Vision-Ease's protective lens gets day in sun

This morning's "Today Show" will feature Ramsey eyeglass-maker Vision-Ease as part of the Skin Cancer Foundation's effort to teach viewers how to protect their eyes and skin from harmful sun rays.

The broadcast could not be timelier.

Vision-Ease, which makes prescription and bifocal and trifocal lenses for eye doctors, LensCrafter, VisionWorld and Wal-Mart, recently launched a line of Coppertone polarized lenses that block UVA, UVB and glare from "High-Energy Visible Light."

Ultraviolet rays are harmful and associated with eyelid cancer, cataracts and macular degeneration, said officials with the Skin Cancer Foundation, which recently endorsed Vision-Ease's Coppertone lenses and selected them to feature on the "Today Show" along with protective clothing and sunscreen products.

Veronica Barlow, a spokeswoman for the foundation, said the Coppertone lens blocks 99 percent of the harmful radiation.

"You won't find many companies our size getting their products mentioned on the 'Today Show,'" said Doug Hepper, CEO of the $125 million company that competes with firms 10 times larger. "Ten percent of skin cancers happen around your eye. This product can clearly make a difference," he said.

Vision-Ease is beginning to feel some signs of economic doldrums. Consumers tend not to update prescription eyeglasses and forgo high-quality sunglasses in tight times. But Coppertone is changing that, Hepper said in an interview Monday.

"The fact that we are growing and able to hire 80 people [in Minnesota] last year in a mediocre economy ... is because of the Coppertone product," Hepper said. "It's been very successful getting us new business from existing [retailers] and new customers."

Including Coppertone, Vision-Ease now produces 22,000 pairs of lenses a day in Ramsey. Some are polychromatic lenses, which lighten or darken, depending on ambient light. A broad customer base has made the factory one of UPS' largest customers in the state and put Vision-Ease on path to grow to $130 million this year, Hepper said.

While that's shy of its usual 15 percent annual sales growth, company officials are thrilled. About half of company sales come from Coppertone and other new products developed in the last three years, officials said. Vision-Ease invests $10 million a year in plant improvements and 3 percent of sales in research and development.

Of the company's 1,300 workers, 500 are in Minnesota, where only specialty lenses are made. A plant in Jakarta, Indonesia, makes its lower-end products, Hepper said.

In Minnesota, Vision-Ease has invested millions to buy high-precision robotic machines that cost about $300,000 a pop. The high-tech work and Coppertone lenses are helping it compete against industry giants such as Essilor in France, Hoya in Japan and Carl Zeiss in Germany.

Hepper prefers these days to when he arrived at the company in 2002. The Pittsburgh native and 29-year coatings guru from PPG Industries joined Vision-Ease when it was still under the ownership of the now defunct BMC Industries.

The Buckbee-Mears precision metal manufacturer and maker of medical stents, eyeglass lenses, and old-fashioned TV-screen masks filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2004 and sold most of its assets. Insight Equity bought the surviving eyeglass-lens unit.

Vision-Ease's factory now runs 24/7, as robotic machines snatch circular films, mold them onto rugged polycarbonate lenses and bake them. Workers finish 90 percent of the prescriptions. Eye labs then complete them, making the final tweaks that correct for patient astigmatisms.

Vision-Ease recently partnered with the University of Minnesota's Math Department and is licensing software that will one day let it research, map out and test new trifocal polarized lens prescriptions in a month rather than a year.

"Right now it's embryonic," Hepper said. "But it's coming."

Dee DePass • 612-673-7725