Peeq Pro has had a really good April. We have signed up a record number of optometry offices this month, but one consistent theme in these conversations is people who reject us or who sign up with us say, “I don’t make much money with Peeq Pro.”
This is not untrue, but it is also false.
For an individual office that buys five dry eye boxes and sells those over a quarter with no compliance protocol (i.e. no repurchase of necessary compliance products), you won’t make much money. In this instance, you probably spend about $250 to make about $75 - or a 30% ROI. Yikes. That’s not much.
But, here is the key to Peeq Pro’s relationship with an optometric office - the recurring nature of compliance. If on the other hand, your patient is moderately compliant - washing their eyelids every third day. And so, they order every quarter, then you make an additional $150 per year for those five patients (with no COGs). Again, that’s roughly $30 per patient. To add up, the optometrist makes an additional $45 per year on a moderately compliant patient.
The real statement should not be that I do not make very much on Peeq Pro. It should be that I do not make very much PERIOD. The profit margin on the average eye exam in the United States according to Review of Optometric Business is $26.
Now, let’s imagine that people actually start to change their behavior and they actually wash their eyelids, take fish oil, etc. every day. In that case, an optometrist makes about $120 per patient of profit. This is not a snake oil sales game. This is what patients are supposed to be doing.
If you have dry eye or the pre-cursor meibomian gland dysfunction, you are supposed to follow a protocol set out by the Tear Film and Ocular Surface Society (TFOS) called DEWS II. This is not Peeq Pro selling an unneeded product - it is Peeq Pro selling toothpaste to soda drinkers.
The point is that optometrists assume failure in their business model. They assume that they will get no compliance. And so, they do not do everything in their power to help encourage compliance. There is a very clear pathway to achieving both better outcomes for your patients and more take home profit. But, most look at it and say - “Nah, there is not enough profit in it.”
This way of thinking fails to put the emphasis on the right places - patient outcomes and profits. They align but require consistency in both cases.