Building Places, Not Just Optical Stores. Milan Siriey on the New Rules of Eyewear Retail

The co-founder of MILIEU.VISION, who previously founded Milan Lunetier, explains why the next generation of optical businesses will need to master both optics and vision care, alongside product and space design, team culture, local relevance and profitability.

Independent eyewear has spent the past decade upgrading the product. Milan Siriey believes the industry’s next battle will be fought over the entire operating model.

Few figures embody the evolving meaning of savoir-faire in independent eyewear as clearly as Milan Siriey, whose career brings together optical expertise, craftsmanship, product design, retail strategy and customer experience.

Over a career spanning more than 20 years, the French optician, entrepreneur and consultant has watched independent luxury optical boutiques adopt the codes of services from hospitality industry and after of high-end watchmaking, while accessible retail chains strengthened their presence with increasingly sophisticated store concepts and prime locations and consumers become increasingly fluent in brands, materials and craftsmanship.

The result is a far more demanding market. The modern optician is no longer simply a product specialist. They must also be a curator, technician, experience designer, team builder, commercial strategist and credible local presence.

Milan has experienced this transformation from several perspectives. He founded Milan Lunetier in Paris in 2011, building a business around service, savoir faire, lifestyle, restoration, training and product culture before selling it to Anne & Valentin in 2020. Since 2015, he has also advised entrepreneurs, eyewear brands, retail chains and buying groups on commercial strategy, customer experience, store design and organisational transformation.

In 2022, he co-founded MILIEU.VISION in Anglet, in France’s Basque Country, alongside Nhi Leduc and Justine Nguyen. Built without an architect and shaped entirely around the founders’ operational vision, the store dedicates up to 90 minutes to each customer, treats repair and restoration as genuine like the analysis about vision needs commitments and remains closed on weekends to protect the team’s working environment.

For Curated Optics’ latest Face of the Moment, Milan discusses the changing role of the optician, the future of independent eyewear and why the stores that fail to reinvent themselves may gradually disappear while others continue to grow.

Editor’s note: Milan Siriey’s answers are published in full and have not been edited for length or style.

1. How do you see the eyewear industry today? What’s changed the most since you started out?

I can only speak from my own vantage point over the last twenty years.

• Retail: A whole new segment emerged, independent luxury eyewear boutiques, running on codes borrowed from high-end watchmaking.  In the aesthetic segment – accessible, modern, “cool” chains took up serious real estate (Cubitts, Bloobloom, Jimmy Fairly, YUN, Ace & Tate). More broadly, far more opticians now put independent eyewear front and center.
• Opticians: The emergence of the modern optician, where craftsmanship and customer experience take center stage has fundamentally redefined the profession. Craft and visual-health expertise became central, a shift that kicked off around 2010 and is now table stakes. Customers now expect to see the “behind the scenes” at a glance: a fitting/repair workshop, an eye exam room.
• Consumers: Behavior shifted a lot. Customers care more about the product, do their own research on brands, materials, and manufacturing, and often walk in already fluent in product culture.
• Product: The offering expanded massively. Creative movements started by a handful of brands grew into full aesthetic families. The independent luxury segment structured itself hard ,like the color segment. Specialized worlds emerged or grew fast: smart glasses, sport eyewear, kids’ eyewear. The lenses arrive now to get an esthetique place too, and we talk about the technique
• Competition: The day-to-day changed completely. Everyone’s now leveling up service quality, expertise, team well-being, customer experience, and space design, all at once.

Twenty years ago, an independent optician mainly needed to nail sourcing and product culture. Today, that same professional has to perform across every dimension of the business.

2. If you were opening an optical store today, from scratch, where would you start?

Location first. I’d make sure of 4 things:

• Accessibility : Foot, Bike, Car
• Street visibility: from multiple directions.
• Retail fabric : solid, or with real growth potential
• Purchasing power : matching the concept

Once the location’s locked, I’d work several fronts at the same time, since they’re fully interconnected:

• Space design & Workflow
• Customer experience
• Product offering
• Commercial strategy
• How to become ea real local player

Then I’d build the internal organization and operating processes.

3. How do you see the industry evolving over the next 5–10 years? What’s the biggest shift coming?

The gradual disappearance of opticians who will not couldn’t reinvent themselves in favor of concepts that are coherent, clearly positioned, and flawlessly executed.

4. What separates an ordinary optical store from a place customers remember and talk about?

• A place shaped by the people running it
• A place where nothing is left to chance
• A place that feels good to be in, carried by a team that’s happy, skilled, and deeply professional

5. How much weight do you give storytelling versus just selling product?

It depends entirely on the store’s concept. In independent eyewear, there’s no such thing as just a good product, there’s passion and knowledge passed down through an object. That story runs through the design, the making, the craft, what the frame evokes once worn, and the day-to-day follow-up an optician-technician provides.

The real difference is often between an advisor and a good salesperson, two profiles suited to two different store concepts. Luxury or Cool Market.

6. One piece of advice for a young independent optician opening their first store?

Believe deeply in your project, keep questioning yourself regularly, and above all, surround yourself well.

7. How do you build a product selection with a real identity, rather than a pile of brands?

After a first good feeling. I map the offering by product families, ensuring it simultaneously meets three key criteria:

• Morphological fit
• Corrective needs
• Aesthetics

8. Does independent eyewear still have strong growth potential, or is the market too crowded?

Yes. Plenty of countries still don’t have a mature market in independent or independent luxury eyewear. Some markets, on the other hand, have hit a very high level of maturity, there, only the sharpest, most driven, most invested professionals will keep standing out over time.

9. What mistakes do opticians make most often today?

A part do it really well. But most of us : 

• Less curiosity.
• Less questioning.
• Not enough business structure.

Optical retail used to be an easy business. That belief still shapes too many decisions today.

A Part, Staying locked into habits and beliefs, without watching how the industry is shifting at home, abroad, and in other industries entirely. This buisness is not easy and the margin dry year after year.

10. What would you like independent eyewear to look like in ten years?

More clearly segmented and owned as such:

• Luxury
• Designers
• Sport
• Smart glasses
• Kids
• Contact lenses

I’d like these worlds to keep being carried by independent opticians, with teams of technical experts and passionate advisors who pass on knowledge in an accessible way.

And I’d like these independents to lean on the strength of collectives, invisible to the end consumer, that sharpen their standing as visual-health experts and eyewear expert empowering them to while boosting profitability and commercial power by pooling skills, tools, resources, and the sharing of vision and savoir faire in B2B.

Coherence Is the New Differentiation

The central idea running through Milan’s answers is that independent eyewear no suffers from a lack of good products. It suffers from a lack of coherence.

In mature markets or emerging market, gaining access to respected brands is no longer enough to create meaningful differentiation. The real competitive advantage lies in the system connecting location, assortment, technical expertise (optical & eyewear), space design, team culture, profitability and the customer’s reason to return.

That system is harder to photograph than a striking interior or a rare frame. It is also considerably harder to copy.

For Milan, the most memorable optical store is not necessarily the largest, most expensive or most heavily designed. It is the one in which every decision feels connected and where nothing appears to have been left to chance.