NEW YORK—Jerry Ostrov, named chairman and chief executive officer of Bausch & Lomb (B&L) on Jan. 23, sees room for growth in both contact lens sales and sales of eyecare solutions. B&L will be working both to educate consumers on their eyecare options and to assist eyecare professionals in maximizing that growth, Ostrov said during a press briefing at International Vision Expo East yesterday.

Multifocal contacts, for example, which have a much lower consumer penetration than other CL designs, “are way underdeveloped in terms of the total market,” Ostrov said. To help boost the category, B&L launched a consumer TV commercial early this year supporting multifocals. To encourage ECPs to fit multifocal CLs, the company has a new Web site, www.presbyopesinyourpractice.com, that provides fitting tips, advice from ECPs who use multifocals successfully, a fitting calculator and patient information.

On the solutions side, B&L has been successful with new “travel size” packaging for its ReNu solution, designed in a bottle that qualifies to go through airport security. “Not everything we do has to be complicated,” Ostrov noted. “The most important thing is that it’s relevant.”

B&L’s business is currently about 80 percent in professional products, 20 percent in consumer products; the new chairman/CEO is looking to expand both segments of that business. “We don’t want to take away from the 80 percent; we want to make the 20 percent even bigger,” he declared, noting that areas for growth include the international market, particularly Asia, as well as the U.S.

Ostrov, an industry veteran who was previously group chairman, worldwide vision care, for Johnson & Johnson Vision Care from 1998 until he retired in 2006, said his first priority in taking over at B&L was to meet with company employees around the world “to make sure they understand our focus on growth and our long-term investment in the business.”

He noted that the objective of Warburg-Pincus, which acquired 155-year-old B&L—and took it private—last year is “to create great value within the underdeveloped assets” of the company. “We want to work with our customers in a collaborative environment to grow the business,” he declared.