Article

Kiosk startup finds a fresh take to solve a dirty problem

The opticwash kiosk, the brainchild of a former car dealer, cleans eyewear and jewelry.

July 22, 2013 by Natalie Gagliordi — Editor of KioskMarketplace.com, Networld Media Group

These days, there's nary a problem that doesn't have a kiosk to solve it: From the hassle of picking up warehouse merchandise to dealing with a lost house key — and now, cleaning dirty eyewear.

The opticwash kiosk, created by Ocala, Fla.-based Bryan Myers, boasts the ability to cleanse and disinfect eyewear and jewelry in little more than a minute. The fully-automated system prompts users to place their dirtied and delicate items inside the kiosk and then runs a wash and dry cycle that the company said removes 99 percent of bacteria.

For Myers, a car dealer turned kiosk entrepreneur, entering the eyewear industry was the inadvertent result of a conversation he had with his son and business partner, Brandon Myers.

"We wanted to come up with something that would make money when we weren't there," Myers said. "We knew it needed to be self-service and recession proof. And then it just came to me, as we looked around us and everyone was wearing sunglasses."

James Dvorak, the VP of information technology at opticwash, said that when Myers initially came to him with the kiosk idea, he was a bit skeptical.

"I have to admit, at first I thought — no way will this ever take off ... a kiosk that cleans your glasses and then dries them?" Dvorak said. "And then he told me he only wants to charge $1 per use."

After several meetings, CAD renderings and extensive marketplace research, Myers and Dvorak took their design work to Flextronics, which reviewed the project potential and agreed to manufacture a series of prototypes.

Two years later, through a primarily bootstrapping effort, the prototypes deployed to the general public and have found particular popularity in airports and military bases, Dvorak said. The opticwash also won the Grand Prix Award at last year's INPEX inventors conference, landing Myers a $7,500 prize.

Myers said Flextronics is in the production phase for full-scale manufacturing of 1,000 opticwash kiosks, with a professional line also in the works that he said will be marketed toward optometrists and fine jewelry stores.

For now, Myers said he has no plans to make his company public or bring in investors. But when asked if he would sell the business, in a fashion similar to the recent acquisition of ecoATM by Outerwall, Myers didn't rule out the idea entirely.

"I'm a builder, an entrepreneur ... but I get bored," Myers said. "So I'll never say never."

Watch the video below for a look at the opticwash:

Read more about kiosk design.