NEW YORK—Josephine Lubrano and Christie Ruscio are childhood friends who have a passion for eyewear. While they met when they were 17, it wasn’t until they were in college that they started working together as saleswomen in an optical store. Fast forward to today—after closing down two of their shared independent boutiques in Manhattan, they have taken their love for providing the best eyewear on the road and go venue-to-venue with their business, Eyewear Girls on the Go. Not only are they able to make schedules flexible enough for them as working mothers, they are also able to spend extra time with their clients in the comfort of their own homes.

Eyewear Girls on the Go came about in 2016, after Lubrano and Ruscio realized that the amount of money they were paying for their brick-and-mortar stores was just too much. “Owning a retail optical business entails a lot of overhead, and with some of the toughest competitors arising it became challenging to survive,” stated Ruscio. “We began to notice the impact that the internet was having on our customers but we never wanted to stop doing what we love, being eyewear stylist.”

Because they had been practicing for 6 years and had the background in optical, family and friends who wanted to get fitted with glasses often reached out to the Eyewear Girls because they couldn’t make it into the stores in Manhattan and would ask if they could come to their homes. “Some people living in Brooklyn, Staten Island, New Jersey, couldn’t make it into our store so we’d bring home 10 to15 frames and we’d either go to their house or they’d come to ours. We’d get their prescriptions, bring it back to our store and make the glasses for them,” Lubrano explained.

“When our practices ended, we took a break before deciding to start the mobile concept. We were working under a non-compete (having come out of a franchise) and couldn’t advertise our business, so we started with our friends and family [as our customer base], going person-to-person and we kept it going from there.”

  

Today, Eyewear Girls on the Go brings their eyewear by request to personal house parties, local hospitals, local churches, schools and shopping venues and come equipped to take the proper measurements and make sales on the spot. “People just come out and whether they have their prescriptions or not, they’ll pick out a frame and then send us the prescription. After we send it out to get made, we take another ride back [to the venue] and dispense everything,” Lubrano stated. “Watching everyone try on glasses together and seeing their reactions to one another is such a personal approach and it makes everyone happy,” Ruscio added.

For the parties hosted at people’s homes, the Eyewear Girls offer an incentive to the host—allowing him/her to pick out one frame, prescription or sun. When they visit venues such as hospitals or shopping centers, sometimes they are required to pay a fee for participating.

  

Having a mobile business has proven to have more peaks than pits for Lubrano and Ruscio. While they learned that time management and multi-tasking are crucial to their business very early on, they also realized that being mobile allowed them flexible schedules which is important to them as working mothers and as opticians who are passionate about their craft. They are able to spend more time with patients—getting that extra time to really educate someone about their frame choices; and garner an even more diverse clientele because they are in different venues all the time.

“We don’t have to sit behind closed doors on beautiful days,” Lubrano. “We are in the car driving around to different boroughs, seeing different people anywhere from Jersey to Long Island. Every day is different.”