Emmanuel Calligeros was hired for his first job, straight out of university, because he could speak Greek.
Fitting contact lenses is like fitting running shoes, you can’t just walk into a sports store and tell them your size. It’s a speciality area.
Today the optometrist owns the independent optometry boutique, where his career first began, in Sydney’s Newtown and has witnessed great changes in the area.
“In 1980 my boss gave me this job straight out of uni because I spoke Greek and he wanted a young Greek optometrist to attract Greeks in the area,” he tells.
“Ironically from the day I started working the Greeks started to leave and it became more of a trendy, gay, arty, crowd.”
Calligeros says over time he has changed the 50 year old practice’s image to suit the emerging demographic.
“We’ve got boutique eyewear and more exclusive products. We don’t feel threatened by Specsavers and OPSM. The more of that bottom end that starts to proliferate the more upmarket we go and our business has gone from strength to strength because of that,” he says.
“My clientele isn’t the type that would even bother going to OPSM. They’re more attracted to our unique brand, some of which we import directly from Europe,” he says.
Calligeros, who runs the practice with his wife Connie, travels to Milan, Paris, Tokyo, New York and Vegas for industry fairs, trying to get to at least one of the major fairs every year.
In addition to running his business, Calligeros specialises in contact lenses, which he taught at university from 1984 up until a few years ago.
“I was first approached by the university to teach since I sort of had a reputation in the field for liking contact lenses at a time when not many optometrists were good at them,” he says.
“I was wearing contact lenses since high school, mostly for sport, and that was always an interest of mine,” he says.
“Fitting contact lenses is like fitting running shoes, you can’t just walk into a sports store and tell them your size. It’s a speciality area.”
The contact lense industry is currently trying to reinvent itself, as internet shopping has hit the business hard, Calligeros says.
“Contact lenses are a commodity so you don’t need an optometrist to know what you’re wearing. You can go online and you can buy them from Canada, it’s a lot cheaper to do that, now with our exchange rate, some of the best deals are from America,” he says.
Calligeros is not worried though.
“The more I specialise in the trickier contacts, the less I’m affected by the Internet. You need to reinvent yourself. People always comment that I’ve got the latest equipment and frames, but I can’t stand still, I have to keep reinventing myself so I’m always ahead of the market, or at the top of the market,” he says.
In a world where technology moves faster than the eye can see, a question Calligeros is often asked is: can computers damage your eyes?
“The truth is that they’d don’t,” he says.
“What computers do is highlight problems, so if you’ve got a mild focusing problem and you sit in front of a computer for eight hours then that problem will become obvious to you.”
People have much higher vision demands today, Calligeros says.
“Now you’ve got older people who use computers, they’re not happy to have just reading glasses, they need computer glasses and TV glasses,” he says.
Even the introduction of 3D movies is bringing in extra work.
“If you’ve got a lazy eye you don’t see 3D. This is probably the dawn of a new era where 3D will start to highlight problems, people who need a prescription will find you can’t just wear the 3D glasses, you’ll have to put them on top of glasses. Eventually we’ll probably be making prescription 3D glasses,” he says.
“There’s always something happening in optics.”