Glasses direct blog

Although I work for glasses direct, I still buy glasses elsewhere. Sometimes for mystery shopping, sometimes just for pleasure.

Of all the glasses shops I’ve been in, the selection that made me drool the most was Bromptons in Brighton. A beautiful boutique shop with lovely friendly staff, and a selection of the most wonderfully beautiful modern glasses, and a range of vintage weird specs.

If you love really beautiful glasses, and are in the south, give this place look.

I actually drove down there this weekend to buy a new pair from their shop (after I dropped my main pair in a river a couple of weeks ago). I said I was from Glasses Direct and they didn’t throw me out, which was nice.

Image from zach_manchester

In my last post I discussed some of the basic reasons that glasses are so expensive – cross subsidisation of the services offered by the glasses themselves (ie, they don’t charge the true cost for eye tests, but much more for the glasses). Also rents, expensive equipment, etc.

To try and stop people from going online to buy glasses many opticians will resist giving you your Pupillary Distance (This is, as it sounds, the distance between your pupils. I’ll write another blog post on this topic soon, and will be having a discussion with our Senior Optician about PDs which I’ll put up as a podcast).

To give you an idea of what many opticians feel about you, their customers, and the services that we and they provide, it can be worth eavesdropping on some of their conversations.

Optiboard is a forum for americans in the optical trade. There have been many threads on there about the online trade, and PD measurements.

Here is one about PD measurements: which many opticians are reluctant to give out.

“Online eyeglasses appeal to the cheapest and most moronic people out there. If I lose a few drooling idiots with no money to the online crowd, I’m not sure I even care.”

“Tell them to take their own. If they feel they do not need us, they they can do it themselves (note, I am no longer in the industry, so I can make statements like that).”

“My policy would (I haven’t been asked yet) No PD, period!”

“My policy is no PD, period.”

One member of the board tried to point out that by providing a service of measuring PDs etc, it could actually be a useful way of keeping customers returning to him, but he was in a very small minority being shouted down by the others who think that everyone who orders online is a moron, and any glasses bought online will be awful and won’t work.

We’ve had over 100,000 happy customers, and made over 200,000 pairs of glasses. If they didn’t work, we’d have been out of business a long time ago.

The industry is changing, and we’re part of that change. I wish the industry would realise that we’re not out to destroy anything, we’re just about giving a better deal. People, including myself, will still buy from the highstreet, and online. I buy books from amazon, my local book shop, and waterstones. I’ll buy glasses online, from the big chains, and from independant opticians (more of which in another post).

The difference is that I have 10 pairs of glasses, Two are from high street opticians, and are nearly double the cost of all the other 8 bought on-line put together!

The guvnor was doing his stuff on Sky-TV last night covering recent stories bubbling up on the internet.

Watch him here: Why Video Games Can Help Surgeons

“Sky’s Martin Stanford speaks to Jamie Murray-Wells from glassesdirect.co.uk about the stories moving up across the internet, including why video games can make surgeons faster and more accurate”

Glasses – stylebayarea.com from pb on Vimeo

This is a video from the San Francisco blog stylebayarea.com

The presenter discusses different styles, touches on how to choose your glasses, and generally gives some ideas for glasses style. It has some great examples of celebrities looking fantastic in glasses.

It really cheeses me off that a lot of people don’t realise how important glasses really are.

A recent family do highlighted the fact to me. A distant relation, a bank manager, had a broken pair of glasses, yet hadn’t got them fixed for 4 months!

Rant 1: Glasses are important! from Glasses Direct on Vimeo

THEY’RE ON YOUR FACE! They’re a major part of the impression you give about yourself. GET THEM FIXED!