It takes about an hour to get from Xidan to Panjiayuan, which is famous for affordable eyewear in Beijing. After coming out from Daming eyewear shop, the reporter went directly to the famous mirror Garden Eyewear city to see if they could match discount prescription glasses.

Compared with the previous brand eyewear shop, the business of the eyewear city is booming, and the reporter took a rough stroll on the first floor and found that each store has several or even more than 10 customers in it. "Our prices here are much cheaper than outside, even wholesale prices." A shop assistant said.

However, compared with Fenghao, Daming and other optical shops, the decoration and layout of these shops are obviously much simpler. Feng Hao has a special optometry room, and these shops are often optometry rooms and counters mixed together. An optometry instrument, a visual acuity test table hanging on the wall, and a row of various degrees of eyeglasses constitute all the equipment of optometry. In a shop, the reporter calculated that the average optometry time of each customer was within 10 minutes. According to the data, under standard technical conditions, the optometry time usually takes between half an hour and 1 hour.

As seen before in Fenghao and Daming eyeglasses stores, there are a wide variety of eyeglass frames and lens brands in these stores, and they are rarely repeated, which also makes the idea of price comparison impossible for reporters to achieve. Finally, the reporter in a newly opened shop on the first floor, found the Pepsi brand glasses frame, "If you want, 288 yuan will take it." The owner complained a little to reporters said, "here are engaged in wholesale, it is difficult to sell a good price, take the price plus a few dozen dollars I sold."

Finally, the reporter took a look at a pair of memory titanium frames, the owner gave a quote of 180 yuan, and said that this is the cheapest kind of frame here. Subsequently, the reporter chose a left eye degree of 75 degrees, right eye degree of 250 degrees of anti-radiation resin lenses, the owner said that the value of 80 yuan, but also explained to reporters that the cost of different degrees of lenses is actually the same. After several rounds of bargaining, the glasses priced at 260 yuan were sold at the actual price of 150 yuan.

Inside the shop, two female shop assistants in white lab coats were chatting, and the reporter joined in the conversation. They told reporters that they are the optometrist of the ×× eyeglass store (reporter note: a large glasses chain store in Beijing), and they came to help with their rest today and had to go to work the next day.

"Well, in our optician's, a pair of glasses of eight or nine hundred dollars is a normal thing, the customer without a second thought." An older optometrist told reporters, "Here, the price of two or three hundred customers are not satisfied, but also have to give you a bargain, a business must be done down to grind." Apparently, in this optometrist's opinion, the price of her glasses is much higher, but the business is not so laborious.

An hour's journey, but a few dollars of transportation costs, but there are hundreds of differences in the price of glasses. How profitable is the retail eyewear industry?

"I can't tell you what the profit margin is, but the profit margin of these brands is not as high as it used to be. The peak was from 1991 to 1998, and the profit margin of retail glasses can even reach 200%." A person familiar with the situation who once served in the Feng Haoxi single eyewear store told reporters that because the traditional eyewear retailers still use the sales model of Wangjie Wangbao, the cost has been a problem plaguing the traditional store. For example, the rent of Fenghao optical store in Xidan is 4.4 million yuan a year, and the annual use fee of advertising light boxes is 150,000 yuan, plus high advertising costs and labor costs, which are eventually passed on to consumers.

The situation in the city of glasses is different, the owner of the boss told reporters that the rent per square meter of the city of glasses is 8 yuan per day, his store has about 40 square meters, the cost of about 20,000 yuan per month, that is to say, the rent for a year is about 100,000 yuan, the cost is only 250,000 yuan. "On the one hand, our cost is really relatively low, and on the other hand, the overall environment of Optician City cannot allow us to have too high a price, and we are also considering small profits and quick sales."