Leightons practices undergo £150,000 refurbishment

Leightons Opticians and Hearing Care practices in Camberley, Epsom and Sutton are the latest in the company to undergo an extensive £150,000 refurbishment.

As part of ‘Project Burgundy’ the family-run business aims to redesign all of its 34 stores throughout the south of England by the end of the year.

In the refurnished practices, the company’s well-known burgundy colour scheme has been replaced with a contemporary mix of exposed brick wall and fuchsia padded walls, with flashes of greys and bright whites to provide a fresh and modern look. New LED lighting has been installed to best showcase designer spectacles and sunglasses.

All three practices have had additional rooms built in, with dedicated audiology suites and additional pre-testing rooms. There is also a focus on new equipment and technology, including optical coherence technology.

The consulting rooms feature large flatscreen televisions with digital displays on the shop floor and music played throughout to add to the overall customer experience.

Camberley’s branch manager, Priya Burgul, said: “We love the fresh, modern look. The new design has created a brighter atmosphere, which helps with the flow of services in the branch and ensures we can give a better, more thorough service to our customers.

“It’s also fantastic to have the new facilities and technology to enhance our optical and hearing care services.”

Accessible

Explaining the refurbishment, Leightons Opticians and Hearing Care chief executive, Ryan Leighton, said: “As a company we are invested in delivering both optical expertise and audiology in a contemporary way, making these services accessible to all and the re-branding project will hopefully optimise the customer’s in-store experience and ultimately increase footfall by up to 30%.”

“The bigger fits obviously require more investment and are very much part of our strategy in developing keystone, destination centres of excellence. Combining audiology and optical in a seamless and stylish way helps to create a real point of difference for the brand, whilst better serving the needs of a fashion-focused younger market.”

Mr Leighton added: “In some stores we are installing lifts and completely transforming the experience to add much more clinical space away from the ground floor. This helps us to position the ground floor much more effectively as the first customer touchpoint, the view into the store, to ease browsing, product curation and provide dedicated dispensing areas.”

He concluded: “We are on a mission to get ‘Project Burgundy’ completed by the end of 2016, so we have a lot of work and changes ahead of us.”