I love words. Sure. Those who know me (even when they just know me through… words) know I love cars and guitars and music and, oh yeah, eyewear but… what I really love is WORDS. I love hearing them and using them and abusing them and choosing them and (as Managing Editor Christine Yeh knows full well) I even love misspelling them.

Oddly I’ve spent most of my life crafting a career in writing and yet I’ve been a terrible speller equally long. I’m sure it is a bit of a learning disability stirred with a spoonful of genetics—my dear dad was a master craftsman but a terrible speller. But show me a clever two-syllable word, and I’ll show you an infinite variety of ways to misspell “silebal.”

It might actually be that aversion to stringing letters together properly that leads me to seeing words in ways and to means of new ideas. That spark happened very recently at one of my favorite social media grazing zones: the Luxury Eyewear Forum (LEF) on Facebook.

If you haven’t visited yet you are missing out on a “whirl” of experience touching on eyewear, life, retailing, life, eyewear, (dogs), gripes, opti-gems, life (on the road) and an occasional “danger” zone of jokes. It’s a great brew and I tip my hat especially to Louis J.L. Fullagar (His father was in the legendary Pretty Things rock band) for initiating this FB other-load of intensely informative banter.

So I’m on a leisure stroll through a post asking assistance on what it takes to bring an optical shop up beyond the grade-of-blah and in to the status-sphere of rare, precious and bountiful. There are lots of invaluable tips, advice and more than a few gripes but suddenly out of somewhere, there is a suggestion that there is no easy formula. The gem of advice goes to that place where the ultimate guarantee of success can never come easy. In order to make the whole eyewear experience happen in a powerful way one needs to be on every detail at every second. And… here it comes… the commenter says it takes complete… supervision. And there it is. A word. Look at it. Read it. Remember it. SuperVision.

Thanks to all at the Luxury Eyewear Forum for a word to get us all through to the next level of optical engagement: SuperVision.       

—James J. Spina
Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]