Divide and concur. Let me explain.

If you’ve been with 20/20 for a bit more than a bit, you know the lay of the land around here with this magazine in both our print and digital entities. Each month, we divide eyewear up in a series of focused features highlighting some general eyewear and sunwear categories. As instance, this month the attention is on men’s eyewear. We divvy up concepts that way with issues on women’s eyewear, kids, new debuts (for the Vision Expo issues), frame materials, luxury and a rather fixed array throughout the year.

And every month, the edit/art team delivers some concise but creative formatting with brand debuts on our What’s New pages and extensions of collections on our What’s Next pages. Fashion Editor Victoria Garcia and Feature Editor Jillian Urcelay also set up eyewear trends for each month’s themed eyewear on their New Products pages.

This careful division of monthly themes makes a special feature such as this month’s exclusive chat with Patrick Dempsey by Urcelay additionally engaging since it offers the chance to enhance with storytelling about the identity of great eyewear. That, in turn, gives you the chance to “concur” with ideas and themes about the eyewear that is special to you in your retailing environment.

As well as being the expert on fitting and fulfilling a flawless eyecare vision package, it is your mission to build stories about the glasses you dispense. Consumers love these back stories. They thrive on the ultimate reasons for their choices in eyewear, and they look to you for those ultimately satisfying stories justifying the eyewear defining their personalities. Just putting all your frame inventory out there for perusal or depending on intimidating frameboards could be delivering a flawed experience. You need to carefully curate. I’m certainly not suggesting you divide your stable of product up via the monthly themes in 20/20, but you should develop a careful system that unifies themes in the assortment of collections you present. Deepen your knowledge of frame qualities from materials to pricing and demographics. Keep it playful but built on your deep knowledge of this product we all know and love. Learn from wherever you can and in ways you deem valuable to you and your customers.

Divide and concur with confidence. And let us know how you are doing with this concept remembering that we learn from you so that we, in turn, can add our stories to yours.

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