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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Courts Optical expands amid online pressure

by

PETER CHRISTOPHER
82 days ago
20250425
Ophthalmologist John Roberts, regional manager of Courts Optical, second from right, cuts the ribbon to open Courts Optical at Kappa Drugs, Glencoe, with director Shiva Mungal, left, and director Andrew Laquis, right.

Ophthalmologist John Roberts, regional manager of Courts Optical, second from right, cuts the ribbon to open Courts Optical at Kappa Drugs, Glencoe, with director Shiva Mungal, left, and director Andrew Laquis, right.

VASHTI SINGH

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Geopo­lit­i­cal pres­sures are not yet af­fect­ing busi­ness at Court Op­ti­cal, but the com­pa­ny is keep­ing an eye on the tar­iff sit­u­a­tion.

This was con­firmed by Uni­com­er’s Op­ti­cal re­gion­al man­ag­er John Roberts at the open­ing of the brand’s store in Glen­coe, the com­pa­ny’s 17th lo­ca­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Roberts said, “For us, it’s not re­al­ly an is­sue, be­cause we get a lot of our frames from Italy. That’s the main fash­ion­able frames. So they’ll come in di­rect to the mar­kets from air­freight or we ac­tu­al­ly go to our sup­pli­ers, go­ing di­rect to Chi­na, so right now, we’re watch­ing it care­ful­ly, but we’re not ex­pect­ing any­thing ma­jor to af­fect that.”

He said there had been some in­crease in trans­porta­tion costs, but he said the com­pa­ny did not pass on that cost to cus­tomers.

He, how­ev­er, ad­mit­ted the com­pa­ny had en­dured a tough year, as its mar­ket share had been im­pact­ed by the rise of peo­ple shift­ing to pur­chas­ing glass­es through on­line sites. Roberts said while this was a chal­lenge, he said the com­pa­ny was still push­ing on as the brand pro­vid­ed greater cov­er­age for cus­tomers.

“It has been a tough year, so what we’re try­ing to do is re-im­age the stores. This is the lat­est con­cept for us, fo­cus­ing more on the clin­i­cal side be­cause there’s a lot of com­pe­ti­tion out there. What we found is on­line is rapid­ly com­ing in­to the mar­ket since COVID, but at the end of the day, you don’t re­al­ly get a full ser­vice. What peo­ple don’t re­alise with op­ti­cal is, if you don’t re­al­ly take care of your eyes. That is the route to many dis­eases. So we re­al­ly em­pha­size a com­pre­hen­sive eye ex­am for every­one, at least every two years for 40 years and for 50-year-olds every year,” he said.

Head of the Op­ti­cal Unit for Trinidad and To­ba­go, Kel­lon Craig said the lat­est branch was al­so part of the com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy to be more avail­able for pa­tients.


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