Press Article from The Shrewsbury Chronicle
FIVE jobs have been created by a new service offered by a town opticians, with a view to more people setting their sights on laser eye surgery. Optical Express, in Pride Hill, Shrewsbury, has been open for two years and will be holding a special celebration on Saturday, July 7. The store, which also includes a private dentai clinic, has recently begun to offer free consultations for people wishing to find out if they are suitable candidates for laser eye surgery. Manager Claire Bishop said that nowhere else in Shrewsbury offered the service and customers were coining from as far afield as Chester and Birmingham.
“The surgery cannot be done from here, but the consultations are not offered at all anywhere else in Shrewsbury. We are also now the market leaders in laser surgery and advertise on TV.”
The Optical Express Group was founded in 1991 and now has more than 200 clinics across the UK and Europe, including Ireland, Holland and Germany. In Shrewsbury, three additional staff have already been hired to help run the new consultation service and Claire said she was looking to fill another two posts. “The consultations are free and we offer interest-free credit for the surgery,” added Claire.
The consultations take an hour-and-a-half and the only stipulations are that customers do not wear contact lenses beforehand and do not drive afterwards, because drops are applied which affect vision. Claire said suitability for surgery depended on each person’s prescription, but an alternative is now being offered by the company’s Manchester clinic for those who are not.
“There is now the possibility of lens implants as an alternative for people who are not suitable,” she said.
