A political asylee from Colombia, Felipe Arroyave found himself at 19 years old working at a contact lens factory in Gwinnett County, trying to improve his lot through education.
“I remember going to classes and I had plastic all over my head, because I was working with polymers,” Mr. Arroyave said.
It wasn’t the first job he’d had in the U.S. — busboy, waiter, valet and other positions were already on the resume.
“You can imagine, being an immigrant coming into this country, you do any job you have to do.”
But here, at a company with $4 billion in annual sales, he started to see an opportunity others at a much higher pay grade could not, an ironic blindness to the developing world for a company in the business of restoring vision.
Meeting that need meant founding Spectrum International, a Midtown Atlanta-based exporter of specialty contact lenses used to treat conditions like corneal lacerations, keratoconus and ocular surface disease, among others.
The company was recently named the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Exporter of the Year for 2024, a refection of both its prowess in international sales and its strategic use of loans (especially during the pandemic) and SBA programs like State Trade Expansion Program (STEP) grants to expand around the world. Spectrum now employs 28 people and has customers in more than 65 countries.
“Felipe Arroyave immigrated to the U.S. and worked hard to eventually launch his American dream of business ownership,’ said SBA Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman in a news release. “Today, Spectrum International sells its contact lenses across multiple continents and demonstrates how small businesses are growing our nation’s economy and helping us compete globally.”
Casting a Vision
In his worker days, Mr. Arroyave knew that in developing countries, patients lacked access to the high-tech contact lenses that Americans took for granted, and he wanted to prove they could be exported.
“For me, it was really unfair that all these patients could go to a doctor in California, New York or Washington, but the guy in Peru, the guy in Colombia, Argentina, he had to use technology form the ‘70s or ‘80s.”
He knew the market was there, but he was low on the organizational chart, a simple lab worker with no pedigree to offer a platform. How could he capture the attention of the CEO?
“I kept knocking on his door and knocking on his door and knocking on his door — I would see in him the conference room and I would talk to him about it. I would see him in the lunch room and talk to him about it. He just got so bogged down and annoyed by me and the constant questions about exporting, he said, ‘Listen, I’m going to give you an opportunity.’”
A conference was coming up in Puerto Rico. Mr. Arroyave told Mark Parker, an executive who would later become a “father figure,” that he would pledge two months of his salary as a guarantee for an advance on the $2,800 he anticipated to spend for the conference. If he didn’t bring back business, he would pay the expenses out of his own pocket.
“I just said, ‘Please don’t take it in one lump sum — finance it for six months.”
To hear Mr. Arroyave tell it, Mr. Parker asked for a 5X return. He brought back in sales 17 times more than he spent to attend the conference.
“This gave me the drive that if it could be done in Puerto Rico, it could be done everywhere,” he said. “We have a gem that we need to discover; we need to make into a diamond.”
He climbed the ladder to vice president of international sales for the company, X-Cel Specialty Contacts, but Mr. Arroyave believed the opportunity was much bigger than one company could address. He would later get a master’s degree in international business from the University of Chicago.
The Leo Messi of Exporting
He decided to branch out on his own, making the painful decision to compete against the employer that had taken a chance on him. International was still a side business for X-Cel. He wanted it to be the main show.
“I’m a true exporter by heart,” he said, saying his skills were underutilized. “You cannot put Leo Messi in to play volleyball.”
In 2017, he created Spectrum, using the same playbook, simply broadening the offering to multiple labs instead of one. Now he lets optometrists and ophthalmologists around the world choose products from 23 companies, including some of the largest in their field. Customers can use Spectrum as a catalog, a one-stop shop with a single invoice and consolidated delivery.
“The portfolio grew from 10 products to over 200 products,” he said.
Even X-Cel came back as a client, and Spectrum is now one of its largest customers.
Most people don’t need Spectrum’s products, Mr. Arroyave said, likening normal contact lenses for myopia and hyperopia (nearsightedness and farsightedness) to the jeans one can buy at a department store.
“Our lenses are custom-made, so instead of going to Macy’s you go to a tailor. Waist, knees, everything that would only fit you and nobody else.”
In some cases, products sourced by Spectrum restore sight to those who would otherwise descend into blindness, taking away their opportunity to learn or make a living.
“We change lives one lens at a time,” Mr. Arroyave said.
Spectrum’s main markets are in Latin America; it sells from Midtown to Mexico, Colombia, Spain, Guatemala, Peru and many other jurisdictions. Because of that, the company has set up a distribution center in a free zone near Medellin, Colombia.
Local-language service and logistical assistance have become essential in order to compete with the lower prices coming out of China and India.
“I always tell my people that we have to give customers a holistic experience when they buy from us — giving them an education, giving them the tools, giving them the ability, if they have a problem or a question about fitting a patient, to can contact us through Zoom immediately, and we can help guide them.”
About 30 percent of sales are reinvested in the training of physicians, who are not only customers but partners in treatment. Spectrum also provides free contact lenses to patients, including many children, through its Changing Lives nonprofit, subsidized by paying customers.
Being an American company is sometimes challenging, particularly in the growing market of the Middle East amid the conflict in Gaza. (Spectrum’s SBA award was in part thanks to its use of a STEP grant provided by the Georgia Department of Economic Development to attend the Arab Health show in Dubai.)
A strong dollar also makes Spectrum’s made-in-USA offerings less price competitive, and unstable exchange rates can create problems for importers paying in dollars. Mr. Arroyave works with his customers on hedging, using banking arrangements that give the stable rates. It’s one more way he doles out advice that he has had to learn through academia and the school of hard knocks.
“You cannot put Leo Messi in to play volleyball.”
Felipe Arroyave
Spectrum is no stranger to the export game. In 2022, it won $5,000 for international expansion from the Atlanta Metro Export Challenge and took home the 2023 GLOBE Award from the state of Georgia for expanding into new markets.
Mr. Arroyave is also on the Georgia District Export Council board, where he continues to advise other companies and advance the export ecosystem that has served Spectrum so well.
“Like I told the SBA when they invited us to Washington, you need to feel very proud, because every single one of you and your work, supporting exporters, giving us programs and education … has helped exporters like myself. We don’t sell alcohol, we don’t sell tobacco, we don’t sell firearms or plane parts — we sell little pieces of plastic that give vision back.”
