About the Dry Eye Shop...

Dry Eye Shop is a mission-driven e-commerce store based in Poulsbo, Washington. 

Our vision is not just to serve your dry eye or scleral lens retail needs with professionalism and promptitude. We also aspire to be your trusted information partner and a bright spot in your eye disease journey.

We know all about how confusing it is to select from many similar products, how expensive it is to keep on trying different things, how stressful it is to have a shipment go astray when you're almost out of a critical product, and how worrying it is that your favorite eye ointments or scleral saline may sometimes go on backorder for months at a time or even be recalled. We're here to anticipate needs, fill in information gaps and be a reassuring voice.

Who we're here to serve

Most of our customers have corneal diseases.

"Dry eye" product customers may have auto-immune diseases like Sjögrens or RA, or medically induced ocular surface diseases like Stevens Johnson Syndrome or Ocular Graft v Host Disease or post LASIK corneal neuralgia or "garden variety" dry eye or MGD or a host of other related conditions. 

Scleral lens product customers increasingly include anyone in the dry eye categories plus people with keratoconus or irregular corneas caused by refractive surgery or scarring.

Many of you have been on a years-long journey getting these conditions diagnosed and treated and may yet be struggling to make your way through it. Just know that we're here to help however we can.

History

The Dry Eye Shop began in 2005 as an experimental retail business running in parallel with a medical support group & advocacy project, the Dry Eye Zone. Our websites, blogs, forums and business evolved and grew quietly and organically for about the first ten years, much of the time run more or less solo by our founder, Rebecca. In recent years, there have been times of steeper growth, such as the saline crisis of 2016 and the early part of the pandemic. Those times presented challenges that kept us on our toes.

Originally, a key purpose of the Dry Eye Shop was to raise awareness of some of the more obscure products that can help people with dry eye. Many things have changed since then. Dry eye disease is much better known now. There are far more products on the market and there are far more places to purchase them.

These days, our niche is more about plugging knowledge gaps. We offer a sort of information clearinghouse as well as a commentary on the "stuff" sold for dry eye and scleral lenses. We counter hyperbolic marketing with common sense product descriptions, and we counter industry-speak with personal narration. 

Dry Eye Shop also functions as an informal referral center for the Dry Eye Foundation, a nonprofit patient organization (not affiliated with the shop) incorporated in 2018. That is, people come to the shop for stuff, but they often have information and support needs too. So, Dry Eye Shop staff, website, social media and emails will frequently point out relevant Dry Eye Foundation resources and events.

Providing personalized service and focusing on delivering meaningful content has costs associated. As a result, we do not offer free shipping, and we price our products for sustainability - so some product prices are slightly higher than you are used to. However, you may be surprised how many of our products are priced competitively. We work hard to offer plenty of discounts, from a loyalty point program to product 'bundling' to frequent discount codes and steeper discounts on major holidays.

The products

For all the products we collect here, we wrap them in as much practical down to earth information as possible - much of it learned from you. We also spend time trying to persuade companies to modify and improve products and make more products that will better serve our customers' needs.

Our core product areas are, for dry eye:

• Night protection devices
• Eyelid care (hygiene and compresses)
• Lubricant drops, gels and ointments
• We are also big believers in dry eye glasses, but we no longer sell them. We're happy to refer you to good sources, however.

And for PROSE and scleral lenses:

• Preservative free salines
• Cleaning and disinfection solutions
• Insertion and removal devices
• Items for handling and storage, and kits for travel

How do we choose products? That's a whole 'nuther story in itself! Click here for more!

What we care about

Serving, rather than selling: We do not care for over selling, up selling, hard selling, and, well, pretty much every other kind of selling.  How are you doing and what do you most need? Stuff, information, guidance, encouragement, hope? and how can we help you get it? That’s the bottom line of what we aspire to.

Specializing, rather than generalizing: Your doctor told you to get moisture goggles. That sounds so easy, but in real life, maybe not quite so simple. We embrace all the delectable little details no one else knows or cares about but you and us: The right type of contraption to protect the eyes from drying out overnight… for an individual with severe exposure keratitis? compatible with an Airfit F10 For Her CPAP mask? suitable for someone with chronic edema? with Sjogrens? or a face sleeper with floppy eyelid syndrome - how can we secure them against anything that could abrade the cornea? or what will be the simplest, least maintenance intensive for an elderly patient in an assisted living facility or someone disabled in a group home? What about moisture chamber glasses that someone who deals with the public could dare to show up at work in without feeling like a total idiot? and which are the best lens types for someone housebound by severe photophobia? or which goggles will provide complete wind-proofing for a lady with a tiny, narrow face or a gent with very large orbits?

These things are life and breath to us. We LOVE troubleshooting real world practical stuff.

Being, vs. appearing: Marketingspeak and self-inflating fanfares of every kind, no matter how clever or subtle, are anathema at the Dry Eye Shop. If we have anything of value to offer you, we don't want to tell you. We want to show you. We value transparency, realness, directness. When people send us nice notes, we celebrate and thoroughly savor the moment before we move on with fresh motivation. Your generous words mean everything to us in those moments.

Conversations: Our phone number is prominent, not hidden, and that’s because we WANT to talk to you. We can’t promise a human will always immediately answer the phone. We're a small company, after all. But we can promise to call you back quickly, and to give you our full time and attention when we speak with you, for as long as it takes to help you as well as we possibly can. If you get voicemail, it's because we are providing this kind of service for someone else, and we will return your call as soon as humanly possible.

Understanding: Many people who come to us are struggling on multiple fronts: physically, emotionally, and often financially. We aspire to listen and care and help as best we can. Enough said.

Dry Eye Foundation

In October 2018, Dry Eye Shop's owner Rebecca Petris co-founded the 501(c)(3) nonprofit The Dry Eye Foundation to focus exclusively on education, advocacy and support for people with dry eye disease. The company transferred the Dry Eye Zone and all the Facebook support groups to the Foundation.

Dry Eye Shop continues to use its resources to support and promote the Dry Eye Foundation in all kinds of ways. If you are on our site or emails or order products from us, you'll be hearing frequently about DEF. We encourage you to check it out and become a member to support DEF's work for the community!