Sarabia Optical marks 120 years with new 360 concept

SARABIA OPTICAL has opened its new concept, Sarabia 360 x Essilor Premier, a partnership with the French manufacturer of lenses and optical equipment. The new clinic and concept, which opened at the Molito Lifestyle Center in Alabang on June 5, marks the company’s 120 years in the industry by going beyond frames, lenses, and contacts, entering the arena of eye health.

While stocked with frames by Cartier, Linda Farrow, Moscot, and other expensive eyewear brands, the store’s backroom equipment is worthy of a look. “Instead of just vision correction, Sarabia 360 shifts the focus toward early health prevention,” said Federico Ramon Sarabia IV, whose great-grandfather, Federico Sarabia, the first Filipino optometrist, began the company in 1906.

The new equipment at Sarabia360 includes the WAM 800, an advanced machine that performs comprehensive screenings for vision and eye conditions such as glaucoma, cataracts, and corneal issues.

Another is the Vision-S 700, an artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted eye test and the first of its kind in the Philippines. This immersive exam allows patients to experience how their new prescription will feel in everyday life. In a speech, Mr. Sarabia said that it can simulate how lenses perform during daily activities such as driving and working at a desk with multiple screens.

Finally, there’s the Visioffice 3, an AI-assisted frame and face analysis system that ensures lenses are precisely fitted to each individual’s true vision experience by studying posture and visual habits. Mr. Sarabia says that this is the first in Asia, and sees how lenses adjust to posture, movement, and facial structure.

“We’re introducing advanced, highly personalized screenings,” he said in a speech.

Right now, at Mr. Sarabia’s count, they have about 40 clinics around the country. “We’re not the largest optical (group),” he acknowledged in an interview with BusinessWorld, but “We are the oldest, and the longest-lasting.

“I think it’s just because of how we maintain our commitment,” he said. “Our enduring mission has always been simple: to help Filipinos see better, so that they may live better.”

They have been in the game so long that Mr. Sarabia is noticing a shifting demographic when it comes to their customers. “What we’re noticing in our practice is that we’re getting patients who are younger,” he told BusinessWorld. “That particular age group is growing wider too,” he said about people of college-age and younger. “It’s becoming a bit of a concern that these digital screens, now you can correlate the effect on people.”

On to more cheerful things, Mr. Sarabia talked about how it is working with his family in a 100-year-old company. “We are aligned. The way we grew up, the way we were raised… we’re aligned in that as a family, and what our projection for the future is.” — Joseph L. Garcia