From a young optometrist chasing a relief posting across the Tasman to running two distinct optometry ventures simultaneously, Eric Cheng has never been afraid to chart his own course.

I was born in Taiwan, but my family migrated to New Zealand when I was young. My dad picked Wellington as our first stop – a puzzling choice because it’s so windy and cold. Fortunately, Auckland had the only optometry school in the country, so I had a good reason to move north. The whole family came with me; I graduated from Auckland University in 2003 and went straight into practice.

After two years working in New Zealand, I came across an opportunity for a locum role in Western Australia. My parents weren’t thrilled because Perth is so far from NZ, but I think they assumed it was just a phase of youthful rebellion. But I ended up really enjoying WA.

What struck me immediately was the opportunity. Arriving in 2005, there were positions available everywhere and very little in the way of hard contact lens services, a skill I’d developed in New Zealand.

A DECADE IN FRANCHISE

I worked with OPSM for several years before taking my first step into business ownership in 2014, becoming the franchisee of Laubman and Pank Karrinyup in a shopping centre in Perth’s northern suburbs. It was efficient and well organised; the system takes care of everything from sales to recall, marketing, and stock. But where there’s convenience, there’s also constraint, especially when you want to dig deeper into specialised fields such as orthokeratology (OK).

When my 10-year franchise agreement was due to finish in mid-2024, I took the opportunity to bow out early and help care for a family member in NZ. Later that year when they recovered, I returned to Perth and joined Reenee Hoo in Meadow Springs.

Reenee had recently bought a practice from a retiring ProVision member. I started working with her two days a week, which left time to pursue something I’d been turning over in my mind for a while: a specialty clinic back in Mt Hawthorn.

SETTING UP A SPECIALTY CLINIC

When I left the franchise, I took the topographer, which the franchisor had not wanted to keep. I also had a loyal patient base who needed scleral and specialty contact lens fitting, OK, myopia control, and keratoconus management – and who were not going to travel to Meadow Springs. My solution was simple: I rented a room from a friend who runs a chiropractic clinic in Mt Hawthorn, and filled it with my equipment, converting the space into a clinical-only optometry office. That’s WA Eyecare.

Soon after, a couple of colleagues who were interested in pursuing clinical interests but lacked the equipment asked to share the space. There are now three of us, each contributing roughly two days a week to the clinic.

There is no retail component at WA Eyecare – no frames on display, no lens packages to upsell. We focus entirely on contact lenses, OK, myopia control, and dry eye management, including intense pulsed light therapy. And we send our patients back to their existing retail practices for eyewear.

The overheads are extraordinarily lean. We have no receptionist; I use an online clinical platform to send appointment reminders by SMS, and give patients our direct mobile numbers to make contact. There’s no stock. Our only real costs are the equipment lease and rent, which means we can offer an affordable service to our patients.

PROVISION AND THE TASTE OF INDEPENDENCE

Back at Optimize in Meadow Springs, Reenee and I work under the ProVision banner, which has provided another avenue of professional satisfaction.

ProVision handles consolidated billing and purchasing, so we don’t have to navigate dozens of supplier relationships from scratch. They also provide excellent training on stock management – helping us look at how long stock has been on the shelf, what we should buy, and how to convert slow-moving inventory into cashflow. It’s like a recipe: you go in, follow the recipe, then add your own flavour. The critical difference is our independence. We set our own prices, choose our own frame ranges, and have complete clinical freedom. That’s not something I had before.

THE SIMPLEST IDEAS

Looking at the next 10 years, I want to focus on delivering a genuinely customised service. I want to combine clinical expertise with the freedom to source the right products for each patient and build a service that’s tailored to them.

I don’t really think my career is dramatically different from anyone else’s. I just try new things, and I’m willing to give something a go when I can’t think of a reason not to. That’s what led me to OK and myopia control early in my career, and it’s what led me to set up WA Eyecare with a $300 weekly rent and no receptionist. Sometimes the simplest ideas are the ones worth trying.

Eric Cheng graduated from optometry at Auckland University in 2003. He practises at WA Eyecare and is a co-owner of Optomize Optometrist, both in Perth.