Sustainable Digital Solution for a Premium Eyewear Brand
When a Small Plastic Card Becomes a Big Problem
Most people never think twice about the little plastic card that comes with their glasses. It looks official, lives in a wallet or a kitchen drawer for a while, and then quietly disappears.
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From the business standpoint, though, that card was a surprisingly big problem. It carried product details, authenticity information, partner contacts, and other mandatory (but frankly unengaging) data. It was produced in different ways, in different facilities, for different markets, under different rules – and no one really owned it globally. It was a patchwork solution without a value add.
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For a brand positioning itself as modern, premium, and sustainability-focused, this made no sense. On one side: strategies, roadmaps, and ESG commitments. On the other: a worldwide PVC printing machine dedicated to supporting an experience no one was excited about.
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When we finally pulled the numbers together across production, finance, regulatory, sustainability, and compliance, the scale of the waste became very hard to ignore. Just in PVC plastic for these cards alone, we were effectively using the weight of about three adult blue whales every year. And all that for something that didn’t really create value for customers, partners, or the brand.
From Compliance Box-Ticking to Experience Design
This is where the marketing transformation angle kicked in. Instead of replacing plastic with slightly less problematic paper, we pushed for a different direction: treat this as a chance to redesign the entire post-purchase experience. If we were going to touch something that reached every single wearer, it had to do more than tick compliance boxes.
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So instead, we chose to see it as an experience problem. If we were going to redesign something that reached every single wearer, then it had to do more than tick compliance boxes. It needed to be genuinely useful, elevate the brand, and connect seamlessly into the digital ecosystem we were already busy building.
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My role was to lead the initiative and coordinate global marketing, IT, legal, compliance, medical, and sustainability departments with local markets. The goal was simple to explain but harder to execute: design a secure, compliant, lightweight solution that would reduce waste and cost, strengthen the premium positioning of the brand, and actually help real people – both end-consumers and optical partners.
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Not a flashy vanity project. Not a siloed, over-engineered monster. But a smart, lightweight service that could hook into an already fragmented back-end without breaking anything or anyone.
Designing
the One-Stop Shop Digital Companion
The solution was a mobile companion app that would replace the static card entirely. Instead of a plastic rectangle full of small print, wearers would get a digital passport for their glasses.
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In practical terms, that meant creating a single place where they could verify authenticity, review product and prescription details, access care instructions, receive eye check reminders, learn more about eye health, and discover relevant offers such as a second-pair promotion or extended services. Crucially, it also created a direct line of contact between the wearer and the store or optician who sold them the glasses, providing a 24/7 warranty line, no matter where they were in the world.
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Behind the friendly front-end, the app had to integrate with a complicated, unglamorous reality. We connected it to the production back-end and traceability systems, and linked it to the digital tools used by opticians, including consultation apps and appointment management tools.
All of this had to happen within strict legal and regulatory constraints, varying by market, without introducing friction for partners who were already busy enough. The aim was to quietly upgrade the experience, not burden anyone with yet another complex system.
Proving It Works in the Real World
We launched first as an MVP in a carefully selected group of markets. These markets combined high digital readiness, clear local needs, and strong engagement from stakeholders, which gave us a realistic but supportive environment to test the concept.
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The initial feature set focused on the essentials: authenticity verification, key product and prescription information, partner contact details, wear and care instructions, and a first layer of brand content.
We launched, monitored, listened, and refined. Feedback from opticians, local teams, and end-users was consistently positive; both the “hard” numbers and the “soft” reactions told the same story: this felt more modern, more premium, and actually helpful.
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From a financial point of view, the story was equally strong. The savings from phasing out plastic cards in the pilot markets already exceeded the cost of exploration, design, and implementation. That combination of sustainability impact, cost reduction, and improved customer experience made the business case easy to defend at the steering committee and C-level. The result: a clear yes to global rollout and further development.
Globally Scaling into a Long-Term Digital Asset
With the green light secured, we developed a global rollout roadmap and prioritized markets based on potential impact and implementation complexity. The product kept evolving: we refined user flows, expanded the content strategy, and tied the app with global campaigns and new product introductions so that it wasn’t just a one-off utility, but a living, breathing marketing touchpoint.
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An interesting side effect was how this solution started to reshape the relationship between brand, partner, and end-consumer. Historically, the retailer sat firmly between the brand and the wearer. With the companion app, we respected that relationship while still building a more direct, value-based connection with the end-user. Over time, it laid the groundwork for a possible e-commerce and services pivot and supported the brand’s “cradle to grave” thinking: not just selling glasses, but supporting people throughout their lives.
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By the time the solution scaled globally, it had become much more than a replacement for plastic certificates. It was a recognized part of the brand’s offer to both partners and consumers, a concrete sustainability achievement under the ESG umbrella, and a self-funding digital product that made business, marketing, and environmental sense. All starting from a small, overlooked card that most people thought of as boring paperwork.