Contact Lens Manufacturer has Eye on Growth

Courtesy of Blanchard Contact Lenses

For 40 years, Blanchard Contact Lenses has been designing and manufacturing contact lenses from its laboratories in Canada, and in Manchester for 19 of those years. If you’re surprised that contact lenses are made in NH, you’re not alone.  

However, the lenses manufactured by Blanchard aren’t for the general marketplace. The company produces customized lenses for patients with special needs, such as an irregularly shaped cornea or a patient with a cornea graft. Each lens is produced for a specific eye, explains Bob Martin, vice president of operations, and is carefully inspected to ensure it meets the specifications for that patient.

Blanchard’s markets are the three “Os”—opticians, optometrists and ophthalmologists. 

The Manchester operation sells primarily in the United States while its laboratory in Canada creates products for the global market. Blanchard produces chiefly scleral lenses (large-diameter gas permeable contact lenses designed to rest on the white of the eye, or sclera) and multi-focal lenses (such as bifocals). It recently signed an agreement with Multilens, a laboratory in Sweden, to manufacture and distribute Blanchard’s Mini Scleral Design lens. 

The company held a series of lectures and workshops throughout Sweden and Finland in April to educate doctors about the product. It will hold another series in Norway and Denmark this month. 

Blanchard Contact Lenses employs 30 in the United States and 35 in Canada. Lens prices vary depending on the level of customization, and Blanchard generates more than $6 million in annual revenue, Martin says. He says sales have grown by 6 to 8 percent annually for the past few years. 

A  laboratory technician inspects the cornea-facing side of a lens, ensuring no imperfections, before the outer surface is cut in the manufacturing process. Photo by Christine Carignan.

Most of the contact lens market is disposable soft lenses, and as a result, many people believe rigid lenses, like those produced by Blanchard, are uncomfortable. However, Martin says technology has changed and Blanchard rigid lenses are large, meaning they have less lid interaction than a smaller lens, provide better vision and do not dry out the eye.

“We spent the past five years educating over 1,000 doctors about specialty sclera lenses,” Martin says of the company’s efforts to dispel common misperceptions about rigid lenses.

That education is paying off, Martin says, and seminars and social media continue to be a focus of Blanchard’s marketing campaign. “We’re educating doctors one doctor at a time,” Martin says of the strategy that has helped to drive sales.