The privately owned company, ranked fifth in the nation in eyeglass manufacturing, broke ground last week on a 55,000-square-foot, three-story facility in Watsonville. The company projects its business will continue to grow in the coming decade.

"No matter what the economy is like, people still have to be able to see," said Bill Inman, Continental Sales Co. vice president and chief executive officer. "You can only put off getting that new pair of glasses for so long."

Completion of the facility is slated for late August 2003, according to Jared Bogaard of Bogard Construction. The Santa Cruz-based company is building the new facility at 180 Westgate Drive, on the east side of Highway 1 near Graniterock’s headquarters, and also built the company’s plant in Santa Cruz in the 1970s.

The building’s ground floor will house production, while office and storage space will be on the second floor. The third floor will be office space available for lease.

The company had been planning the new facility for 10 years. The decision to move was made because the Santa Cruz facility had reached capacity.

That company-owned 45,000-square-foot facility on DuBois Street in the Harvey West Park industrial area will close once the new facility opens. Employees will be transferred to Watsonville. Operations at the Salinas facility may be transferred to Watsonville or San Jose eventually, Inman said. That facility applies antireflective coating to lenses.

Continental Sales Co. operates five facilities nationwide and one in Mexico, employing more than 200 people. The company produces 750 to 900 pair of prescription lenses per day. Production will increase up to 60 percent and 30 to 40 jobs will be created during the first year of operation at the new facility.

The company is one of several with plans to locate in Watsonville in the coming months. Home improvement giant Home Depot plans to break ground on its 98,452 square-foot store and 24,240 square-foot garden center next spring at the corner of Loma Prieta and Green Valley Roads. The store should open by winter 2003.

Dong Kim, Continental Sales Co. president and owner, founded Continental Sales Co. in 1967 and steered the company from a one-room operation on Mission Street into a $25 million eyeglass empire by 2000.

Kim, who has no background in optometry, is an unlikely eyeglass entrepreneur. He was born in Seoul, Korea, and came to the United States to study law. Hearing about a business opportunity to import eyeglass frames from Korea, he invested his entire savings.

A few months later, his partners in the deal said they were broke, and that the American market apparently wasn’t interested in Korean frames.

Kim disagreed, tapped friends and family for more capital and bought out his partners.

Today, doctors submit eyeglass prescriptions to the company, which grinds stock lenses, called blanks, to fit a wearer’s needs. Lenses are then cut to fit eyeglass frames. Afterward, special coatings may be applied.

The process of creating lenses will be made more efficient at the new facility with the help of emerging technology, including machines that will allow workers to skip steps during lens polishing, Inman said.

At the new plant, the company will have the capacity to process more than 3,500 pair of lenses per day.

"This facility will allow increased production capacity as well as include one of the most contemporary automated and computer-driven operations found in the world," according to Kim.

Designing the building from the ground up will improve overall efficiency. Work space will be set up in a linear fashion so employees don’t have to walk as far to transport lenses to other work stations, he said. Conveyer belts will be added to speed production.

Contact Karen A. Davis at kdavis@santa-cruz.com.

Continental Sales Co.

WHAT: Nation’s fifth-largest eyeglass manufacturer.

WHERE: 180 Westgate Drive, on the east side of Highway 1 in Watsonville.

FOUNDED: 1967 by Dong Kim.

EMPLOYEES: 200.

FACILITIES: Frame Sales, 165 DuBois St., Santa Cruz; Ocular Labs, 121 E. Brokaw Road, San Jose; Microcoating Lab, 401 Victor Way, Salinas.

INFORMATION: CSC recently broke ground on a new Watsonville facility, slated for construction by late August 2003. The new facility will create as many as 40 new jobs in the area and allow the company to increase its production by as much as 60 percent.