Nearly impossible to believe that there was a time, not long ago, when the masses and the media thought there was no justifiable place for a TV network dedicated to a 24-hour-a-day, full-time sport network. Don’t ask me to count the huge number of channel broadcasts now devoted exactly to that medium. The position of sports, sporting events and sport celebrity is staggering in the minds, hearts, bodies and… eyes of the world. Does that sound like an opportunity?
In a very specific category the big-box-mandate is failing. Sporting goods stores are boarding up shop for a number of reasons including online retailing, quantity-over-quality, seasonally indifferent stocking and horrific customer service. Does that sound like an opportunity?
Clearly and somewhat coldly indicated on a chart in this year’s Sport MarketPulse is the telling figure that 52 percent of consumers engaged in pursuing their eyecare needs are “somewhat interested” in sport endorsements from athletes, and 49 percent of consumers in the dispensing locations actually “request” sport eyewear. Does THAT not sound like an opportunity?
As this issue of 20/20 clearly indicates via the featured eyewear, the variety and quality of sport eyewear on offer and ready for your optical professional allegiance is bountiful. And in keeping with the 20/20 agenda of declaring this year as the year of Eyewear Independents, it’s revealing that a gigantic chunk of those eyewear offerings are from brands with pure optical heritage foundations. As we’ve now done virtually annually from well back before there was even that glimmer of a totally dedicated sport network, 20/20 asserts sport as one of your potentially most fulfilling occasions to take the home field advantage of everyone seeking your vision guidance. Sport Eyewear is YOUR field of dreams. It’s up to you to make that dream come true.
And while on the subject of making dreams come true, can I just be afforded one more glimpse of the glow from 20/20’s recent “five-cover” April opus? We literally partied on top of the world with an event reported by Executive Editor Christine Yeh in Upfront this month. None of it would have happened without the dedicated team of amazing women pictured here. And he’ll likely give me grief for mentioning him, but if it wasn’t for Marchon’s Robert Schienberg, we would easily have come up four covers short without this celebration of a lifetime.
James J. Spina
Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]
