Nike's Strobe Gaining Popularity

"A number of athletes at Athletic Republic-Libertyville’s training center — high school, college, professional or even middle school — are wearing what look like cool sunglasses. But what they’re really wearing is Nike SPARQ Vapor Strobe eyewear," according to a Mundelein Review post. "The strobe eyewear helps athletes enhance their sensory and sensory motor skills when used with specific training methods conducted by Athletic Republic." Read more.

The Gender Difference When It Comes to Eyes

"Studies have consistently reported that women require reading glasses or bifocal lenses earlier than men. According to a recent Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science paper, the gender difference is caused by factors other than focusing ability, such as arm length or preferred reading distance, which should be considered when prescribing readers or bifocals," reports Midwest Lens. "The new evidence was found by a team of researchers who performed a meta-analysis using nine cross-sectional studies to compare the prevalence and magnitude of presbyopia — commonly described as the loss of near vision that occurs with age — among men and women. The researchers further subdivided the analysis to determine what differences in presbyopia might exist between men and women." Read more.

AlwaysCare Teams Up with VSP

AlwaysCare Benefits, Inc. team up with VSP Vision Care to create a vision health plan called Preferred Choice Vision Plans. This arrangement enables AlwaysCare to offer its vision plans side-by-side with plans from VSP Vision Care, providing clients with the choice. Read more.

Frame Sales Up 3%, Sunglasses 7%

Vision Monday reports that "U.S. eyeglass frame sales rose over three percent from 2011 for the year ending June, to $8.5 billion. Sunglass retail sales performed even better, the report said, growing nearly seven percent, to $3.5 billion. Sales of higher end sunglasses, costing more than $50, accounted for most of that growth with unit sales up 7 percent and the total dollar volume growing by almost 9 percent to $2.3 billion." The post is based on the Vision Council's Consumer Barometer. Read more. The question is: How well are unit sales doing?

Former WNBA Star Behind New Online Eyewear Company

Endress Posing for her new company, Ditto

"Now a new eyewear startup in San Mateo, Calif., is taking a different approach from its upstart competitors. Rather than sell its own line of glasses, Ditto partners with 20 eyewear brands, such as Ray-Ban and Persol. Shoppers can try on hundreds of frames in videos of themselves, using their webcams," goes the post on Business Week. "Prices are comparable to brick-and-mortar stores. “We can coexist, and we will—whether [retail chains] like it or not,” says Kate Endress, who launched Ditto in April with former engineers from Google (GOOG) and Nokia (NOK) and has raised $3 million. 'Certain people want to buy online, but there’s always a place for a retail location.' Endress, a basketball star at Indiana’s Ball State University who played briefly with the professional Connecticut Sun prior to an investment banking stint at Citigroup, got her MBA at Stanford in 2011 before launching Ditto. She says more than 13,000 try-on videos have been created on the startup’s site. She won’t disclose sales." Read more.

World Sight Day Challenge Begins

"The World Sight Day Challenge is a major fundraising campaign coordinated by Optometry Giving Sight which is designed to raise funds for projects that provide vision care, local training and infrastructure support for people who are blind or vision impaired due to uncorrected refractive error – simply the need for an eye exam and a pair of glasses," according to Optometry Giving Sight. "Optometry Giving Sight is calling on all members of the optometric community to join the global movement to eliminate avoidable blindness by taking the 2012 World Sight Day Challenge. There are many ways to get involved. Participating optometrists may donate a day of eye exam fees, or a small amount from each pair of glasses sold throughout the month. They may also hold a staff-led fundraising event, or invite patient donations throughout October. Optometric companies can also get involved, by making a company donation, or holding an event in their workplace. Optometry students from around the world also take part in the Challenge. Watch the short video and follow the prompts to register here." Read more.

OD Refuses to Give Out Rx

"Earlier this month I got my eyes checked for my annual appointment at a new eye doctor," reports the Consumerist. "I went to get a glasses and contact prescription, at the end of the appointment I asked for my contact prescription and my doctor flat out refused to give it to me because he didn't want me ordering contacts over the internet since they price match anyway." Read more.

VisionWeb's Money Madness Sweepstakes Starts in a Month

"Get ready to be a hero in your practice with the latest installment of VisionWeb’s Money Madness Sweepstakes – the sweepstakes that rewards your practice for placing ophthalmic product orders on VisionWeb!" announced Midwest Lens. "The sweepstakes runs September 16 through November 10. Enrollment is open now. There are over $13,000 in prizes up for grabs, some just for enrolling! And once again, VisionWeb is enlisting participants to help select some of the prizes too." Read more.

Celebs Behind Persol

"When it comes to sunglasses, the Italian company Persol is, absolutely deservedly, the luckiest in the business. For not one but two of the 20th Century's most-emulated men favoured its shades - and they are still selling because of it," reports the London Telegraph. "The first was Italy's smoothie of smoothies, Marcello Mastroianni, who wore a pair of Persol 649's in the 1961 film, Divorce Italian Style. Designed four years earlier for the dust-deflecting demands of Torinese tram drivers, the extra-large lenses on these heavily-tinted glasses lent Mastroianni's character a satisfyingly shifty air as he planned to bump off his wife. The second, even more significantly, was Steve McQueen, who looked ridiculously manly in his Persol 714's, both on set in The Thomas Crown Affair , and off-set as he raced various Ferraris, Triumphs and Von Dutch motorcycles." Read more.

EyeMed's Call Center Gets Certified

EyeMed Vision Care’s customer call center has earned its third straight “Certified Center of Excellence” designation from BenchmarkPortal. BenchmarkPortal also ranked EyeMed’s call center in the Top 15 of the Top 100 Award for the second year in a row. EyeMed is one of the nation’s leading vision benefits companies and part of Luxottica, a leader in vision care and eyewear.Read more.

VSP Global Expands Calls Center

"Eye-care insurer VSP Global plans to add more than 100 jobs by the end of 2013, many of them by January, at its Columbus call center and an eyeglass-making lab in Lockbourne, its central U.S. leader said Thursday." That's the word from Columbus Business First. Read more.

Peoples and Parabellum Team Up for Sunglasses

OP's Sunglasses and Parabellum Case

"Oliver Peoples has paired up with Parabellum, the leather goods company, for a limited line of two unisex sunglasses, resulting in a curious intersection of rugged and polish," according to the New York Times. "The line provides two styles of Oliver Peoples Lindford glasses: one has matte black polarized lenses, and the other has rose gold with java-colored polarized lenses." Read more.

Opticians Fall in Love

For Owl Optical owners Chris and Julie Hansen, glasses are talismans. So goes their press release. They met at an eyewear shop in 1998 where Julie was working while studying at the University of Minnesota. Chris waited for her to help him. Julie’s big first line? “I like your boots!” Julie recalls Chris picked a pair of black plastic-framed Lafonts. Chris was too shy to ask her out in the public gaze of the optical shop, so he waited until he got home to make the big call. They went out for a drink, talked about eyewear, and have been together ever since. Married in 1999, the couple has two boys who make occasional star appearances at the shop, and a Siberian husky. Read more.

EyeMaster Stores Now Called Visionworks

Visionworks, the largest wholly owned U.S.-based optical retailer, has changed the name of its 28 EyeMasters stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to Visionworks. The company says that it is more than a simple name change and it promises a deepened commitment to extraordinary service, selection and value for North Texas consumers. The stores have been refurbished and will offer a larger selection and variety of eyewear.Read more. This is second time the chain has rebranded stores in recent months.

New Company Helps with Eye Docs' Coding

"A new company has been created to help ophthalmologists and optometrists improve the accuracy of the coding they do on claims they submit for reimbursement for the services they provide," according to Modern Medicine. "The Corcoran Consulting Group has launched Corcoran Compliance Connection LLC to provide real-time coding recommendations based on chart documentation in medical practices’ electronic health record (EHR) systems. A practice’s EHR is linked to company software to accomplish the task." Read more.

OD Must Register as a Sex Offender

"Diego Posada, the former Walmart eye doctor accused of molesting children in his office, has been sentenced in a plea deal that avoids a trial on felony charges that could have stripped him of his professional license," according to 9News. "District Court Judge John E. Popovich, Jr sentenced Posada to one year in the Adams County Jail, the maximum for a Class 2 misdemeanor. Posada will be required to register as a sex offender." Read more.

Novartis Treatment May Help with VMA

Ocriplasmin

The investigational eye treatment ocriplasmin significantly resolved vitreomacular traction (VMT) and closed macular holes compared to placebo in patients with vitreomacular adhesion (VMA). That's the conclusion of two Phase III studies, involving 652 patients, that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), according to a press release from treatment's developer Novartis. VMA, including VMT and macular holes, is an age-related progressive eye disease that may lead to visual distortion, loss in visual acuity, and central blindness. More than 300,000 patients suffer from this disease in Europe alone.Read more.

Eye Exam Now Can Reveal Alzheimer's, Parkinson's,and Creutzfeld-Jacobs

"Sticky plaques of proteins called amyloids mark several different, though related degenerative brain diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Creutzfeld-Jacobs. The symptoms of these disorders overlap and methods to diagnose and monitor them are not very advanced," notes Science Daily. "To solve this problem, scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have devised several new fluorescent probes that change color depending on what type of amyloid they encounter. Because amyloids accumulate in the eye as well as the brain, their discovery offers hope that one day neurodegenerative diseases could be differentially diagnosed with simple eye drops or ointment and an eye exam." Read more.

Gene for Leber congenital Amaurosis Isolated

"Researchers from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Loyola University Chicago Health Sciences Division and their collaborators have isolated an elusive human gene that causes a common form of Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a relatively rare but devastating form of early-onset blindness. The new LCA gene is called NMNAT1," according to Midwest Lens. "Finding the specific gene mutated in patients with LCA is the first step towards developing sight-saving gene therapy." Read more.

Kimberly-Clark Professional Adds to its Safety Glasses

Kimberly-Clark Professional's new Jackson Safety Nemesis polarized safety eyewear reportedly offer protection in a polarized lens, reducing eye fatigue as well as providing superior peripheral vision and side protection through a sleek, wraparound design. The company notes that the lens minimizes oriented light that causes glare, allowing the wearer to see fine details and deep colors without eyestrain, eye stress or fatigue. It does so without compromising or sacrificing clarity, performance or durability.Read more.