These are not your father’s contacts. They may not even be for you. But that’s all right with Wesley Jessen Visioncare Inc., a leader in specialty contacts located in Des Plaines. Its WildEyes contacts are not for everyone.
What makes this newest line of novelty contact lenses so wild is its six unusual designs. There’s Wildfire, with its red and yellow fire; Hypnotica, made of a black lens and a spiraling white circle; the dazzling blue Zoomin’; Pool Shark’s 8-ball; White-Out, which is white except for the pupils; and Starry-Eyed, a black background with a green crescent moon and star.
WildEyes are targeted to Generation “Y,” ages 15-25, and have a price tag of $150 a pair. (For Halloween, the line has added Cateye, for feline fanciers, and Redeye, for the Dracula look, with a special price of $99 a pair.)
According to Paul Soye of Chicago, senior manager in marketing at Wesley Jessen, these contacts allow wearers “to set trends not follow them.”
“They’re positioned to people who want more of a radical yet temporary change in their appearance — a departure from the normal, the cutting edge,” Soye says. “It’s not a hole in your tongue or a tattoo.”
Since their launch in January, WildEyes have caught fire. “First, we thought skateboarders would be the ones purchasing them,” Soye says. “But it’s a bit more mainstream and skewed more toward males.”
WildEyes can be ordered with or without prescriptions; in fact, the company estimates as many as 40 percent are sold to those who don’t need prescription lenses. They have to be ordered through a licensed practitioner and must be fitted.
Juan Ramirez, 39, of Chicago could hardly wait to try WildEyes. A food service employee at Marriott O’Hare in Chicago, Ramirez owns a pair of Zoomin’ and Wildfire and wants a pair of White-Out. He wears them both at work and at play.
“Sometimes people look really close at me and look into my eyes,” Ramirez says. “They tell me they like them. I like them because wherever I am, people notice me.”
With more than $282.2 million in worldwide sales in 1997 and 38 percent of the U.S. specialty contact lens market, Wesley Jessen is the fourth largest soft lens manufacturer in the world and is the largest “stand-alone” contact lens company, according to market reports, independent industry audits and Health Products Research of New Jersey.
It offers 10 categories of specialty lenses. Among Wesley Jessen’s firsts: opaque color contacts, disposable opaque color contacts, contact lenses for those with astigmatism, extended-wear contact lenses and disposable soft contact lenses with UV protection.
But WildEyes is something different for Wesley Jessen.
“We’re a serious vision correction company, but that doesn’t preclude us (from offering) a product that delivers an opportunity for self-expression,” says Kevin J. Ryan of Mt. Prospect, president and CEO of Wesley Jessen. “Our WildEyes are a fun, non-harmful way to express yourself.”
Getting noticed for its patented printing technology — the process in which color is placed onto the lens — is how Wesley Jessen got into all this “wild” business. According to Soye, because of Wesley Jessen’s ability to produce specialty contacts with distinctive, long-lasting color, it was “inundated” with requests to make special lenses for the movie industry. Wesley Jessen’s handiwork has appeared in “Star Trek,” “Nixon,” “Wolf” and “Interview With a Vampire.”
In April 1997, a competitive market and increased demand by the movie industry and optometrists compelled Wesley Jessen executives to take a look at offering these contacts to consumers. Wesley Jessen evaluated the market, developed 21 initial designs, ran focus groups and did market research to check on interest and to pick the top six designs. These were then test-marketed with established color contact lens sellers in six major markets, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. There was enough interest to move ahead.
Before Wild Eyes, those who wanted unique, colored contacts had to spend up to $1,200 for hand-painted lenses that may fade. So, with its technology already in place, Wesley Jessen created WildEyes, the first FDA-approved contact of its kind.
Each WildEyes lens design begins in Wesley Jessen’s research and development department, first with a sketch and then finalized on the computer.
“If we can draw it, we can put it on lenses,” says Barry Atkins of Chicago, a chemist in Wesley Jessen’s research and development department.
Atkins spends his days testing shades, mixing pigments, making various color combinations and generating visuals for the lenses on the computer.
Wesley Jessen began more than 50 years ago with a far simpler mission: saving the sight of Dr. Newton K. Wesley, a professor at what later would be called the Illinois College of Optometry in Chicago. Suffering from keratoconus, a sight-threatening eye condition, he and his prize pupil, Dr. George Jessen, researched a theory that a contact lens could reverse his serious condition and prevent blindness. After several years of research, they discovered a superior plastic material to be used in hard contact lenses and perfected a wearable, comfortable, hard contact lens. Their combined efforts launched Wesley Jessen in 1946.
Seventy patents later, Wesley Jessen is focusing on growing an industry that combines both a medical device and a fashion accessory in one package.
“(WildEyes contacts) fill a niche in the market and give kids a chance to express themselves in a colorful, reversible, temporary and flexible way,” Ryan says.
Ryan, in his fourth year as Wesley Jessen’s president, has engineered the acquisition of a competitor, Barnes-Hind, the contact lens division of Pilkingon PLC; doubled the sales base of the company; and successfully completed the company’s initial public offering of common stock in February 1997 on NASDAQ (WJCO). He is also responsible for formulating a market/sales strategy focused on specialty lenses.
With 20 years in the contact lens business starting with the Barnes Hind division of Revlon in 1978 and serving as president and group president for Revlon’s eye care division through the ’80s, Ryan knows contacts.
He believes that continued growth is tied to innovation because, historically, demands for lenses have leaped ahead with each technological improvement in comfort, convenience and quality.
“The market will attract new wearers by providing new benefits not previously available,” Ryan says.
WildEyes is part of that strategy and so far, Wesley Jessen has sent 4,000 diagnostic kits, used to fit contact lens wearers, to optometrists, ophthalmologists and retail optical chains. Soye estimates there are thousands of WildEyes wearers across the country, in major metropolitan areas and small towns, though it’s too early to provide exact figures.
So how long can this wildness go on? Wesley Jessen’s research and development is already creating more wild and crazy designs.
“Interest is huge,” Soye says. “The future of these lenses depends on new innovations that could prolong the life of the product for years to come.”
WildEyes’ Web site (www.wild-eyes.com) and promotions have brought interest.
“Because of WildEyes, the traffic flow into our office has increased,” says Dr. Pam Lowe, doctor of optometry at Professional Eye Care Center in Chicago and a trustee with the Illinois Chapter of the American Optometric Association. “Through WildEyes’ Web site exposure in teen magazines and a poster that we have in our window, many see the WildEyes and want to try them on. It’s a new product (that is) creating a new group that may have never been interested in contact lenses before.”
Although some may have concerns about the wearing of contacts for fun, Lowe doesn’t. “Like any contact, in the right hands it’s OK,” he says.
“We stress clean hands, a clean case, proper disinfecting of the lenses and good compliance,” Lowe says. “Then there are no problems.”
Unless being a little wild is a problem for you.
