Look New Canaan, an eyewear vendor and optometry practice located on 21 Forest St., has reached its one-year milestone.
Owned and operated by Dr. Jennifer Stewart, a Rowayton resident with more than 15 years of optometry experience, the retail shop and practice provides patients of all ages with eye exams, custom lens fitting, ocular disease management and more.
Stewart said that her first year has been “more than she could have ever expected or planned on.”
“It’s been an unbelievable first year,” she told New Canaanite. “Patients have been really great, and the town has been so supportive of us. It really exceeded all of my expectations.”
In addition to the wide range of services offered at Look New Canaan, Stewart said she believes that the location has been a major factor in her success.
“I feel like it was a little bit of luck and a little bit of planning,” she said. “Being right here on Forest Street has done wonders for the business with the number of people walking by, the local business on our street plus the rest of New Canaan, I couldn’t have picked a better spot to open.”
Look New Canaan is unique among eyewear vendors due to Stewart’s strict curation of her product line, with only high-quality, handmade frames from reputable small businesses making the cut, she said. The store’s shelves offer custom frames designed by Stewart herself, dubbed “The Look Collective,” featuring handmade frames named after local landmarks, such as “The Silvermine.” Since opening, Look has launched another exclusive eyewear line designed by Stewart, featuring frames handcrafted from sustainably sourced buffalo horn.
“People love it,” Stewart said when asked how this decision has impacted her business. “They love having a custom one-of-a-kind frame that is not an off-the-shelf purchase. They love supporting other local businesses or other small businesses because they’re hand-made.”
Look New Canaan’s high quality eyewear and service has attracted customers from across the county, not just locals.
“Our customers are primarily from New Canaan, just because of its convenience,” said Stewart. “But I had a practice in Norwalk before this, so I have a lot of patients from Norwalk. We also get a lot of Darien patients. I live in Rowayton so I get a lot of Rowayton patients. Plus North Stamford, South Salem, Pound Ridge, Bedford, Wilton, Westport. I also have some from Fairfield, Danbury, Ridgefield. So primarily New Canaan, but it is a huge radius that we draw from.”
Stewart’s experience as a New Canaan business owner has been “very different” from Norwalk, she said.
“It is so nice to have a town that supports small, local businesses, and I always joke with my friends who live in other parts of the country that what I’ve experienced here doesn’t really exist other places, where people were just excited to have me here, and they just came in to say, ‘Welcome to New Canaan,’ ” Stewart said. “ ‘Welcome to being here.’ New Canaan I think is so proud to support local businesses. I think it’s just different in that it’s more of a walkable downtown than Norwalk. … A lot of patients will come here for the exam, and then they spend the rest of the day getting a smoothie or going for lunch or shopping on Elm Street. So it’s more of a destination. The local support is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.”
In addition to standard optometry services, Stewart is also certified to fit “MiSight” lenses, a treatment which can reduce the progress of myopia, or nearsightedness, with age.