Our Story

Chadwick Optical’s origins can be traced back to the little town of Southbridge, Massachusetts, where American Optical was originally headquartered in the 1800s. American Optical might not be much of a name now, but for well over a century, American Optical was a leading innovator in eyeglass frames, lenses, and vision. They even had major contributions to fiber optics and film. American Optical was obsessed with vision and how the eyes work together with lenses. They invented a number of products and assessment devices to measure and monitor various binocular vision issues. My parents met at American Optical.

American Optical’s reign as industry leaders came to an end in the ’80s and ’90s for many reasons, but one was that optometry began heading in a different direction. American Optical was trying to solve problems that optometrists no longer cared about. They were trying to optimize how you see and how your eyes work together, and optometry was focusing on ocular health. 

In my late teenage years, my parents split. My mom continued to run Chadwick Optical, and I took care of my dad during his fight with cancer. I worked for a couple of different optical retailers, an independent in New Hampshire, and then I moved down to Pennsylvania and worked for a large multi-national chain. Corporate retail sucked out my soul. It was always about the numbers and never about the person. I remember getting absolutely reamed for remaking a patient’s pair of glasses because it reduced the manager’s “spiff.” He didn’t care that the remake worked or that the patient was thankful. Only that he didn’t get his weekly bonus as a result. After just six months, I was so frustrated that I decided to completely leave the industry.

I spent about 10 years doing various things. I worked as a computer programmer. I bought, ran and sold a pizza shop. During this time, Chadwick Optical shrank substantially in size and staff, and was just 4 people. But it was 4 people doing some very special things. They were working on eyeglasses for studies to help patients with strokes. They were making some crazy glasses that we could once only dream of making.

My mom approached me in 2011, considering retirement, and asked if I would like to purchase Chadwick Optical. I’ve always been a tinkerer, and found their processes and new toys very interesting, so I said yes. It seemed like a fun path forward. We worked on relocating the business to Pennsylvania over the next few years.

Patient care in the corporate environment left me with a bad taste in my mouth. When I took over Chadwick Optical in 2013, I had a mantra:

We didn’t need to see patients directly. We would support the doctors who helped the patients.

And we did. And we continue to. From 4 people in 2013 to 35 people today, Chadwick Optical has become world renowned for helping doctors with their most challenging cases. We work with colleges to support their students’ low vision education. I lecture nationally and internationally to opticians, optometrists and ophthalmologists, spreading the word about how incredibly special glasses are, and how special they can be.

How special are glasses? Well, let’s start with this. Over ⅔ of the data in your brain arrived there through your eyes. No other part of your body, none of your senses capture as much data as your eyes do. It’s not even close. Put on a pair of glasses, and ⅔ of your brain data is processed through them. This is not something to be taken lightly. 

While it’s not to be taken lightly, it often is taken way more lightly than you would expect. The refraction, the eyeglass prescription, is often an afterthought as part of an eye exam. In ophthalmology offices, the doctor themselves usually has one of their office assistants do the refraction. The refraction is chopped liver, but is completely responsible for how you see the world.

Refraction is SO disregarded that optometry is considering removing refraction from the boards to make room for more medical knowledge.

Watching this trajectory over the last decade has been frustrating. Every day, we receive phone calls and emails nationwide from patients who are not being helped. Private equity and corporate chains are buying out retiring doctors, and turning them into the soul-sucking environments I remember working in 25 years ago.

Chadwick Optical’s tag line is “Let’s Exceed the Standard of Care”, a plea to doctors to do better, and let us help them do better. There are fewer doctors able to do better. They’re working for their corporate overlords, and have duties beyond delivering the best patient care possible.

Chadwick Low Vision Center is our attempt to directly exceed the standard of care. We’ll continue to help doctors through Chadwick Optical, but with the Chadwick Low Vision Center, we can help people directly. We didn’t really want to do this. But in the healthcare landscape we’re living in, we felt we had to. 

Vision insurance is a scam that changes the nature of the conversations we should be having.  For glasses, we’ve simplified pricing so we can talk about what’s really important: how you see, how your eyes are serving you, and how we can help maximize your potential. And we make the glasses right in our lab.