being sincere to our clients. Hence all our clients know that in Kenari they get full service and information and will never be exploited. This is the main reason for our popularity, in addition to the quality of the products we offer.
