We are Advanced Eyecare Professionals (AEP), located on West Main Street behind Rite-Aid in the shopping plaza with B.C. Pizza. We offer ophthalmology, optometry and a full service optical shop. We are now back OPEN, LOVE Lowell, and want to stay for many years to come!
The closures affected all types of businesses including businesses in health care like dentists, physical therapy, our eye care industry, and many more. The eye care industry waited and excitedly planned for the all too perfect year of 2020. The year began with fun puns and special events planned around the year of “perfect vision”. Ours was, “2020 the year for your eyes!” And it truly is, however, none of us saw a year that the Snellen eye chart says should be perfect, would actually blindside us with a halt to daily normalcy worldwide. The ripple effects hitting every aspect of life including the care of patients in our beloved eye care industry.
We too closed our doors on all three of our locations to protect patients and staff. We saw emergent patients either at local ERs or a single doctor would open an office by themselves to assist the person in need. We fulfilled contact lens re-ordering and glasses fulfillment the best we could through email and mail delivery to try and support our patients during the closure. Like everyone is feeling, it has been very hard to say the least.
Our office is not a chain. We are a family owned and operated local business with our starting office in Hastings opening in 1984. Our Lowell and Ionia locations opened in 2002. As we open back up, like every local business, we hope that you support LOCAL in every way you can! We realize that you can buy glasses, sunglasses and contacts online, or from big box stores. However, we also hope you realize that big box stores and online quick buys don’t always stand by their products like we do. If you compare apples to apples from the online offerings or big box stores you’ll see that the value of the products you get from AEP are far superior and last longer. The big box stores and online giants also don’t support local school sporting events, clubs/organizations, or have community outreach like we do. Our community eyecare week event that we have done annually for the past 8 years has helped hundreds locally get a free eye exam and glasses that could not otherwise afford it. We also recently announced a 2020 graduate outreach of a free eye exam for the class of 2020 to help grads celebrate and see their bright futures.
We greatly care, and hope you do as well, about the local community and local businesses. Our offices started opening back up with partial staff and limited hours in each of the locations. Currently Lowell is open Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 8am – 5pm and can be reached via phone at (616) 897-7000. Ionia is open Monday through Thursday 8am – 5pm, and Hastings is open Monday through Thursday 8am-5pm. As with all businesses we have many new safety protocols in place to keep you and our staff as safe as possible during your visit. Including installed protective breath shields on equipment; increased office cleanings above and beyond our already high level of cleaning regiments between each patient, and many more protocols. Please visit www.AEPeyecare.com to view our “EYES on Safety” protocols. We hope to SEE you all soon, so we can continue with our mission of “Saving & Improving Vision Close to Home!”