Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are thrilled that you were able to be here both in person and on our live webcast. We have quite a full day for you that we hope you'll get a lot out of. Before we begin, if you would please silence your cell phones. Take a minute to do that. We are so glad that you could join us. We have a lot of items to go over first, such as our forward-looking statements here available for your reference on slide three. We will have an agenda here of presenters. At 11:30 A.M., we have a 15-minute break. After that, you'll come back in. We'll have our panel discussion, financial overview, and then closing remarks and Q&A at the end of our presentation.
Once the webcast is done, we will have a lunch and management mingle at the very end. We could not be more excited to share with you the transformation we have underway. Here is a quick video highlighting what is to come. It is my pleasure to welcome Alex Wilkes, CEO of National Vision.
Thank you. Thanks, Tamara. First and foremost, thanks for everyone for joining us this morning. We actually do have a fantastic story to share. I joined National Vision summer of last year. When I was going through the recruiting process with the board and with Reade, I came into the company and I said, look, there's a lot of stuff that needs to evolve in this organization. Here's the playbook that I see we need to execute in order to get back to where this company once was. These are the things that need to occur. I got a resounding endorsement from the board, from the management team. We've been on the path of executing that plan for the last 15 months. However, you know, there's an interesting thing in this story. Reade is such a cultural phenomenon within the company.
It is hard to describe it. He literally will high-five every doctor, every store manager. The organization has a lot of love for that gentleman. Reade, thank you for being the cultural champion that you have been. This transformation that we get to talk about would not be possible without you laying the groundwork and making the organization feel great about what we are up to. A million thanks. I had this opportunity to join the company with really a playbook in mind of what needed to occur. What I hope you take away from today is we are executing that playbook. We are boldly reinventing National Vision. We are modernizing almost every single aspect of the company and how we approach the consumer and how we think about marketing and how we think about technology and how we think about our in-store experiences.
We're attacking key areas of underdevelopment. You're going to hear a lot about that today, about areas of underdeveloped products, underdeveloped consumer segments, and underdeveloped experiences that we believe we have a right to win and a clear path to closing those gaps. We're leveraging a data-driven approach like never before. We know more about our consumer today than we did last year and certainly several years ago. That's informing a lot of the decisions that we're making around product, around marketing, around in-store experiences, around our staffing, and around our doctor models. We're hyper-focused on operating margin expansion. This was once a company that delivered double-digit operating margin. We think we have a pathway to get back there. It's a hyper-focus of the management team. Over the last year, we've made significant strides in that direction.
One of the things I'm most proud of is these folks that are just sitting to my left and to my right and also some of our other team members who are here today. You'll find that we've built a world-class team. These are phenomenal leaders that you're going to get to spend a little bit more time with today and hear about their story as well. A lot is changing at National Vision. We're changing our strategy. We're changing our approach to the consumer. We've changed a lot of our management team members. One thing that is not changing is our core mission, which is helping people see their best to live their best. At our core, we want to deliver exceptional experiences, exceptional value, and exceptional access to care.
We do that across a network of over 1,200 locations with over 13,000 passionate team members, with a phenomenal lab distribution network. We own four domestic labs where we manufacture the lenses at the highest quality standards within the category. Ultimately, we deliver over 6 million eye exams per year. That is a lot of health care that we get to deliver to Americans on an annual basis. We are also one of the largest participants in the optical ecosystem. Our scale economies from a purchasing perspective mean that we are either the number one or number two purchaser of lenses frames in the world. That gives us tremendous scale and tremendous opportunity to launch new products and go to market with new and interesting things. Even as large as we are, we are still a small component of the overall optical retail category.
We're about 3% of optical retail. There's some big other players in the market. The most significant owner of optical retail share to date is still the independent optometrist. Independent optometry still maintains about a 50% share of the market. It's a highly fragmented market with an opportunity for us to take share. It's a growing market. Vision Council estimates that the optical retail market will be worth $85 billion by 2030. A nice market with nice growth and really strong tailwinds. I don't know if folks in this room have kids. I have a 15-year-old, a 12-year-old, and a 9-year-old. Those kids are spending a lot of time on screens. With that time spent on screens, we're seeing prevalence of myopia, nearsightedness raise. We're seeing consumers who are becoming presbyopic at an earlier age.
All of these things are consumer tailwinds that are driving more and more impact into the category. Population's aging. Younger kids are spending more time on screens. We have a demonstration of Ray-Ban Meta. You will hopefully get a chance to experience that product, if not here today in one of our stores. Certainly, that's going to be a significant part of the category. It's a fantastic category with great tailwinds. We believe we have the strongest foundation to win within the market. We're starting from a great place. We have great assets. Sometimes you come into roles like this and you have to worry about real estate repositioning and capital structures and different asset allocation strategies. This transformation that we're driving is actually one of the commercial model of the company. We're doing it from a strong foundation.
A foundation that historically has delivered consistent and strong results. For 19 years, National Vision was a strong, mid-single-digit comp-performing company. The model worked. However, consumer preferences evolved. We saw a rise of Managed Care. You saw a rise of consumers who were demanding more premium products in the category. We were not always meeting those needs. As a company, we are at an inflection point. We are a company that had to change our model. We had to change our approach to optical and our approach to the consumer. Today, you are going to hear a story of bold reinvention. That is really along three themes. A new leadership team with fresh perspectives that is really changing how we think about the business, how we think about National Vision, how we think about the consumer, and acting with a real sense of urgency to change the trajectory of the company.
You'll see how we're rapidly modernizing the business, again, in almost every aspect of our business model. You're going to see our clear growth runway on the underdeveloped products, segments, and customer experiences where we have significant opportunity to grow. Let me spend a minute on the leadership team, the folks that are seated to my left and my right. Tremendous leaders with both retail and optical experience. Over half of them are new in their roles within the last 16 months. When I look at this group of leaders, my colleagues, these are folks that are sharp, driven, and certainly have the right attitude and the right capabilities and the right energy to accomplish what we want to. By the way, I mean, these three guys, they go to the same barber. How lucky am I to spend time with these handsome folks?
It's funny, actually. I'm looking at these guys. You have the marketing commercial people on the left. You have the accountant and the technology and the lawyers on the right. They didn't even decide to sit like this. I guess you gravitate towards your people or whatever it is, right? Anyway, fantastic leaders. I couldn't be more thrilled to get to work with these guys on a daily basis. If you can't tell, we actually have a lot of fun doing what we're doing along the way. The story of National Vision is we were an analog one-size-fits-all replicator. As a company, we had a bunch of manual processes. They worked, but they weren't necessarily the most efficient and smartest way to go forward. We were super focused on a price-sensitive cash-pay customer.
That's what this company was actually founded and based on. We had a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing. I think some of you have heard me say this in the past. We bought a bunch of linear. We bought a bunch of search. We put the same message out in those channels. We had an outdated digital experience. For a company that captures almost 3.5 million people online every year that book their eye exams on americasbest.com, what I said before is booking an eye exam at americasbest.com was less committal than making a dinner reservation on OpenTable. We had the opportunity to create a more joyful, better online experience for those consumers who not only book appointments but also want to shop online. We had a very functional but limited product assortment. Our assortment was geared towards that cash-pay consumer.
We always worked to keep those prices incredibly, incredibly low. As we evolve, we're becoming more data-driven. We're becoming a more dynamic company. We have an expanded view of the customer that we're going to share a lot more about today. Specifically, not just our historic consumer but also the consumer that we're working to attract and retain going forward. We're moving to a dynamic marketing organization powered by world-class CRM capabilities and a new approach to creative and media. We're working on an e-commerce transformation to update our e-com capabilities, to make our online experience more joyful. As the number one entry point to our brand, our consumers deserve to have a fantastic online experience with us. Last but certainly not least, we're taking a much more sophisticated approach to pricing and assortment than what we've ever done in the past.
Those early actions that we've taken on price and assortment have a long runway. As I'll share here in a little bit, we think substantial more opportunity. We have developed a strategic framework that's guiding our work, that's guiding our prioritization. We really think about this in terms of four vectors to grow the company. The first is around underdeveloped consumers: the Managed Care customer, the progressive wearer, and the outsider X consumer. Underdeveloped products. We are underdeveloped in almost every aspect of premiumization within the optical category: lens coatings, transitions, progressive lenses, and more premium frames. We have the ability to enhance the customer experience through segmentation, by creating more joyful in-store and online experiences, and by doing a better job of integrating e-commerce and CRM so that we have one single view of the customer.
Even with 1,200 points of distribution, we have significant opportunity for new store growth and white space. We certainly have opportunity for cost optimization. Chris Laden, our CFO, is going to spend a bit more time diving deep into specifically our point of view on cost and where we have opportunity in the specific areas that we have attacked this year and that are going to bear fruit in future years. Okay. The following three slides might be the most important takeaways for this group today. Our opportunity to drive value comes from really two significant places: where we are underdeveloped on consumer type and where we are underdeveloped on products. We significantly underindex the market on Managed Care consumers. It is about 40% of our mix today. The category sits at 70%.
The Outsider X customer, that's the customer that gets their prescription from an outside doctor and then has that prescription filled within a specific retail location. That business is in the teens for us. It's about 50% of the optical retail category. Progressive wearers, we've made some traction there. It's about in the 20% of our mix. The category sits closer to 40%. There is a lot of room for us to go with these very valuable segments. On underdeveloped products, anti-reflective coatings, Transitions, advanced materials, we underindex significantly on all three of those. One of my favorite fun facts is that if we increase penetration 1% across all three of those elements, we would generate $40 million of incremental revenue for the company. Given the size of our underdevelopment, we actually think that is substantial low-hanging fruit.
Let me unpack the customer mix data points a little bit because I think this could be surprising to some. Our entry-level bundle and our self-pay customer that we spent so much of our time, energy, on over the years to attract and grow is worth somewhere between 1.4% and 4%, four times less profit than some of these more valuable consumer segments that we are now seeking. We know we have a right to win because we've already been winning with these consumer types. This is a significant opportunity. I think if we were to take a straw poll amongst our analysts and investors and said, "Hey, do you think the progressive wearer is a percent or a multiple times more valuable from a profitability standpoint?" We would probably hear somewhere in the percent range, right?
The fact that the progressive wearer is four times more valuable from a profit perspective than our entry-bundle-level customer, I think that gives some really good perspective on, as we think about the construct of our traffic overall, why we are so hyper-focused on these three segments of Managed Care, outsider X, and progressives because of the outsized profit contribution that they can have compared to who our historical target was. As we begin to make pricing adjustments and assortment adjustments, we have plenty of room to go versus the category from an average transaction perspective. This might also surprise you that we, with an exam, sit between one and a half to three times under the category from an average transaction value perspective. Our strategy is not to close the gap in its entirety.
We will maintain our position as the destination for value within the category, the obvious destination for value within the category. Because we underindex so significantly, we do know we have room to chip away against that underdevelopment from an average revenue per customer perspective. What you're going to hear from us throughout the day is we believe we have a right to win as an organization. We're expanding with our high-value customers that we are already gaining. It's not like we are attracting a whole new customer cohort to our stores. We're winning with these customers today. Now we're starting to distort a bit more of our attention, our marketing power, our assortment power against serving these customers better. We have a significant opportunity in underdeveloped areas of both consumer and product.
We will leverage our extensive store footprint stronger and better than what we have in the past. As a company and our brands, we have category-leading brand awareness. Just this third quarter, with the launch of our new America's Best campaign, we actually took the number one spot within optical retail for unaided customer awareness. I'm so super proud of the work that the marketing organization has done to capture that spot. With one of the largest employed optometrist networks on the planet, we have a fantastic partnership and asset with our doctors to ensure we're driving consistency and quality of care to the 6 million+ patient interactions we have on an annual basis. Our early traction is showing. The results have already started to accumulate. Year to date, we've driven 120 basis points of operating margin improvement as we put the strategy into play.
Our comps are back in the mid-single-digit range. Again, I could not be prouder of this organization and this team for what we have done so far. Today, you are hearing the story of a bold reinvention of our company led by the right team. We have significant long-term opportunity for growth by serving the underindexed consumers and by focusing on the underdeveloped product segments that historically have not necessarily been a focus for the organization. With that, it is my great pleasure to introduce Joe VanDette, our Chief Brand and Marketing Officer, who led all of the fantastic work around both the National Vision rebrand and the America's Best branding and repositioning. Joe, welcome.
Thanks, Alex. Hello, everyone. There I am. All right. As he said, I am Joe VanDette. I lead marketing. I also lead our go-to-market brand strategy.
I joined National Vision three and a half years ago, excited to join a successful, mature organization. Reade probably sold me on the 19 years of consistent results. I'm super excited. Where we are today is actually a marketer's dream. Why? Because we have the advantage of starting from such a strong foundation. Alex said it: number one brand awareness in the category. I, too, am super proud of my team for achieving that goal. We are enthusiastically operating with the heartbeat of a startup company. Why? Because we have so much untapped potential and opportunity to modernize. What we're working on right now is the most exciting thing a marketer could do. It all begins with the customer. Importantly, and more than ever before, we are using consumer insights and data to drive our strategy.
A clear picture of who our customers are ensures we delight them across this transformation. Alex did a poll. I think I'll do a poll, too. I bet if I polled the room, you would say our consumer is or was low-income, cost-conscious. That's who we targeted. As we have evolved, so too has our customer. We actually have a consumer base that mirrors broad U.S. demographics. If you direct your attention to the chart on the left, we actually overindex on middle-income consumers. Again, we were out there saying one message, targeting one consumer set. What we attracted was something else. On the right-hand side, age, demographics right in line with the U.S. They do not skew younger, older. We are right down the middle in terms of 18 to 65.
This is an important unlock as we introduce more premium services and assortment, which we'll hear a little bit more about today. To be clear, this is a reset of our expectations for which consumers we can win. Our appeal is broader and stronger than ever before. That knowledge, plus a clear view of those underdeveloped product segments and consumer segments, gives us a real clear path forward to winning. Customers and patients like the pragmatic buyer who appreciates value regardless of their income level, style leaders who have their own prescription in hand or want more premium products, wellness shoppers looking for great clinical experiences or have more advanced needs. We have a significant runway with all of these customer segments. Growth will come by evolving our marketing to attract them now that we know we can win them, right?
Going from an analog replicator shouting the same message at the top of our lungs to everyone in the United States to taking that volume and that share of voice and targeting these customers more specifically is the plan. Messages that will convey the type of experiences that we are building in our stores and in our offices. Again, my colleagues will take you through some of those as we go through today's presentation. Regardless of which brand we are talking about, there are key moments in the customer journey where we need to create experiences that matter and are tailored to winning these customer segments. These moments that matter will make the customer come back. Winning those moments that matter will make them love us. At America's Best, that could be a best-in-class clinical experience.
At Eyeglass World, that might be a stylish pair of frames that unlocks the customer's personal style. It means delighting consumers wherever and however they choose to shop. That means in-store or online. As Alex mentioned, we have three and a half million visits to americasbest.com to book exams. That is strong online traffic, a strong base that starts their journey with us in a digital manner. Now we are investing in that digital experience, right, to turn those visitors into customers, to engage them in between their purchase cycle and drive loyalty. We just launched a new CRM system. Our first customer journeys, specifically targeting these customer segments with messages that are meaningful to them, have begun. We still have a long runway to go. We are very proud to have done that late this summer.
Soon, we will launch a new digital experience online connected to the CRM experience we built. Same platform, same partner, same goal: to tailor our messaging to ensure consumers get what they want from us when they want from us where they want it. We have new partners like VML, Adobe, and Accenture that are helping us along this journey. We are now operating with the most advanced technologies available with the most innovative partners in the market. Advancements in our capabilities, not enough. We need to ensure that our brands resonate with these consumer groups and this expanded view of our customer. We are reinventing our brands to meet this moment. This summer, both the National Vision and America's Best brands were refreshed, strong signals of who we are becoming. Looking forward, Eyeglass World and Vista will undergo evolutions of their own.
Let's start by touching on our revised corporate brand. As you saw in our opening video, which always gets me hyped up, and as you see around you today, this is the new National Vision design. Its announcement is outside to who we are becoming, but it is also rallying our internal teams. We are now more focused, more dynamic, sharper. I think everyone here would agree. Everyone's really rallied around this new design. We all want the same swag that Alex is wearing today. We did not stop there. We did it at America's Best, too. At America's Best, we launched a new brand design and a new creative platform. The goal was to resonate with consumers in a new, fresh, and distinctive way.
This new campaign, "Every Eye Deserves Better," sets us up as a champion of the consumer in our industry with real energetic people at its center. By allowing all to see themselves as America's Best consumers, we can drive more awareness, more traffic, and more advocacy from those consumers regarding our brands. Let's take a look at how we got to where we got.
At America's Best, we've always stood for delivering exceptional access, value, convenience, and experiences. Along the way, the category followed our lead. With a message on deals, people were thinking less about their health. We've changed the game before, and we're changing it again with a total transformation and a mission we can all get behind: "Every Eye Deserves Better." This mission puts the focus back on the kind of care we've always been about. We're modernizing how we look and feel and changing the way we talk. Now we're celebrating real people, real moments, and every eye. We're launching in big ways. We're just getting started.
We are just getting started. We've stayed true to our heritage. You can probably see there's a little owl in the A/V. He hasn't gone away entirely. Takes more of a brand guide position now as opposed to being our spokesman. We're letting people speak for our brand, people that are really enjoying their lives because of what we do for them. It has been an absolute dream to work on this rebrand. It is a dream that I don't have to wake up from because we're going to do it again. Next up, and happening now, is work on Eyeglass World's evolution.
I think Priti will talk a little bit later about some of the directions we're heading, just as Mark's going to talk a little later about the experiences we're building around "Every Eye Deserves Better." As always, it will begin with our consumer as we do this work, right? The outcomes that we're aiming to attract those additional segments and to create brand designs and marketing plans and online experiences will be based on those consumer insights. To summarize, I hope you get a sense of the excitement I have for my job, the incredible progress we've made unlocking customer growth by understanding who they are, how we're maximizing our marketing approach, partners, technology, and design to attract those segments, and the incredible opportunity ahead.
Next up, to talk about how we are evolving our assortment to capture this expanded view of our customer is our Chief Merchandising and Managed Care Officer, Ana Moeddel.
Thank you, Joe. Thank you all for being here with us today. I am Ana Moeddel, and I lead our merchandising and Managed Care teams. I'm one of the newer members of the team, about two months in. I can honestly say this is already shaping up to be one of the most exciting chapters of my career. I have always loved how the optical industry combines innovation and purpose. Throughout my career, I've been lucky to experience both. What drew me to NVI, however, is also the size of the opportunity and the fact that here at NVI, we're not just talking about change. We're in it. We're doing it every day. That mix of ambition and momentum is what energizes me.
I am really excited today to share with you how we are channeling that energy into our plans for merchandising and Managed Care, plans that have been built on the same insights that Joe just talked about. In my short time here at NVI, one thing became very clear very quickly. We have so much untapped potential. That is an opportunity, an opportunity to really shape the next chapter of growth for NVI. To capture this opportunity, we will have to pivot. We will have to evolve our assortment mix. We will have to strengthen our Managed Care capabilities. That will allow us to better align our products with our customer base while staying true to what makes us special, which is delivering great quality and accessibility at a great value. The best part is our teams are ready. They are energized. They are talented and already leaning in to making it all happen.
Let's take a quick look back before we look ahead. You've already heard from Alex and Joe that historically, we focused on one segment of customers. We've optimized both our product and programs to that customer segment. Over time, though, due to our strong value proposition and brand recognition, we've seen the Managed Care customers become a much larger part of our customer base. The challenge is that our product did not evolve at the same pace with our customer. That is exactly where our opportunity lies. It's time to pivot. It's time to meet this segment where they are. Serving the managed vision care customer means helping them maximize their benefits. That means offering them more premium products that allow them to take advantage and get the best value out of the plans that they have on their Managed Care benefits.
The good news is our early shifts are working. They are delivering already great results. How big is this opportunity? Our ambition is for 50% of our revenue to come from managed vision care customer orders. Today, we are closer to 40%, which means that we have a significant runway ahead of us. We believe we have a clear path to getting there and getting ourselves much more in line with our category. Here is the thing. We are confident we can win with this customer segment. The industry has seen significant growth in Managed Care. Today, about 70% of consumers report having some sort of managed vision care benefits. That is a big market. We are well positioned to serve it. First, our customer-centric approach. Everything we do starts and ends with a customer. Second, our national scale. We have reach. We have consistency.
We have resources that most of our competitors cannot match. Third, our evolving product assortment. We are now aligning our product with insurance benefits so we can allow these customers to get the best value their plans allow. How exactly will we get there? You have heard this from both Joe and Alex and even myself. Historically, we have focused on one segment of customer, the price-sensitive, cash-paying consumer. Our assortment reflected that. That focus helped us grow but left us underdeveloped versus the category in premium or branded frames and premium lenses and contact lenses. That stopped us from being able to capture the full potential of the ticket that we can get from this customer segment. You have heard us talk about quick wins with pricing. To evolve the ticket further, we really need to evolve the mix.
That will not only improve our ticket, but it will also drive traffic because we'll be offering customers what they're looking for. As of the end of 2024, about 20% of our frame board in our stores was frames above $99. At the end of this year, that percentage is moving to 40%. We have room to grow it even further. Over time, we'll become more localized. We'll be tailoring our assortment to very specific market customer needs. Last but not least, we do think there is significant opportunity in lenses and contact lenses. Now we're very much in the early stages of this evolution. Every frame on our board has a purpose. Our updated visual merchandising makes it easier for customers to find what they're looking for. When it comes to lenses and contact lenses, we have not yet scratched the surface.
It is very clear that we're underdeveloped versus the category in both of these segments. Let's dig a little deeper into the lenses. For those of you who wear glasses, these terms may seem familiar. I will try to give a brief explanation anyway. When it comes to lenses, I'd like to highlight three areas of opportunities among lots of others. First, anti-reflective coatings. These are glare-free coatings that allow both looks and vision to be glare-free. We are about half-penetrated in this category of coatings versus the industry. Second, advanced materials. These are materials like polycarbonate and high-index plastic. They are thinner, lighter, and more impact-resistant. A bit better progress versus the category, but still significant opportunity to get us more in line with the category. Third, transitions lenses. These are lenses that are clear indoors, become darker when you go outside, and back clear indoors.
Again, we're half-penetrated versus the category. These are not niche upgrades. Consumers these days expect these upgrades. They're looking for them. By offering and selling more like the category, we're really putting our customer first. We have significant opportunity to grow without pushing away our value-driven consumer. As we make these changes, we're being very intentional and data-driven. This past year, we've turned lots of dials. Our early progress is exciting. Our conversion is healthy. Our NPS scores are rising. Our consumers are telling us that we're on the right path. The best part is we're just getting started. Let me share with you a few examples of what this progress looks like in action. This past year, we focused on frames. We've made quite a few shifts. We've launched luxury brands like Jimmy Choo and Boss and Versace and Burberry.
The results are just after a few months very much in line with industry expectations on these brands. These are big milestones. It shows us that our customers are really embracing our new offerings. We have also launched Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. They are overachieving our expectations. Significant. Our customers are responding really well to innovation. In other words, our early moves are significant, telling that our customers really, really appreciate where we are going. We have also taken steps to modernize our pricing, starting with America's Best. That means saying goodbye to the $0.95 price points in our bundles. This may sound simple. It is a meaningful change because cleaner rounded pricing helps our customers understand our offering better, compare their options, and find what they are looking for. It also creates a more modern and cohesive brand experience, reinforcing our value.
To sum this up, we have a tremendous opportunity with product. And we have the strategies, the teams, and the plans in place to achieve it. Even better, our customers are telling us that we are on the right path. I truly could not be more excited about what's to come. We are at the beginning of a longer journey. This is shaping the next chapter of growth for National Vision. Now I would like to hand it over to Mark Banner, the President of America's Best, who is helping bring these changes to life and leading our field teams at America's Best, making sure that every customer that comes through our door receives the product, the service, and the experience they have come to expect from us. Welcome, Mark.
I'd love to start off by saying that Joe and Ana are fantastic partners. I couldn't have a better team as we go forward and work on this transformation. My name is Mark Banner. I am the President of America's Best. I have the privilege to lead our 10,000+ frontline retail team members, as well as the 2,400 doctors of optometry in our optometry network. The service and customer experience that our frontline teams deliver is critical to bringing Alex's vision to life. I got to say, our frontline teams are passionate. They're mission-driven. They're excited about the future. I've been in retail for over 30 years, beginning my career as a consultative salesperson on the sales floor and then leading successful customer experience transformations at two large brands.
I got to tell you, this is one of the most exciting times in retail in the industry, as well as in the optical industry. We know more about our customers than ever before. Our customers expect brands to personalize their experiences to meet their own individual needs. It is important, as we think about leveraging the data and the advancements in technology, that we are also thinking about the important human-to-human connections that we know lead to those lasting lifetime relationships. We believe in America's Best that we have the opportunity to significantly increase the lifetime value of all of our customers as we focus on delivering a world-changing experience for them. I joined NVI about 16 months ago, just about the time that Alex did. It was an exciting time to join because, as Alex shared, the mandate for transformation was clear.
It's one thing to join a company that says they want to change. It's another thing to join a company at that critical moment where they acknowledge that not only is change necessary, but they're willing to start the change. Joining at that critical moment between the realization of the need to transformation and the actualization of the transformation is an exciting time to join. Over time, we put an amazing team together. This is the team that I'm excited to transform America's Best with. We're doing it all on behalf of our customers and patients. Here at America's Best, we believe that every eye deserves better. As you heard Joe share, this is a marketing campaign that we launched in Q3. We're very pleased with our early consumer results.
As importantly, every eye deserves better is resonating strongly with our frontline teams on both the retail side and the clinical side. Every eye deserves better is our brand promise. It is the ethos through which we are running the business. We stand all of our decisions up against, does this bring every eye deserves better to life? As America's Best, we are the largest brand at National Vision. We are the forefront of the transformation with over 1,050 stores, 10,000 retail team members, 2,400 affiliated doctors. We have momentum at our back as the transformation is really getting rolling. This all starts from our perspective with delivering an outstanding customer experience. Without the right experience for our customers and patients, we will not be able to sell the exciting new merchandise that Ana is bringing or serve in multiple ways the customers that Joe is sending to us.
We really thought about this across three different dynamics. We had to get the culture right. We had to get the behaviors right. And we had to make sure that we had the right digital tools to improve the experiences. You heard Alex share that we're moving from analog replicator to segmented digital innovator. In America's Best, this transformation began in the back half of last year as we said we are going to move from a transactional lowest price to consultative best value. Why does that matter? Let me unpack a few examples that I'll talk about on some of these segments that we've been thinking about.
Because we were operations first as opposed to customer first, if a customer came into the store with Outside Rx, what we've branded as bring your own prescription, because our teams were focused on operating specifically just to get someone into a doctor examination room and then get them out and get that flow fast, our teams did not know what to do with someone when they came in. They started with every transaction with a question, what time's your appointment? Are you here to see the doctor? Today we start with, welcome to America's Best. The teams find out their reason for joining us and what the customer's names and individual needs are. Through that lens, we've been able to quickly, oh, you have your own prescription with you. We'd love to help you today.
We have lots of different styles that we think would meet your needs. Let's talk about progressive customers or anti-glare reflective. Because we were focused on lowest price, if someone came into our stores, our teams were always focused on what's the absolute lowest price that we could find for you as opposed to determining what are your individual needs. Let me give you a couple of options and educate you along the journey. Since we've begun to do that, we're seeing significant acceleration in the penetration of things like progressives and anti-glare. That's all driven by behavior changes in our frontline teams. On managed vision care, again, because we were operations focused on that cash pay customer, it was really hard and complex for our teams to find out what are the managed vision care plans that this particular customer might have.
We're in pilot right now on digital tools that will make it a lot easier for us to find and match the customer's eye managed vision care plan to them, allowing our teams to focus on building, again, those important human-to-human interactions. While we're moving fast, we're also being very thoughtful about doing it in a sustainable manner. We have a clear North Star vision that is tightly aligned with where National Vision as a whole is going. It's really important to remember that America's Best remains committed to being a value player in the industry. It's important for us to remain and keep our position as both attainable and accessible for eye care and eyewear for our patients and customers. With over 1,000 stores, you can see exceptionally executed, it's important that we're able to do this exceptionally well across all of our stores.
In order to do that, we know that we have to make it simple and easy. Here's the great thing. We actually have heard, and our data shows that that's what our customers are looking for. Patients want a simple and easy experience. Simple and easy does not mean a low-quality eye exam. As a matter of fact, simple and easy actually gives our doctors the time to build the relationships with their patients and find out what's important to them. We also want our entire team focused on our customers' and patients' emotional reason for purchasing. That's where the line comes in. We want to make sure that you look, see, and feel your best. Look your best. Did we find the right pair of frames for you that matches your personality? Did we help guide you to that?
Are we helping you see your best? Because our doctors gave you a high-quality eye exam and the right prescription. Did our retail team members find the right lens and enhancements for you and how you live your life every day? We know if we do that well and our customers and patients feel listened to and cared for, they will leave feeling their best. We believe that there are not very many people in the optical industry that are focused on the emotional reasons for buying. This is definitely a place that America's Best can win. We have significant runway. You think about the four growth factors that you have heard us talk about. We have actions underway in all four of these and are already beginning to see results.
Starting with underdeveloped customers, this starts with shifting the mindsets of our teams so they understand who's already coming into our stores and what are they interested in purchasing, and then putting those behaviors that I've already unpacked a little bit in place. You think about underdeveloped products. As you heard Ana share, it starts with making sure that we have the right merchandise in our stores to meet the needs and expectations of the customers that are already coming in. Step two, we'll begin to segment our merchandising by each individual store based on the customers that they have and enhancing our customer and patient experience.
Again, everything that we're doing is focused on our customers and patients first and ensuring that our teams have the digital tools so they can spend their time building great customer relationships and spend less time doing non-value-added tasks. Of course, we view new store growth as an important driver of our short-term and our long-term growth strategy. This is a lot of change. You may ask yourself, how are our frontline teams doing managing this change? I've led a couple of different customer experience transformations. I know winning the hearts and minds of the frontline is the most important part of being successful in a transformation. What you're seeing here is we actually brought all of our frontline leaders together at the beginning of this. We said, hey, we've done things the same way a long time.
We've got an exciting, compelling vision for the future. How are you feeling about it? This is the real-time word cloud on what they said, not unexpected things like, I'm nervous. This is some uncertainty. What I want you to know is that we're eyes wide open on change is not something that just happens. You've got to bring your frontline teams along. What we started with then is saying, let's paint a compelling vision for you on where we are going. Once we did that, we had to make sure that we created the right environment and system for our teams to embrace the change. It starts with mindset. The first thing that we did was introduce this idea of growth mindset, which I'm sure that you're all aware of. Many of our team members were living in a fixed mindset.
We had to teach them, what does it mean to lead with a growth mindset? We had to educate them on who's already coming into our stores and how do we serve them best. We had to think about our teams, making sure we had clear expectations of what we wanted them to do and where they were spending their time. Had you come into one of our stores a year ago, you would have seen our managers. Actually, you probably would not have seen our managers because they would have been sitting in an office filling out checklists and sending all sorts of forms into their teams, lots of auditing. If you came into one of our stores today, hopefully what you'll see is you'll see our store managers out on the floor training their team members, interacting with customers, making sure that everyone's needs are met.
We had to put the right mechanisms in place. For our district managers, they used to hit three or four stores a day with a checklist of things that they would fill out. Now you'll see our district managers hit one store a day focused on training and development with all of their team members. We also had to think about KPIs. When I joined, we had 27 pages on our production report that our teams were held accountable for. We actually had a definition book that had to tell you what all they are. We have simplified that to the most important one-page worth of things that we need our teams focused on. Behaviors, behaviors, something that I can hear our frontline team members say or we can see them do. What are the behaviors that lead to success?
One of the things that we just started putting in place last quarter that we're really excited about is the idea of a doctor-to-retail handoff. In the past, what you would see because we were operations-focused, our doctors would leave. They'd walk over. There was a metal file here. They would drop the patient's chart in it. They would walk back and grab the next patient. The retail team member would walk up. They would grab it out. There was no interaction between that doctor and the patient. The most important part in a purchase from a patient perspective is the doctor's recommendation. People want to buy what the doctors tell them they need. Makes a lot of sense, right? We said, we got to pause and make sure that there's a clean handoff.
This is not just on the retail side. This is also on the doctor side. We had to convince our doctors, which was easy to do, by the way, to say, hey, you are spending a lot of time with your patients. We want them to see their best. They will purchase what you think is right for them. By the way, our doctors are not selling, just to be clear. They are just letting the patients know, based on what I found out about you, this is the right product for you. We are seeing tremendous success with that in a short period of time. If you look in the center here, you will see feedback loop. One of the ways we were able to get so much done so fast is we are listening to our frontline teams.
One of my favorite sayings is that good ideas can come from anywhere and be implemented everywhere. What we've done is we brought groups of store managers in, district managers in, salespeople in, doctors in. We've asked them the most important question that any leader can ask, what can I do to make your job easier? We heard from them all sorts of things, many of which were easy to put in place. By the way, most of them were aligned with providing a great customer and patient experience. As we were rolling these things out, you could share with our teams, hey, these are ideas that we're hearing from you. That accelerated the speed at which our teams were willing to transform. By the way, there's all sorts of nuggets you can get out there.
We now have these voice-of-the-field calls every month. Then once a quarter, we bring a live group in. We listen to them, right? That also helps us understand what are best practices one place that we can implement someplace else. As you can see, we got our group of leaders together. We asked them the exact same question again. Again, this is real-time word bubble. We said, how are you feeling about the transformation now? Now you're seeing words like growth, evolution, opportunity, progress, innovation, needed, necessary. Our teams are excited about the future. They're excited because we're listening to them. They're seeing the results show up. That's so important as well. You can't just ask them to do something.
You have to make sure it's something that's measurable and that it's in the right interest of our customers and patients. My favorite part is our patients and customers are telling us that it's working. Our NPS scores have continually risen year over year. Actually, this is the first month that we're comping the transformation from last year. It's great to see that even on top of last year's great results, our customers are saying we're getting even better. Some of my favorite quotes here, as you'll see, the folks radiate a level of warmth and professionalism that's praiseworthy. That's that emotional connection, warmth. The staff explained progressive lenses to me. I'm finally able to see. No other eye care facility has ever done that.
Again, if you go back and you think about transactional lowest price to consultative best value, I wonder a year ago, would we have heard this from our teams, right? Taking the time to explain what's the difference between a progressive lens and a standard bifocal. As a matter of fact, we actually have Optikam over here in our AB experience. I really recommend you all go over there and see it because it does a great job of showing what this means. I have been coming here for a while now. I love how they remember you and are always so helpful and friendly. Again, one of the first things that we did, and this seems so simple, but it's so game-changing for any type of experiences. Can you get and use your customer's name?
Just that one simple, let me find out your name and use it throughout the presentation builds a great connection, which of course leads to loyalty. Loyalty leads to more frequent purchases, which significantly drives the lifetime value of each customer that comes into one of our stores. I love it when they talk about the fact that we're remembering them. Actually, we're talking about this year we put in place, we want our customers to remember, I'm sorry, we want to remember our customers. That was a key piece. As we look towards next year, our rallying cry is, and we want our customers to remember us as an individual and what our names are because the experience we're giving is that differentiated. As we look towards the future, we're excited about where we're going.
We're going to continue to double down on behavior changes. We know it's one of the simplest things that you can do. What I love about this picture is what you're noticing. It seems like it's so simple because you've got one of our sales associates talking with one of our customers at the frameboard. Why is this so game-changing? We were operationally focused before. Had you come into one of our stores a year ago, what you would have seen is that sales associate, she probably would have been sitting at a desk and asking the customer to browse frames on their own because they were focused on doing all of the paperwork and doing the hard work to find out what's the right insurance plan.
Just standing up and saying, let me come over here and help guide you and find the right set of frames for you can be really, really game-changing because now you're not just a place that you're pulling a piece of glasses off a wall. You actually have an expert there that's helping guide you on your journey. Then empowering smarter associates. Again, this comes in many different places. We want to make sure that things like demonstrating merchandise or telling features and benefits, that can be done through video way more effectively than it can be done from a person having a conversation with you. Again, please check out our AB experience over here.
You'll get to see the new merchandise that's out, but you'll also get to see Optikam, which is now deployed as of this month in all of our America's Best and Eyeglass World stores. It really does three things. Number one, it can simply and easily get to what your price should be. That allows our team members to give every customer multiple quotes. If lowest price is what's important to you, we still have that because that's who we are. If finding the right solution for you so you can see your best and we can meet your needs, here's what that solution is. We're finding more and more customers are, of course, choosing the solution that allows their vision to be the best for them.
The other thing that it can do is it shows videos on what does it look like if you're wearing a progressive lens and how do you actually interact with that? What does AR anti-reflection do for you when you're driving at night? You can simply slide it. By the way, I encourage you to pick this up so you can see how easy it is to use yourself. You can use that yourself. Our patients can see, wow, this is the experience that I'm going to get that's different. This isn't just about an add-on to sell you more. You make the choice that's best for you. We just want to make sure that you're well-informed and educated on the choices that are out there for you.
Of course, making sure that we can take things that are operationally driven, like how do I actually match up your eye insurance? What you find is that if you ask most people, man on the street, they know what their health insurance is. Almost everyone's eye insurance is through a different provider. Very few people, when they come in, actually know who their eye insurance provider is, who their managed vision care provider is. Having a quick and easy way for our teams to look that up, again, frees up their time to focus on building those important relationships and then strengthening our ways of working. We'll continue to be committed to investing in training with our teams.
For example, next year, we'll be launching a communications platform, which will simplify our communication with the frontline, as well as allow us to measure effectively our sales tasks versus our non-selling tasks, and then modernizing and shaping our care journey. Today, we're doing it through behaviors and digital tools. And we're loving what we're seeing. Tomorrow, as you heard Joe say, we'll have a new e-commerce platform out. We'll begin to have a stronger, more effective online presence to complement our already strong in-store presence. In the future, we're envisioning a connected experience where customers can shop online. When they come into the store, we'll already have your three favorite frames pulled out for you, maybe with a couple of other recommendations.
We can take what the doctor recommended for you and make sure that that's shown to you and waiting for you when you leave the eye exam. We are also committed to every eye deserves better. How do we bring this to life? Like Joe shared, we launched this marketing campaign in Q3. We have already touched every one of our 1,050+ stores in a very cost-effective way by putting every eye deserves better into each one of our stores, things like window clings and small signages. What we are really excited about is we have been able to bring this to life without having to undergo a massive, massive store remodel program. There are small changes we can make to bring this to life in all of our stores. Speaking of real estate, we still view real estate as an important part of our growth future.
As Chris and Alex have shared, in the short term, we expect to open around 30 stores a year while we reinvest into high-return, high-growth initiatives, things like e-commerce and digital. We expect to return to our more traditional 60+ growth pattern starting in 2028. We also are in the middle of a new store design project with WD Partners focused on, again, bridging clinical and digital and retail all together, envisioning that connected commerce world of the future and making sure that we can bring to life for our teams and for our customers every eye deserves better. We anticipate our first new store to launch in the back half of Q2 next year. I'm excited about the future of AB and believe that the new store design we have, coupled with the tremendous opportunities for store growth, will lead to sustainable long-term growth.
Now let's watch one of our new commercials focused on these eyes and bringing every eye deserves better to life.
These eyes. These eyes. These eyes make a statement. They take it all in. These eyes I got from my mom, which I got from my mom, which I got from my mom. They helped me bake this. Nail this. These eyes are important to me because they're the only ones I've got. That's why I take them here to America's Best, with a team of doctors and associates who believe every eye deserves better. Especially these ones. America's Best. Every eye deserves better.
We love that, as Joe said, real people with real experiences. Here at America's Best, we believe that each and every eye deserves better. With our frontline teams, we're challenging to bring that to life through Better Begins With You.
How can you commit every day to be better on behalf of our customers and our patients? We also know that our experience is not just a retail experience. It is also a clinical experience. What is really important to think about is if you think about the industry, most people, you go see a doctor in the back room, and you come out, and you see a retail associate in the front room. Customers and patients, they do not actually bifurcate that in their mind. They think about it as this was a single America's Best experience. How can we make sure that we connect those two things really, really seamlessly? That is a place that we believe America's Best has a chance to win. I would say this. You have heard the term, we are just getting started so many times.
As I think about where America's Best is today, number one, we're early in our journey, but we love what we're seeing. Two, we're excited about the future and the possibilities that exist. Three, we have a long runway for growth, both with our existing customers as well as attracting new customers to the brand. Right now, I'd actually like to invite Dr. Priti Patel, our former Chief Medical Officer and current Head of Emerging Brands, onto the stage. We can share with you a little bit about how we bridge the clinical and retail experience for our customers and patients.
Thank you, Mark. Thank you, guys. All right. I actually want to start with my journey and how I joined optometry. It was actually in the exam lane, seeing patients, providing the great care for patients coming in. I quickly realized that I could make a bigger impact shaping the experience for customers and patients across the country. The natural next step was really to join National Vision, whose sole mission was providing accessible eyewear and eye care. I'm really thrilled to be leading the transformation for emerging brands and for Eyeglass World. I'll tell you, Mark, I personally know how important the doctor and our doctor network is in our overall experience.
Yeah, for sure. I got to tell you, Dr. Patel is an amazing, amazing partner. We worked together when she was Chief Medical Officer. I'm just so excited that together we lead our brands and make the customer experience we get. As Priti said, we have over 2,400 doctors in our network. I think you've heard us share that several times. That is a key competitive advantage for National Vision. The way we deliver care, National Vision was at the forefront of teleoptometry, ensuring that we provide access to as many patients as possible.
Yeah. Through the pandemic, National Vision had a big challenge to ensure we had enough doctor capacity to meet the large patient demand coming out of the pandemic. I'll tell you, the organization not only met that challenge, they transformed the challenge. We launched a remote care platform that allowed optometrists to practice in their homes how they see fit. Actually, for patients, this was a huge unlock for access of care. We were able to have the patients be seen in their community and also in rural communities where there may not be optometrists readily available. I'd say, Mark, we had a win both on the doctor's side and the patient's side with remote.
Exactly. Members of my own family have had remote exams. It is a little different, but once you get used to it, right? Actually, if you think about it, if you're getting your eye exam, you actually have right in front of you one versus two, right? You hear the doctor the same way.
You see them.
For sure. There you go. You see them on screen. As leaders in fields that are talking to customers and patients, the most important place for us to be is actually out in our stores and out in our doctor's offices, spending time with the people that are interacting with our customers and patients every day. One thing that was really eye-opening to me, spending time with our doctors, is that our doctors provide more than just a prescription for eyeglasses. You think about that's the main reason that most patients come to see us. They want a prescription to purchase a pair of eyeglasses. Our doctors provide so much more than that. It was eye-opening to me to learn that our doctors actually provide full eye health.
Yeah. I mean, typically, a patient comes into an Eyeglass World or America's Best to get an updated prescription. I'll tell you, on a weekly basis, our optometrists are diagnosing not only sight-threatening conditions, but life-threatening conditions, such as diabetes in the eye, hypertension in the eye, even ocular tumors. I would say the doctors are able to provide a comprehensive exam. The technology that we provide really helps that entire experience.
Absolutely. We've talked a lot about customer experience advancements and how we're changing this to consultants. I got to say that also is happening with our doctors. National Vision has always been committed to quality patient care. The pivot we made with our frontline doctors this year was we want them to be focused on quality patient outcomes. Now, if you think about it, you can't provide a quality patient outcome without delivering quality patient care. Quality patient care is still at the heart of that. That is a transformation. Quality patient care was operationally focused.
Quality patient outcomes say you need to listen to the patient, find out what is important to them, make sure that they understand the recommendation and prescription that you're giving them, and make sure when they leave the office, they understand the steps they need to take so they can see their best. Some of the quotes we've heard, because again, we're hearing this from our patients, things like, "The doctor who did my eye exam was wonderful. He explained everything about my eyesight to me that I never knew before I visited America's Best." It's not just providing the care. It's making sure that the patient understands what is being explained to them so they can action upon it after they leave. My doctor that did my exam was the most informative doctor that I ever had.
If a doctor gives a fantastic eye exam and they do not explain it to the patient, that exam is almost wasted. Versus if the doctor takes the time to explain to them what is happening in their eyes, the patient is much more likely to action on it, leading to better quality vision for them. My favorite here again was the doctor was personal, kind, and thorough and answered all my questions. Doctors that build a connection with their patients make a difference in their lives. We are so proud of our doctor network and everything that they provide to our patients. We could not do it without them. We have had a lot of exciting transformation going on in the company. Priti, I know there is a lot of transformation going on in emerging brands as well.
Yes, there is. Thank you, Mark. Congratulations on the outstanding work at America's Best. Thank you. All right. We are going to talk about Eyeglass World right now. I am super excited, as I said, to lead the emerging brands and Eyeglass World into this transformation. I am going to jump right in here. Let me talk about our emerging brand strategy and how we are looking at emerging brands. We are now pulling our Eyeglass World brand and our Vista Optical, which is Fred Meyer and Military, under one umbrella. This actually allows us to focus on these brands, resource, and invest strategically to allow even our smaller brands to grow. As you heard from Joe earlier, Eyeglass World is next in our brand evolution. We have just kicked off important work around brand positioning to allow focus for the Eyeglass World brand.
This not only helps us in terms of any category trends that may come up, but it also sets up the brand for long-term growth. Since stepping into the role earlier this year, the focus has been on really strengthening the brand. It starts with our store associates. You heard Mark talk about all of the amazing work going on at America's Best with our store associates. It's no different at Eyeglass World. We've given the teams a vision, a purpose, really energized our frontlines to get behind the brand. We've also focused on operational discipline, doubling down on retail best practices, focusing on the KPIs that matter to National Vision and, more importantly, our customer. We also made the strategic decision to transition 42% of our Eyeglass World locations to an employed OD model.
I'll tell you, we're already seeing the benefits of this decision, both from a patient experience as well as our store associates. Lastly, we're focusing on demand drivers. You heard Ana and Joe talk about the amazing work that their teams are doing both on the merchandising and marketing sides, which will help our Eyeglass World continue to grow. We recognize, and I recognize, that Eyeglass World is an important asset for National Vision, especially in areas like Florida where our brand recognition is particularly strong. We've rallied the troops. We have a clear vision, as I've stated, and we're already seeing positive momentum with our comp trajectory moving in the right direction. I'm incredibly proud of the team and what they've done this year. Again, the brand will start with customer insights.
That's where this all begins, with data-driven insights that will help the brand in terms of growth. From that, we'll tailor our products and our experiences to really meet that brand positioning. Our goal is to launch a refreshed brand by mid-2026, which we're all very, very excited to happen. Finally, as we look at National Vision's four growth vectors for Eyeglass World, it's very clear. It starts with our brand positioning and our messaging, becoming more relevant in this crowded optical market, making sure that we're meeting our customers' needs, having that perfect pair of lenses and frames as they leave our stores. Lastly, delivering a memorable experience, not just any experience, a memorable experience when they exit an Eyeglass World. As you see our foundation become stronger, you'll start to see us pursue unit growth opportunities in a more focused and targeted way.
All of these investments is not just about keeping up with the pace. It is actually building deeper, more long-standing relationships with our customers. I hope you heard today from me a clear vision for our future and a clear path forward. Thank you so much for your time. I will turn it over to Tamara.
Thank you Priti. All right. We have a 15-minute break now, so we will meet back here about 11:35 A.M. Thank you. You want a pillow? All right, everyone, welcome back. We are excited to get started. I am going to hand it over to Alex Wilkes, who is our moderator for our panel discussion.
Great. These chairs are much more comfortable than the ones on the side, I got to say that. Yes, they are. Thank you, Tamara. By the way, for the record, I only agreed to moderate this session if I got note cards so I could be like, you know, the Inside the Actor Studio guy as I... Between the Ferns. Ask up Between the Ferns when you're done. I might. I can, you know...j ust be careful. They do not want to hurt anybody in the ferns.
Hand them out. Okay. We have got it. We have got you covered. Thanks, Priti. So far, right, you have heard a bit of our story and how it is rooted in data and our notions of the consumer transformation, how we are thinking about it. You know, I get the pleasure of also working with these three fantastic guys on a daily basis.
You have Jared Brandman, who's our Chief Strategy Officer and our General Counsel, a role that he took on both of those positions within the last year. David Cutler, our Chief Technology Officer, and Bill Clark, our Chief People Officer. These three guys play a really, really important role in our transformation as well. Jared, as he's leading strategic planning for the organization and continuously thinking about the risk within the company. As you've heard from everyone on the day so far, technology is playing an ever more important part of our organization and how it enables our transformational experience. Of course, our 14,000 people, it's a tremendous amount of change management that needs to be led, and that's all in Bill's hands. Let's spend a little bit of time talking about... Let me get to my cards here. You look at that.
Jared, let's start with you. So, Jared, you do have this exciting new job of both combined legal and strategy officer. So talk a little bit about that. Now, you know, that unique role plays into our company.
Great. Thanks, Alex. It's great to be with everybody here today. As Alex mentioned, I'm the Chief Legal and Strategy Officer here at National Vision, and I've been here since the IPO. One of the things before I get going, I just wanted to maybe hit a couple of things that Alex mentioned early on today, earlier on in his opening remarks. The first one is, as you think about the equation for delivering the commercial transformation that we've talked about, right? Like, it's no coincidence here that the equation means strategy plus people and culture plus technology. This bald thing, the bald thing's optional.
Now you tell me.
I just want to make that clear because I know it came up and may come up more, but just to be clear, I do think that's really important.
Dave, thanks for cutting your hair for today. Thanks for all that. Yeah.
The other thing that Alex mentioned, and again, since I've been here since the IPO, there's been a ton of change. Alex mentioned one important thing that isn't changing that I do want to just reinforce, which is our mission. Each and every day, we get to wake up working for a company knowing that we are in existence to help people, right? To help people see, to see their best, to live their best. That is and has been and will be an important noble cause that guides us as we're moving forward.
That said, you know, there's been a good amount of change since the transition. As I look around, I'm confident in saying this. I've never seen this company more focused, more disciplined, more strategically aligned, and working together closely as we're looking to deliver growth and, you know, achieve our goals. As I think about the strategy role, that's a big part of what it really is. It's cliché, but it is true. Strategy doesn't work if it's just words on a page. It really is about translating ambition into execution. For us, it's about executing our transformation with focus, with intentionality, with a data-driven approach, and taking a multi-year planning approach to achieving our strategic plans. As you've heard from Alex already and from Ana and from Joe and from Mark and from Priti, there's truly so many exciting things about our strategic journey.
We are a company that is well positioned in a growing industry. We've got a great foundation with our brands, with our store footprint, with our doctor network. We're being laser-focused as we're driving growth through our four growth vectors, where we have a pretty significant, maybe massive opportunity as we're thinking about products, underdeveloped products and our underdeveloped consumer segments. We're being super intentional as we're rapidly modernizing the company, which again takes both strategy, technology, and people and strong culture. Probably most important of all, and I hope that you see it both on the panel as you're talking with all of us today, that we are doing this, working super closely as a team and having some fun along the way.
Actually, working with Jared is, it truly is a delight. I mean, he's a lawyer. He's, you know, take the good and the bad with that. Honestly, one of the most sharp, one of the sharpest legal minds I've had the chance to work with, a phenomenal teammate, and one of the most strategic thinkers I've encountered, which is why it was a natural move for him to take on this added responsibility. A lot of the work you're seeing, how we think about the business, how we're structuring our operating rhythm, all comes from Jared and Jared Seaman as expanding also. Thanks, Jared.
Thanks.
All right. Dave has been here three months. Almost three months, right? Dave, early observations, three months in.
Probably a little bit of context first. I've known Alex now for, what's it been, 20 years? We were children. We were youngins. Somehow you've aged a lot better than I have.
We worked together at a consulting company, spent about three years in Minneapolis working side by side. A great deal of respect for Alex. We've stayed in touch. When he gave me a call several months ago to talk about the role here at National Vision and CTO, I was at Slalom Consulting. I had been there for 17 years, helping companies through transformations. I was more than happy to give him some advice, consulting, maybe even sell him a little bit of work. He shared the vision we have here at National Vision. He shared the mission, the idea about transforming not just ourselves, but transforming the industry. It really hooked me. I listened, paid attention, got a chance to meet a lot of the rest of the executive team and a lot of the folks.
The common thing I saw was repeated over and over was that focus on the transformation, focus on the mission, focus on the vision. I've been super excited to be here. I've learned a ton about the platform and really excited about what we're building. It's not perfect. We've got some work to do. I don't think you would have hired me if it was going to be easy.
Thanks for taking my call. What surprised you?
You know, what surprised me, it's a good question. I think what has surprised me, I've had a chance through my nearly 30 years career in consulting to work with some amazing leadership teams, some amazing companies, and had a chance to kind of see how they work. I've been through many different transformations.
What I have seen is that the companies that have a connected, integrated vision with a leadership team that are all rallied around that are the most successful. I see that here. That has been, I do not want to say surprising, but it has been encouraging and it has gotten me excited. It is also just the little things. I showed up on day one and Joe was standing there and he introduced himself, like, "Let me walk you around." We had a corporate fun run. Jared tracked me down and said, "Hey, let me talk to you about kind of our legal team and what we do and how we can work together and what we can do." We all sit in an open area in the center of our floor. We do not have offices. We kind of want to be accessible.
Bill sits next to me and he just waves at everybody that walks by and says hi. And he's totally genuine in doing it. It's those little things and the lack of ego. I think that's what surprised me the most is the fact it's an amazing team. I've worked with world-class executive teams before, and this is a world-class executive team. It's amazing to be part of it.
It's been great welcoming Dave. He's been immediately an awesome addition to the team, no doubt about it.
Thirty seconds on this fun run business. We host this annual fun run in Atlanta with a bunch of other businesses sponsored by Kaiser. National Vision had the largest turnout of any corporation in Atlanta at this year's fun run. Now, the story that no one else knows is Jared is also a pretty fantastic athlete.
He plays soccer for, like, he plays in one of the leagues that goes to like two in the morning on Monday and Tuesday nights. I know Jared's also a runner. I called Libby on Jared's team. I said, "Hey, what do you think Jared's splits are?" She gave me a number. I'm like, that's going to be hard to beat because, you know, I'm a little competitive." I show up to this thing.
It's just 5K, by the way.
I mean, for the kids, just for the fun. It is a fun run. I show up to this thing. I'm like, you know, trying to get in the zone. Jared's like, "Yeah, I twisted my ankle playing soccer. I'm not going to run this thing." I had a number in mind. These two walked, and I ended up with like a leg injury that I was hobbling around with the next week.
He did beat us even though he walked. He did beat us.
You won.
He won.
I won. Yes.
Thanks, Bill. Thanks for letting me run.
So hard to let him run. These guys were walking. Anyway, it was a great experience. Dave, welcome to the team. In all sincerity, thank you for taking my call. None of what we're doing, though, really works without the engagement of the team and our army of 14,000 embracing what we're doing. You know, Bill, talk a little bit about the change management approach within the company.
Yeah, thanks, Alex. I'm really excited about all the change that's happening in the organization. There is a lot of change happening in the organization.
The great thing is no single person is really leading this change. We all are. It is the entire leadership team working together, being very intentional. It is us empowering the leaders that we work with every day to lead their teams. It is not a single individual. It is really great to see this come about. It is set up with, you know, all the things that Jared talked about, you know, better plans, you know, path forward. I love what Mark talked about earlier also because we are able to take those different expectations and build training and, you know, behavior guides and all of the right things that we need to do to ensure that all of our frontline leaders understand what success looks like because they all really want to serve our patients and cultures, or sorry, our patients and customers.
That hasn't changed with all of the things that we've done. We still have that strong foundation of our associate base, you know, very strongly wanting to serve the communities within where they live and work. That has been a great foundation as we put all of this new change in place in a very disciplined way. I do love the fact that we're ensuring that all of our leaders across the organization are aligned. We have been intentional about that by putting, you know, different leadership behaviors in place and teaching and training those throughout the organization.
Let's take a minute on that. Last year, right around this time, we, as a senior leadership team, developed our five leadership expectations that subsequently have been rolled out to the rest of the team and have really taken hold within the organization. Spend maybe a few minutes on that as well.
Yeah, absolutely. It was great because we had the what set aside, what we're going to work on, you know, how we're going to transform the organization, a lot of great initiatives in place. What we had to really spend some time on is how are we going to engage the company? How are we going to ensure that, you know, it is all of our leaders working together to bring the change about? We did, we spent some time, we put together five leadership behaviors, and I'll go through them. The first was putting National Vision first, or is putting National Vision first. This was around ensuring that all of our leaders were owners of the organization.
You know, they were putting the company first, which is a little bit different than maybe we would have worked before, where maybe we were just, you know, trying to make sure that, you know, that things were nice versus ensuring that the company and we owned that relationship.
I'd say, right, we were a very nice large player in the optical ecosystem. Yeah, but we were not necessarily always leveraging that size and scale to always get the best for our company.
Back to your earlier slide around the scale that we have. The next is being customer and patient obsessed, just ensuring that everybody across all our leaders across the organization understands what that means. We heard Ana talk about it and Joe talk about it and Mark talk about it.
We begin and end with a customer and patient in mind with all that we do. We have got to ensure that that continues. The third is curiosity and staying curious, asking the next question, pushing a little further, not just, you know, managing the status quo. We reward and we talk about as our teams and our leaders are curious in whatever business that they are leading. We reward it in the moment. It is being great. We use this a lot in our everyday vernacular. The third is acting with urgency. When we are transforming at the rate that we are, we have got to move fast. You know, if things are not working, we pivot fast. I think that is really important as we are working in this kind of startup mode that we are in. The last, but definitely not least, is the behavior around sweating every nickel.
I think it's Chris's favorite. Yes, he'll talk about that a little bit more and how we're sweating nickels left and right in the business. We're focusing the team on expense control while still investing in the things that we need to invest in. It's really getting the most out of those dollars.
One of the things I was surprised about, David, when he joined is that in addition to just being really good in IT, he also was good at alliteration. I was just thinking about it, Bill, as you were talking, like I think there's a few, you know, a few things like I'm going to do it in F's here, right? I think it's about it's going to be okay. It's on a webcast. It's about focus, fast, and fun. I think focus, I think, is a really important element here, right?
That certainly I hope you see, right, in how we're delivering the transformation. Another piece, because I know this group doesn't really always get to see like tactically how companies bring things to life like this. You know, I did want to just mention some, you know, a way in which Bill and I are working closely together. Again, it's bringing strategy to life, right, from ambition to execution as we've been intentional in establishing a strategic transformation office, right? That is a, like it's a governance cross-functional group that is designed to ensure that we're staying focused and that we're driving forward on these strategic initiatives. You know, think about all the change that we've been talking about today.
We're talking about managing, you know, 30+ important strategic initiatives and ensuring that we're hitting our marks, we're measuring against our KPIs, we're being nimble, we're assessing risks, you know, and that we're layering these initiatives to ensure that we are going to be delivering this consistent long-term, you know, growth, right, which is so super important. Again, it's, you know, beyond just that, it's a great way to bring the organization along, right, to be reinforcing these behaviors and in many ways to help upskill the organization to ensure we're being able to deliver. Yeah, we're just kind of focused, focused, fast, and fun. We need one for Chris. We need one for Chris. We were fiscally responsible. I love that. And fiscally, I like that. I was thinking about one for Mark and Priti also where we're talking about the brands.
You know, we are being led by our consumers. You're going to have to go with me here. We're being led with our consumers so that they can talk to their friends and family and they're all going to come to our stores.
[crosstalk] Wow, that's like six apps. Wow. That's, I think, five apps. Save us here, Alex. I don't know.
Maybe I'll jump in. Yeah, yeah. We do have a lot of change coming throughout the, or going on throughout the organization and more to come. One of the great reinforcement mechanisms that we have in place is, you know, we measure and we talk to our associates. Mark talked about all of the listening groups that we have. We also do an annual experience survey. You know, we publish those results the next summer. We had record participation this year, which was phenomenal.
We saw great linkage. Our associates and our doctors were connected to the things that we are doing. They were seeing, based on their survey results, they can link what they do every day to our strategies and what we are trying to accomplish. I think that is really great. We did see an overall increase in our scores, which was also just icing on the cake.
The discipline you guys spoke of, it cannot be understated. Just in practical terms, what that means is this leadership team in our strategic transformation office spends a couple hours every Friday focused on the initiatives. What do we need to do as leaders to remove any obstacles? What do we need to do to speed those along? What do we need to do to pivot? We are incredibly disciplined within that rhythm.
It's a wonderful structure for our organization to ensure that we stay on track to ultimately the financial goals that all of those things ladder up to. Guys, we're almost out of time. I do have a quick speed dating question for all three of you guys. We're sitting on the stage five years from now. What's on your mind and what are we saying then?
All right, great. I guess first I'm going to say, of course, given everything that we've talked about today, we are being laser-focused in all the important things that are happening now. If you, you know, if you force us to fast forward, you know, five years from now, I think there's a couple of things that I would just highlight quickly. One, you heard Ana talk about it earlier today around the smart glasses realm.
I think five years from now we'll be in a much more mature smart glasses and wearable, you know, moment, you know, where I think we'll have, you know, a great place to play and, you know, a leadership opportunity there. You've heard Priti and Mark talk about it a little bit earlier, right? It's more than just an eye exam. I do think healthcare through the eye and medical technology advancements are going to be pretty important. We're going to see a lot of change between now and the next five years. Of course, we're always staying tracking and watching things closely in the industry, whether that's partnerships, you know, and other transactional things. Undoubtedly, there'll be, you know, more to talk about in five years on that front too. That's what I got.
Good. I like that list. It's good. I guess as a technology guy, like no self-respecting technology guy could be in a room like this and not say AI is going to be key. AI is fundamental. We talk about how technology is a foundation for a lot of what we're doing. I like to say we are customer-focused, we are data-driven, but we're technology-enabled. AI is a key element of that. You said five years. I think in five years, we're going to see a very interesting change in the way that we are conducting commerce in general. We can see it already with what ChatGPT is doing by doing transactions within the actual dialogues. I think we're going to see an expansion of that. We're going to see agent-to-agent commerce. We're going to see agent-enabled commerce, agentic commerce.
There's going to be a whole different way in which people are interacting with us. They're interacting with each other and they're interacting with those that they're buying from. I believe that National Vision is going to be a key player in that. The work that we're doing, that Joe's doing and team's doing around our new e-commerce site, we're setting ourselves up technologically, but also from a customer expectation to be leading in that sector. I think maybe even before five years from now, but we'll see a huge transition in how people are buying. National Vision will be helping drive a lot of that.
That's great. I just can't wait to see how we evolve our remote hybrid exam model and what that looks like in five years. I think that's going to be phenomenal. Much to what you were talking about, Dave, the organization and technological advancements that we have and how that comes to play and how we work and, you know, how teams get work accomplished. And then, you know, we have had a great history of associates and doctors building careers at National Vision. I cannot wait to see how that continues to progress and meeting and hanging out with all those folks that have been with us for so long and build wonderful careers here.
Great. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate everything you are doing to drive this company forward. Could not appreciate more the efforts and how much fun it is to work with you guys on a daily basis.
Thanks, Alex. Many, many thanks.
All righty.
Thanks, everybody.
All right. No one wants to hear from the finance guy, right? You guys good? All right. Just kidding. It is actually my pleasure now to introduce our CFO, Chris Laden. Chris and I have also had the privilege of working together in the past. He has brought an incredible discipline to the organization. For a finance guy, he's funny, he's energetic. Most importantly, he knows his stuff. We are in a phenomenal place with you leading our finance function.
Thanks, Alex. Hello, everybody. Look at that. Cheers for the finance guy. I do not think anyone's going to accuse us of being scripted in our panel discussion, which is great. As Alex said, my name is Chris Laden. I have the privilege of serving as National Vision's Chief Financial Officer. I actually had the opportunity to work with Alex for about five years in the optical industry prior to joining National Vision.
When I heard he came over here, I was eagerly awaiting a phone call because I've always had the utmost respect for what National Vision stood for from its mission, its story, and its market position. Fast forward less than a year. How lucky am I to be up here on stage with you all talking about our long-term financial ambitions? If there are four things I want you guys to take away from our conversation today, it's this. First, as you've heard me say since I've joined National Vision, operating margin expansion is a primary focus for this management team. We've got significant opportunities in growing top line and profitability. We're going to bring these opportunities to life through disciplined investments phased over time.
We are going to maintain a strong balance sheet and preserve liquidity to make sure that we can support these growth initiatives while actively mitigating our risks. As we unpack this further, let me quickly start by recapping some of the key messages you heard from all of our speakers today and why they give us confidence in the future of National Vision. As you heard Alex start off with, we operate in a highly fragmented growing industry. We, frankly, have a right to win with our great base of assets, including our over 1,200 locations, four domestic laboratories, and great brands. Joe and Ana walked us through our new branding and merchandising strategies, which demonstrate the tailwinds that we have with our targeted consumer segments. Mark and Priti highlighted our elevated focus on customer care, providing superior scalable customer experiences and exam experiences.
These strategic levers will all work together to help us unlock the revenue potential in our four growth vectors. You guys have seen this slide a lot today. I am going to show it one more time because it is critically important to understanding our unique position for growth. What is exciting to consider is that as you think through these growth vectors, most of them apply to growing our two key retail KPIs, both average ticket and growing traffic. For example, the better that we can attract Outside Rx consumer, it not only helps us grow customer count, but these consumers tend to spend more than our current average cash pay customers today, also driving average ticket. Likewise, by introducing more premium frames, that appeals to a broader consumer set.
Not only are we increasing average ticket, but we're also putting ourselves in the consideration set for consumers that previously may not have chosen to purchase with the National Vision brand. We designed these transformation levers to create value not just for our consumers, but for our business and our investors. We are going to execute these levers with a strong focus on cost optimization, which we will go into more detail shortly. Together, we believe that these will grow long-term sales and improve profitability. I know that's why you're here today. Let's dig into our long-term sales projections a bit further. As we look out through 2030, we believe we can produce predictable and consistent revenue growth in the high single digits. The strategies behind our foundational improvements and growth vectors will deliver comparable store sales in the mid-single digit range.
This, together with new stores, will help us hit that high single-digit target range. As we think about our new store opportunities, let me take a moment to remind everyone where we operate today. We operate in 38 states and Puerto Rico. As you can see from this chart, we tend to have higher presence in states like Florida, my hometown, Georgia, Texas, and California. Even in these states, we believe that we have ample opportunity for fill-ins. That is why you heard Mark say earlier that we plan on growing approximately 30 new stores in 2026 and 2027, and to re-accelerate our new store growth from 2028 through 2030 to about 60 stores per year. Ultimately, we are looking to grow about 240 new stores over the next five years.
As we think about new store economics, we're really excited about the opportunity that our growth strategies have towards improving payback. Our new store formats and modernized branding will better resonate with consumers. Our new merchandising and selling strategies will better delight customers and ultimately drive higher average ticket while we still maintain ourselves an obvious destination for value. In states that allow it, remote care is part of our core operating model and will continue to drive efficiencies there. Our focus on keeping costs down will help improve not just new store, but also home office economics. Let's drill into that a bit further. As you heard Alex and I say in our earnings calls throughout the year, we've already taken out $10 million of SG&A in 2025.
We said that we were interrogating every line of indirect spend as part of a broader enterprise-wide cost-out initiative. We're happy to report that by the end of Q4, we will have begun the implementation of cost-out initiatives worth $20 million of annualized spend, about half of which we expect to materialize in 2026. The nature of these savings will materialize through renegotiated pricing with our key strategic vendors, optimized consumption in our stores and home office, and frankly, just better improvements in our working capital management. From a category perspective, we've reviewed partnerships and spend in categories ranging from logistics to insurance, technology to marketing, banking to store supplies. We've reviewed spend as critical as our core software platforms to items as detailed as what kind of paper are we ordering in our stores.
We are highly confident that we can execute against all of these cost-out initiatives. What does this mean for us in the short term and the long term? Our 2026 planning scenario currently assumes net revenue growth in the high single digit range driven by mid-single digit comps and another 100 basis points of operating margin expansion. Our comp sales profile will likely look similar to 2025, with growth in average ticket through consumer adoption of more premium frames and lenses, as well as the impact of price increases. Our planning scenario assumes that we continue to grow traffic in our target consumer segments that will be at least partially offset by softness in lower consumer segments. Our planning scenario assumes that we open 30 new stores in 2026, and we continue to balance capital investments between new store growth and ongoing investments in modernizing the business.
As we look beyond 2026, assuming no deterioration in the macroeconomic environment, our profitability algorithm remains quite simple for the next five years. On average, we plan to grow net revenue in the high single digit range while proving meaningful operating margin expansion in the 50-150 basis point range, restoring our operating margin rate to proven historical norms. We will continue to remain focused on disciplined cost management, ensuring that we gain leverage in our key spend categories while we continue to reinvest in the strategies that are ultimately going to fuel our growth vectors. While we grow, we are committed to maintaining a strong balance sheet and preserving liquidity. Over the last two years, we've reduced our net leverage ratio from 2.2x to 1.1x by paying down over $200 million in debt and growing EBITDA.
Going forward, our goal is to keep our leverage ratio around 1x, assuming no material change in market conditions. From a capital allocation perspective, over the next two years, we expect it to look quite similar to 2025. We will balance investments in our organic growth initiatives with those in new stores, ultimately unlocking higher investor returns. As we re-accelerate store growth in 2028 and beyond, we will also be generating very healthy free cash flows, which is going to provide us with optionality for new ways to allocate capital and maximize shareholder returns. In any given year over the next five years, we expect to reinvest approximately 4%-5% of our net revenues into capital expenditures. In any given year, 1%-2% will be invested in store maintenance, refresh, and remodels.
As Mark mentioned earlier, we are being purposeful in our new store design efforts to minimize the investment required to bring elements of the new store design to our existing fleet. The remaining 3%-4% of CapEx in any given year will go towards our organic growth initiatives and new store growth. As I wrap this section, the obvious question is, what gives this team the confidence that we can achieve these lofty long-term financial ambitions? My very simple answer is, because we are already doing it. Year to date, through Q3, we've increased net revenue 7.1% while expanding operating margin by 120 basis points. We have confidence that we can continue this momentum into 2026 and beyond. I hope this context helps you understand why we're so excited about the future of National Vision.
We're in the midst of a transformation that is energizing this management team, our store associates, and our associates at our home office. I truly believe that there is no one better equipped to lead this transformation than our CEO and my friend, Alex Wilkes. Alex, with that moderate amount of brown-nosing, I'll invite you back on stage and invite you for closing remarks.
Thanks, Chris. Also, another guy that I could not have been more pleased answered my call when I called him. Quick true story. I actually called Chris. I said, "Hey, Chris, I have this idea for you." He said, "Hey, you know, I'm actually pretty happy." It was not quite as he portrayed it. On a couple of phone calls later, I was able to convince Chris to join us as our CFO. Again, Chris, you've just done a fantastic job getting us disciplined, getting us organized, and really setting the stage for our growth.
Thank you so much.
I hope what you take away from today is the following. First and foremost, we have the right team to drive this transformation. We have sophisticated thinkers, team players, optical legends, marketing geniuses, people leaders, technology leaders, and collectively, we know exactly what we need to do to drive growth within this company. We have an absolutely clear game plan on how to deliver the growth. We know exactly where our opportunities lie from an underdevelopment perspective, both from a product and a consumer side. We know the improvements that we still need to make to the consumer experience. Importantly, we know exactly what we need to attack from a cost perspective. That work is already well underway.
We spent the entirety of 2025 understanding, as Chris mentioned, where we had opportunity to reduce cost. I love that example of interrogating the paper that goes to our stores, but we looked at everything: policies related to mileage, how many printers a store could have, how many printers we should have in the office, how many calendars a store manager, the answer is one, should be allowed to order. This is the level of discipline and focus we are bringing to the organization. I'm confident in this team. I'm confident in our strategy. Again, I think we know exactly the value and the relative value of what we can go after over the next several years to drive both comps and to drive our traffic. Importantly, though, for us, it is the character of that traffic.
I want to go back to one of the slides I shared with this group earlier. The relative value and profit contribution of the Managed Care, progressive, and outside customer versus the historical norm that we have targeted being not a percentage, but a multiple in terms of profit contribution to the company. When we talk about our evolution, focusing on those customer types, that is why we are so hyper-focused on it. Going back to what Ana shared around our product evolution, just a 1% change in the premium products of anti-reflective coatings, Transitions, premium lens materials generates $40 million of incremental revenue to the company. We are so significantly underindexed versus the category on a very sensitive and, frankly, adjustable and easy-sellable product that consumers are dying for. We just need to do a better job of serving those products up.
I hope everyone here has gotten a real good sense for what we are, what we are trying to accomplish, and what we will accomplish as a company. We're boldly reinventing National Vision. We're modernizing every aspect of the company. We're attacking all the underdeveloped areas of product and consumer. We're taking a much more data-driven and analytical approach to the business than we might have historically. We're hyper-focused on operating margin expansion and build talk to our leadership behaviors. Sweating every nickel is something we expect of our teammates. Last, but most importantly, we have built the right team to deliver long-term shareholder value. With that, this is just the beginning. There's lots more to come from our organization, and you can expect significant growth from this team go forward over the long term.
With that, it's my pleasure to take questions from the audience and myself, Chris, and the entire leadership team. Is that your disposal for what might be on your minds? I think Tamara is going to play just a little bit.
We're going to pass mics around. If you would please state your name and your question when you get the mic. That's it.
Okay. I'll start with Kate.
Thank you. Kate McShane from Goldman Sachs. I wanted to ask two questions. First, just how we should be thinking about the makeup of the comp you wrote that you put out today for fiscal year 2026 between ticket and traffic. Then just with regards to store growth, is there any detail that you could share about mature markets versus new markets and how that cadence changes through 2030? Any additional information on the 42% of the Eyeglass World locations that are going to employ owned?
Got it. Let me quickly just talk about a little bit of our ticket and traffic dynamic that I think is important context. Chris, if you can delve into some of the specifics. Again, as we think about evolving our ticket, it is also a function of the mix of our customer type. Our ticket is actually composed of three functions. It is price, it is mix and assortment evolution, but it is also customer mix evolution within that that is driving it, again, based on this notion of the relative value of those Outside Rx, and progressive wearers. For us, it is actually as important to think about the mix of customer type versus just the absolute traffic number. Chris, if you want to touch a little bit on the composition of.
Yeah, Alex, I think that's spot on. I think from a core traffic versus ticket perspective, you'd say 2026 will likely look pretty similar to what we've seen year to date 2025, which is relatively flat overall traffic with the majority of our comp coming from mix. To Alex's point, we are growing traffic. We're just growing traffic specifically in the targeted customer segments that we know are going to produce more value for the company. As you think about where we've allocated our resources historically, we've got this huge ball of resources that we've historically pointed towards cash pay, typically low-income consumers. We're not walking away from that consumer.
As we reproportion the messaging, the investments we're making towards attracting customers, we're naturally going to see some softness in that consumer segment that historically got close to 100% of our attention. We're going to start drawing in more Managed Care outside our ex-progressive consumers. On the net, you might see traffic that's not growing at a material level, but kind of when you peel back the onion, we're actually seeing double-digit traffic growth in the key consumer segments with some partial offsets in some of our lower value segments.
It can't be understated that those more valuable consumers are worth a multiple in terms of profit contribution than the historical segment that we've targeted. Kate, I'm sorry, would you remind your question on Eyeglass World?
T he Eyeglass World commented about 42% of the locations going to an employee-owned model. Can you talk about that decision and maybe what it means and then just the store growth mature versus new markets?
Great. I'll take the Eyeglass World one if you take the store growth. Eyeglass World had a bifurcated doctor model. A fair number of stores were where we had employed doctors and then a very large portion where there was a subleased doctor relationship. As Priti and I were talking about the Eyeglass World strategy, getting to a consistent operating model with the doctor was necessary in order for us to kind of start to build upon the brand. It gave us a stronger foundation to jump off from, ensuring that we could deliver consistency and experience, ensuring that we could deliver consistency and price. Because an interesting thing happens in the world of subleased doctors.
The doctors actually set their price wherever they want to set the price. That can actually become an impediment to traffic growth. The other thing is the subleased doctors, they get to individually decide which Managed Care panels they participate on and which ones they do not. When you move to an employed model, you have a far greater consistency of the experience. That was a necessary step and the first necessary step that we felt we had to take in order to start reinvesting in Eyeglass World and accelerating our growth within the brand. Again, one quarter in, we're super, super pleased with the results.
Yeah. As we think about the geographies of our new store growth, I'd say over the last few years, we've been focused on growing in states that allow for a remote doctor model to work. I think it's still a key focus area for us because boy, does it help when you think about some of the challenges this industry went through post-2020. National Vision did a great job of pivoting quickly of how do you solve the supply constraint. I think we'll continue to stay focused on states that allow remote care. I do think we've really been focused on filling opportunities around existing stores. It wouldn't surprise me if we went into some new markets in 2026.
Sure. Great. Can we go? I'll go from this row to the next one. Adrienne.
Thank you very much. Adrienne Yih from Barclays. Along those same lines, it seems like the organization's moving extraordinarily fast. The customer's uptake is very fast. One of the longest kind of horizon events is your store-based infrastructure. Let's call it 1,200 some-odd stores.
They were historically targeting that 80% world, 10-year leases. How are you kind of changing those, elevating the markets? There should be some very low-hanging fruit as you come up into higher demos and MSAs. Just wondering how that transition is going to be happening and what the opportunity for the multiples of return on that. Thank you.
On real estate and real estate, our overall real estate portfolio, we actually find is located pretty much in the places we want to be. The vast majority of our real estate are in regional power centers anchored by a TJ Maxx or a Target and aligned to the customer demo that we generally are winning with and want to continue to win with. Absolutely, we do have some outlier locations in the kind of local strip mall.
Generally speaking, we don't believe we have a real estate positioning challenge in executing our strategy. As Mark spoke of earlier, we are looking at ways. We have hired a design agency to help us design our store of the future. Part of their brief is to also say, "All right, what are the elements we can take from that store of the future in a very cost-effective way, bring those to scale within our existing 1,200 locations?" In the capital algorithm that Chris provided is consideration for taking those elements and bringing it at scale to the rest of the fleet.
Yeah. The only thing I'd add is in Q4 of last year, we announced that we had a series of closures that were going to be planned at lease expiration through 2026. Part of the analysis was not just store profitability, but is this store positioned where we want to be in the future? As we look at some of the things we've announced then, I believe it was around a dozen stores a year from 2024 through 2026. That was kind of contemplated as part of the equation as well, which is, are these ultimately the stores and locations we need in order to be successful as we move forward?
Can you just remind us, where is your four-wall at peak or when you were historically, where is it today, and where can it go in the future?
Yeah. I don't think we've disclosed four-wall economics specifically. What I'd say is, as you look at the enterprise-level operating margin historically in the low double digits, we've seen inflation in both the store economics and in the home office. As we think about the $20 million we discussed earlier today, those are not exclusively four-wall savings opportunities. I'd say it's pretty well balanced between where we can see just cost out from a store footprint perspective and what we're seeing in the home office.
Great. Thank you. Go left to right. Michael.
Good afternoon. It's Michael Lasser from UBS. Thank you for laying out such a compelling story today. If there are some vulnerabilities, it might be as you serve a more affluent and higher-income consumer, inevitably that customer's also going to have higher expectations. How do you need to invest in order to ensure that you're meeting that higher expectation of that higher-income consumer? Second, the point at which you made about weaning off some of the legacy traffic and growing the new demographic traffic makes sense.
But at what point should outsiders hold you accountable for growing traffic in totality? Because that will be the ultimate measure of success of the strategy and execution. Thank you.
Okay. In terms of investment on selling experience next year, and I'll actually have Mark share a little bit more here as well. Next year, we are budgeting and planning for an extended store manager week where we'll have our store manager organization together to more fully activate them in terms of their expectations for creating those experiences. Mark, do you want to spend a minute on that?
Yeah, sure. I mean, I think you heard me say pretty consistently, we know we have to elevate our in-store experience. And so it really does start with behaviors, which means we have to get our teams together.
Actually, last year, for the very first time, we had all of our brands together, all of our store managers together. The energy was incredible. It was not just a party. It was an investment in them. It was a train the trainer. There was this behavior piece. You are also now starting to see, again, if you check out Optikam on the iPads, and you heard Dave say, "We now have iPads in every single one of our stores." Just having an iPad does not make the experience better. It is the content that is on that iPad. If you think about our ability to now showcase the different types of merchandise that we want to show and the enhancements, our teams are really, really grabbing on to that in an extremely powerful way.
Probably the place that we were most underdeveloped on is actually on our e-commerce platform. Joe spoke about that. That is coming online at the beginning of next year. That should help us elevate the experience quite a bit. The last thing I would say is, remember, these are customers that are already coming into our store. We are having the customer come in. We just had not optimized our experience for them. Elevating our merchandising, having the right merchandise that they want to see, making sure that we have changed the experience to where we are building a relationship with them, those are really the keys. If I think about a premium experience versus, call it maybe an integrated experience, it is, do I feel that I am being treated as an individual? Do I feel that somebody is there listening to me? Do they know my name?
Do they know me the next time I come in? Do they know me no matter where I show up from an integrated commerce perspective? That is where we are making our investments.
Yeah. If you think through the nature of the question through capital investments, if you look at what we are doing in 2025, we have reduced the capital going into new store growth pretty significantly. Our total capital guide for the year is not materially different than what we spent in prior years. Going back to your point, we are still continuing to invest in the business, but we are investing in infrastructural items like the Optikam platform with iPads, like the new Adobe CRM platform, our new ERP that we launched in Q1, early Q2, as well as upfront investments in things like the new e-commerce website that will come out likely in the next year range.
It is the right question, which is we're really rebalancing the proportion of assets going against new store growth and those infrastructural investments. As we start to get some of that foundation built, it's only going to help us to reaccelerate new store growth and payback when we then double down on new store growth in 2028 and beyond.
Again, on the topic of traffic, we undertook the brand reinvention, the rebrand architecture, the new campaign, how we're thinking about our media investment, our investment in a CRM to be more personalized. All of those are pointed at driving traffic. That being said, historically, when you're growing 70-80 stores a year, your traffic ramp and your traffic number looks a little bit different than when you're growing 30, right?
Because you're not getting that compounding effect of the new store or the relatively new store fleet as you were previously. For us, traffic is absolutely a focus. Again, driving the right type of profitable, accretive traffic in my mind is the first thing over the aggregate traffic number. Everything we're doing is intended to drive traffic. Highest brand consideration within the optical retail channel post-rebrand of America's Best Q3, certainly a component of driving positive traffic. I would expect a more significant traffic inflection to come upon the reacceleration of store growth during that era of our transformation. Yeah, Anthony.
Hi. Anthony Chukumba, Loop Capital Markets. I have two questions. First off, you talked about opening 30 stores a year over the next few years and then accelerating, that's 60 stores. I was just wondering if, just at a high level, what the breakdown would be between America's Best versus Eyeglass World. The second thing, there was a lot of conversation about this fun run. Alex, what was your time with the fun run?
Okay. Oh, horrible.
It looks like we might be out of time for questions now.
Question for question two. Question one, the vast majority are going to be America's Best, at least in the next year or two. As Priti talked about, we are in the early stages of Eyeglass World reinvention with outside partners helping us from both a brand and a store design perspective. We also have to answer some fundamental questions about what role does the in-store lab play longer term. We are planning on opening some Eyeglass World stores in the very, very near future.
But scale, I think, is probably a little bit further down the pathway. The second question, I had a target in mind, which was to run the 5K. I'm not a great runner, but I wanted to do it in an 8:30 split. And I hit that mark. I was just over, I think, like 25, 26 minutes, somewhere in that range, which for a guy of this physique, it's not shabby.
He is the fastest CEO we have.
Someone said afterwards, "By the way, it is a fun run. This didn't have to be a competition." I'm like, "Oh, then why give me the bib?" Thanks for that. Go ahead.
Hi, Zach Fadem, Wells Fargo. It seems like you're guiding us to about a double-digit operating margin five years from now. Can you talk about just the path in terms of gross margin, SG&A? What's the contribution from things like remote medicine? What does the cost structure look like? Can you kind of bridge us from point A to point B?
Yeah. Look, I think the majority of the expansion we're going to see is in SG&A. As we're making evolutions to our premium frames and lenses, some of those decisions that are going to be taken that might actually be gross margin dilutive. Obviously, we'll have some that are accretive as well. Our primary focus is to drive more gross margin dollars, which will ultimately help the bottom line because we do not need any incremental SG&A to go support selling more premium products to our existing consumer base. As I think about the five-year outlook, I'd say gross margin expansion is not our primary focus. I expect to see the majority of it come through SG&A. Yes.
Hi. Rebecca Liu from Bank of America. We've heard about the segmenting merchandising in each store based on the customer base in that area. Curious what the percentage of merchandise will be unique to the store and what the timeline of the segmented merchandising will be.
Yeah. So Ana, if you could go ahead and take that. The question was timeline of segmentation, about what percent do you think would be unique?
So we're in the very early stages of really understanding that customer and how that segmentation will work in the future. I can't give you a percentage one way or the other. I can tell you that we are keeping a very close eye to that customer, looking at the data, and will make decisions that will match our product to who our customer is.
On the first phase of segmentation, about how many different store segments do you think we'll have?
We are thinking that we expect four or five store segments to start with and maybe the second part of the next year. Matching product in those four to five segments.
We have been in conversations with some of our partners regarding some more premium/luxury brands that previously we would not have been able to get access to. We're talking about those in the direction of they would be in a couple hundred stores where it absolutely is a no-brainer and makes sense. That is also, I think, a new thought for National Vision that in previous years, we would not have been in a position where our kind of brand was to have conversations with some of the fashion houses that we are today about even carrying those products in, call it, a couple hundred stores. Those are things that are on the table at the moment.
Thanks. Hey, guys. Simeon Siegel at Guggenheim. You have mentioned the multiples often, right? That seems really powerful. I guess number one, just very simply, why is that customer such a better customer from a profitability perspective? I do not know if it is specifically price. I think you said transactions, so it would not be frequency. If you can go there. Why are they not shopping you now? As you think about, I can see the reasons why they're going to, but why aren't they yet? You talked about the increased awareness, which is fantastic. Did you see an, was it with them? Where has it been growing? Are you seeing an increase in sales penetration as that awareness grows?
Yeah. Let me take your second of your third questions first. The short answer is we actually already are winning those customers. We're just underindexed. As Chris talked about, we had spent our entire organizational engine chasing the cash-pay, lower-income consumer. Yet we were actually winning the Managed Care customers to the point that it's already 40% of our mix. We're underindexed, but we were winning those customers. We're winning the progressive customers. Mark spoke of Outside Rx customer. Frankly, that, I think, was a bit of an unintended consequence of our model.
When you spend $150 million a year on linear media saying, "Two pair of eyewear and an eye exam costs X," for those customers that already have that eye exam, they do not think that you are a brand for them because they do not want to go through the eye exam again. There is this unintended consequence or this belief that the consumer has that if I shop at America's Best, I have to go back through it. As Mark said, we kind of actually operated that way. We were winning with these customers, but we had so pointed all of our organizational resources against one specific thing that we were not maximizing for those.
As we start to move into a different direction and we actually target our consumers, that's why we believe we will win because we actually already are without even trying or doing it well today. The second point on, sorry, that was question two.
The first part of the question was the, "Help us understand, unpack why is the profitability at such a high multiple?"
Got it. Thanks, Chris. By the way, just for the analysts in the room, unlike earnings day, there are people that write the questions on the board. You just, "We don't remember that stuff." You look at someone that has a job to write it on the board so you can click it off. No one remembers that stuff. All right. Apparently Chris does, brown noser. All right. Why are some of those customers more valuable?
The way Managed Care plans are constructed in particular, they're actually built in a way to motivate consumers to move towards more premium lens options and all the lens add-ons. That is where those things really start to stack up. The way a plan might work is you get a $130-$170 frame allowance. Your Managed Care provider has also negotiated the cost of anti-reflective lenses on your behalf. It conveys value to that Managed Care customer that no matter where we price it, they're basically paying a negotiated rate for that AR coating, the transitions coating, or more premium material. They feel like they have to take advantage of those options because in a way, they're paying for it in their premium and their paychecks.
The Managed Care consumer, through the construct of their plan, is actually motivated to move into these higher product categories already. That's why that customer is so valuable. The progressive consumer, just a base progressive lens design, begins to move you up in terms of lens cost. But then those consumers, they're not going to spend the type of money on a progressive lens without protecting it with a better anti-reflective coating. Because not only does a better anti-reflective coating give you better cosmesis on the lens, it actually gives you better durability from a scratch resistance perspective as well. It is a little bit of a momentum and velocity game on lenses. The more you spend on the base lens, consumers are predisposed then to start adding things on to either enhance or protect it because they've already invested a substantial amount in the base transaction.
Chris, anything else you'd like to add?
Yeah. I think on Outside Rx consumer, right, there was a reason they chose not to purchase at the point of exam, which is either we did not find the product that we liked in the stores or, "Holy cow, that's really expensive. I'm going to go somewhere else." In both of those categories, we've got a strategy to win. We're now introducing more premium frames that'll better resonate with those consumers. On the latter, we still offer tremendous value for like-for-like frames and lenses than a lot of the competition. They might be spending more than our current average cash-pay consumer. We've got a huge right to win with those consumers that would also help kind of raise our weighted average ticket.
Dylan.
Thanks. If you think about the success you've had to date and you were to sort of talk or speak to the balance between success, doing a better job selling to the existing core versus new customer acquisition, how would you kind of weight those two?
Yeah. I think it's probably about 50/50. I think we've done some really smart mechanical things so far in our assortment and our pricing structure. I think we talked about taking some more of those decisions as we look into 2026. Ana talked about evolving our price points, the modernization, dropping the decimal points, going to 95. It's not just about moving to 95. Our entire pricing algorithm in the store starts from that point. It makes it way, way simpler for the consumer to navigate. I think that's had a huge impact.
I think it shows in our MPS scores. In terms of the behavioral changes in the stores, we still have a long way to go. The work that Mark and Priti are doing is exceptional. Getting our store associates recalibrated from the historical norms that they were trained for 20+ years that their job was to help consumers come into our store and leave having spent as little as possible. That is what they were calibrated on. Mark and Priti are doing a phenomenal job recalibrating expectations to something different. It takes a long time, right, to get 14,000 people along that same way. Again, it is more than just my gut. I mean, we do have some data points I would suggest. It is about 50/50, the mechanical changes, and then the expectations and behavioral stuff flowing through.
Great. Alex, the comments around returning to historical levels from an op margin standpoint, I mean, maybe we do not have these numbers, but it looks like, again, yeah, the guides for sort of, call it, 9%-10% op margin eventually if you run through that math, which is double what you have done historically. I mean, and then it sort of bleeds into the conversation about the better payback on these stores. Is it really just that you are comping on a base with a higher overall ticket so that the leverage point is better in the model now? How do you kind of think about the profitability versus what at least the numbers we have historically?
Yeah. I think there are two areas for opportunity. I think the flow-through on the higher average ticket will certainly be better as we're taking, even in a world of flat traffic and trading, higher value traffic for lower value traffic. We're going to see more gross margin dollars flow through, ultimately helping operating margin. The second is, if you think about it, we'll have three years in a row from 2025 through 2027 of $10 million of incremental annualized SG&A out of the business. That's what we've identified so far, right? We are not stopping, and this team is not satisfied that the cost infrastructure that we have today is what it needs to be go forward. There are certain areas we'll have to make more investments, but we certainly believe there's more operating leverage throughout the business.
It is really just a matter of sequencing then what is the next round of cost outlook like, potentially in the latter years in the five-year period.
Dylan, sorry, one more thing real quick on your point on price and ticket evolution. It is so important and critical for us that the category from 2020 through 2025 expanded price somewhere in the range of 20%-25%. National Vision expanded somewhere around 6% during that same time period. Of course, we saw compression in the P&L because we were not evolving, even keeping pace with the category, right? Now we have this chasm of one and a half to three X average transaction. Again, it cannot be overstated. We are not intending to close the gap to category.
As we start to take incremental steps up in that direction, the mix evolution, the pricing, it absolutely does help us from a marginality perspective at an accelerated pace.
Can I sneak one more in? Just remote, where is remote in these numbers and the outlook? I think there was some hope that it would be a real margin driver, cutting down on dead share time. Yeah. Anything you can say on remote would be appreciated.
Yeah. Remote is certainly a component. We could not achieve our revenue algorithm without remote as a capability. As we think about our ambition of high single-digit revenue growth, mid-single-digit comps through the 2030 time horizon, remote is an enabler to get there because of the challenges that still exist around doctor capacity that I think as an organization, we've done a fantastic job solving for.
Remote is an enabler of that. As Chris said, though, we're not satisfied with what we're going to accomplish from a margin perspective until we unlock hybrid remote. That could be something. It's not currently in our guide, but we do believe that there is an opportunity there. We've always said it's something that we have to be extraordinarily thoughtful in how we progress, right? The change management associated with the hybrid world, which hybrid is the unlock to leverage on doctor labor. We have about 100 doctors currently trained in operating in a remote hybrid mode of practice. We're capturing learnings from that.
I'd say in the same breath that we say remote is part of our core operating model in the states that allow it today, hybrid is on the very early testing phases of how do you build not just the technology solution. That's actually not the most challenging part of it. How do you build the incentives and the behaviors around the doctors to participate in a way that's meaningful?
Great. Yes.
Thanks, guys. Thanks. Paul Lejuez, Citi. On your quest to attract this higher-income consumer, where do you think you're pulling from? Is the low-hanging fruit more of the independents, the mom-and-pops? Do you have your eyes set on certain chains? How does your marketing tie into where you think that customer is going to come from?
Yeah. I mean, ultimately, we do believe it's coming disproportionately from the independent channel.
It's a channel that hasn't evolved necessarily from a product capability, infrastructure, joyfulness of experience perspective in a very, very, very long time. We do think we're going to disproportionately win from those channels, especially around those three customer segments, right? Those three segments, Outside Rx, progressives, and Managed Care consumers historically have been more ingrained in the independent optometrist channel. As they start to shift or as they're not evolving, as they're not making the changes to their model to be more modern, to be fresher, to be more joyful, we think we have a disproportionate ability to win with those consumers.
Yeah. To clarify, I'm sorry, Alex.
No, go ahead.
I was saying to clarify a point that Joe made earlier. When you look at the income demographics of who we're attracting today, we're actually already over-indexing in middle-income consumers.
What we're not optimized for yet is how we're not actually meeting them where they're at in terms of the products and services that they want to buy. Part of the equation is how do you better attract new traffic in these target cohorts? The other part of the equation, and frankly, the part of the equation that's been more impactful for us in terms of quick wins in 2025, has been, how do you take the folks that are already coming through your stores and better serve them through consultative selling techniques, through having the right product available, introducing new technologies like Optikam that helps the consumer better understand some of the benefits of the more premium products and services that you're offering?
It's a really interesting and exciting position to be in, which is we don't necessarily have to go and attract a ton of new traffic from a volume perspective to drive the average ticket outcomes that we're looking for. It's really just better serving the folks that are already walking through the door.
That's right. Yeah.
Hey, guys. Thanks for the great day here, Matt Koranda with Roth Capital. I guess two things. I wanted to hear a little bit more about the deployment of Optikam and what that's done in terms of attach rates for some of the premium lenses that you talked about because you're still under-indexed there. Just curious about sort of the trajectory of how that improves over time.
Optikam deployment, how many locations? I'll take the AR one.
We are now, I'm sorry. As of November, we are now in every single America's Best store and every single Eyeglass World store. It is fully deployed. We started deploying it in August and then scaled it out one region at a time throughout the country and got learnings along the way.
Part to your question on anti-reflective in particular, part of our average ticket growth, a significant part of our average ticket growth this year, actually came from attach rate of anti-reflective growing.
Okay. Great. In the long-term targets, I noticed you guys said about 50% of sales from Managed Care. It looks like in terms of the category, 70% of consumers report having Managed Care benefits to spend. Why the mismatch there? Is there upside opportunity to that 50% over time?
Yeah. I mean, I think there's some Managed Care plans that we don't see necessarily an obvious path towards in a network relationship with. Therefore, we're setting our next milestone at 50% of our mix coming from Managed Care. If some of those opportunities were to ever open up, of course, it could be north of that. We'd have to see an obvious pathway to accomplish that. Getting to 50% of our business with those that we participate in currently, we do think is absolutely achievable. All right. Okay. Wow. Are we done? Or are there any other questions among the group? If you haven't had a chance to already, the things we talked about today, you can actually see come to life on your right side, my left side of the room. We have our Optikam demos available.
If you spend time with our frames, you can see a little bit of a before and after. It is a fairly visceral experience when you see just even our limited assortment of before frames to what we are moving to to help bring that to life. We have a fantastic group of National Vision teammates. I just want to take a moment to thank everyone else who is here besides our senior leadership team that made today come to life. They are all sitting at the back of the room. They are also here to give demos, to answer questions, and spend a little bit more time with this group.
One of the things we did not do is introduce the person who ultimately crafted this entire experience for everyone. Tamara Gonzalez. Tamara headed up our communications. Thank you for pulling this together.
We reported earnings like a couple of weeks and a half ago. Then we had to do this. Tamara's going to Spain and hopefully coming back. She leaves this week for a much-deserved 10-day vacation. Echoing Chris's, Tamara, thank you a million times over for keeping us organized, for keeping this leadership team on track, and for helping us to craft a story. Thank you very much. Good. I know that we had folks in this room who traveled far and wide to be with us here today. It is much, much appreciated that you took time out of your schedule to hear the National Vision story. As you can tell, it is one that we are all incredibly proud of. We are bullish on this company. We absolutely believe every word we said and that we can execute our strategic playbook.
The best is yet to come for this organization. Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys, for making this come true. I say oftentimes that I basically get to report the news, but these guys are the ones creating it on a daily basis. So thank you to the leadership team. All right, guys. I think we have box lunches. We have some mix and mingle time. But the entire team is here for your disposal for the next little bit. All right. Thank you, guys, for the time this morning.
Thank you. Webcast portion of the event. That's it.
All right.
Thank you.