According to the Finnish Association of Optometry (FAO) traditional craftsmanship is decreasing. Lens edging is moving abroad to massive factories. Lens edges are grinded more commonly in lens edging grinderies compared to optical stores. Some clients want their lenses to be edged in optical stores rather than in the lens edging grinderies. Lens edging is a very important part of the optical industry.

The purpose of the study was to describe the popularity and the execution of the lens edging in the optical stores. The aim was to get information about the changes in lens edging in the optical industry and about the factors that affected the lens edging in the optical stores and in the lens edging grinderies. The study also examined how optical stores checked the lenses and eyeglasses coming from the lens edging grinderies. The last study question was how important the opticians found laboratory studies at school.

The study was quantitative and the target was the 556 optical stores that belong to the Finnish Association of Optometry. We got 141 informants. The data were collected and analyzed with Webropol 2.0 Online Survey and Analysis Software. We also used IBM SPSS Statistics 19 for analyzing the data.

18 % of the informants edged all the lenses in their optical store and the rest sent all the lenses or some of them to the lens edging grinderies. Lens edging has decreased in the optical stores over the years. More than 50 % had edged the lenses in their store before but had quit doing it. About 6 % of the optical stores are going to quit lens edging and 18 % did not know what they were going to do with the lens edging in the future. The factors that affected the lens edging in the optical stores were the fast delivery of the eyeglasses, the variety of work and positive challenges it involves. The lenses and eyeglasses that come from the lens edging grinderies were checked quite accurately. The opticians pointed out that the laboratory studies and the lens edging skills are very important in the optical industry.