Smith’s Opticians, Now with Online Shopping

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The ONLINE selection of glasses is just a representation of what you’ll find in the store.
Think of this website as the boutique version of Philip Brown’s Optical Emporium (aka Smith’s Opticians).

We hope you tell everyone you know, especially the out-of-town folks who always love your specs!

Our physical store will remain home to Houston’s largest selection of glasses with 1,000’s of choices!

Yes, it’s true, Smith’s long rumored website, with online shopping, has arrived!
New eyeglasses, sunglasses, and information are added regularly.
The site is technically still in beta (testing) so please be patient and nice with your constructive criticisms.

Now you can browse some of our favorite independent designer glasses and new old stock vintage, all from the comfort of your home, pj’s, bath tub, favorite cafe, or wherever else you may prefer.

We’ll even mail any of these fine frames, with or without single vision lenses (current prescription required), to you or as a gift, anywhere in the U-S-A.

If you don’t find the perfect glasses on our shiny new website and can’t visit the shop,
send a message and we’ll search high and low.

  • Why online shopping?

      Many of you asked for it AND we wanted to share some the independent designer glasses we love with everyone.

      Throughout the 40+ years Smith’s Opticians has been on the independent eyewear scene we’ve met a lot of lovely people. While some are able to easily visit, even bringing their children or grandchildren to the shop, many have since left Houston.

  • Why not offer your whole eyewear inventory?
      Maybe we will, one day.

      • some of the nitty-gritty details…

          1. We’re a small business and we’d like to maintain the high quality customer service of an old school Opticianry with today’s superior optical technologies.
          It sounds generic but we mean it.

          2. We’re not looking to become the next Warby Parker (gasp – it’s cool), we know you might shop there too. They do some things great but we hope you also support local and small businesses like us. (All of our glasses are prescription ready so you can bring them to your local preferred optical provider for lenses.)

          3. A lot of our frames are no longer in production and therefore we may only have one or a few pieces. This is obviously the case with all of the frames in our room of vintage glasses.

          4. Some of our vendors and collections restrict online sales.
          We completely respect their brand integrity and have an intimate understanding of the pros and cons to shopping for glasses online.
          For example, one of our favorite independent designer collections, Dolabany, offers dozens of high quality glasses in current trends but they’re only available at our physical store.

  • What about lenses?

      In-store, we have more options than the big guys. WHY? because we can utilize independent optical laboratories and aren’t restricted by sales minimums or franchise contracts, etc.

      Single vision prescription lenses are the most basic and common form of vision correction. A single vision lens is typically prescribed for distance but can also address eyestrain in up close corrections like eye strain or fatigue from screen time.

      There are thousands of choices for multi-focal aka progressive lenses (aka PAL or no-line bi-focal). The process is highly individualized and for an exact fitting, both lens selection and measurements should be made in person with a professional.

What!? When did all of this happen?

  • ACTUALLY, that’s a funny story…

      We’ve worked for a really long time, you could say at a snail’s pace (slow and steady), to provide a unique selection of glasses from our inventory. Things together without the patience and help of a handful of extremely talented & wonderful people. (more on that soon)

      Smith’s eCommerce site actually went live during a very VERY hectic week in July 2016. Yes, it’s a little late for an official announcement but you know we are usually pretty modest about these sort of things.

      It’s not out of the ordinary for the shop to be bustling and seem like a bit of a party, however, that particular week was especially busy. It just so happened that the online shopping component of our site was scheduled for soft launch THEN we got word that the lawyers, bank, and realtors were ready to wrap up paperwork with Philip to ensure we had a roof over our heads.

      You can read more about the fate of our location at the corner of Austin and Wheeler in a previous post.

 

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