Glasses direct blog

Here at Glasses Direct we always love to hear from our customers and Kathleen Marshall has kindly taken the time to thank us in a poem! After giving her a call to let her know how impressed we all were, she gave me her permission to publish this great piece of work on our blog…  Check out Kathleen’s poem below.

We would love to hear from any of our customers, so if you would like to send us a different kind of ‘thank you’ feel free to post it up!

MIT Media Lab claim to have found a way to get your eye prescription – through a new app on your mobile phone. It works by clipping a small plastic device onto your mobile phone, looking into the lens and pressing the arrow keys several times. It all takes less than two minutes – less time than making a cup of tea! The company has built this app for use in developing countries which lack these systems, to ensure people are looking after their eyes.

Imagine… testing your eyes and then browsing online to find a pair of glasses you love all in the comfort of your own home – you wouldn’t even have to step out of your front door. Check out a short video here to see exactly how it works. Well we’re certainly going to be watching this space. For those of you reading this, do let us know about any other new and inspiring technology developments in the optical world, we’d love to hear all about it…

Glasses Direct has grown up into a strong, popular, charming and loyal six year old. We have gone from distributing 100 pairs a day, to a pair of glasses every few minutes and the company has saved customers up to ten times the amount they would have spent on high-street glasses.

I remember the times of so called ‘NHS’ glasses, when dull unattractive frames were all you could afford and you would always try to wear them as little as possible. Nowadays with the value and range that Glasses Direct has brought about, people can’t get enough of them and think about them more and more as an accessory. We now offer a more diverse collection of stylish glasses and sunglasses than ever before, with our own on-trend range and an impressive selection of designer brands available in our newly launched Designer Outlet.

Over the course of this last year we have accomplished many great things on behalf of our customers: One of the most important was our our Home Trial service which solves the problem of not being able to try the glasses on. You have seven days to try out a range of styles and to ask opinions from friends and family. This is now used by over half our customers and continues to become more and more popular. Advertising is something we’ve working on, with our TV campaign currently being aired on thousands of times across satellite TV stations. Our TV campaign is just one example of the marketing that will help propel us to being a household name and the first place people think of for their eyewear needs.

When I entered the outdated eyewear market six years ago, some found the concept of ordering glasses online unbelievable. Years later we are the point of call for many glasses wearers in the UK, and have well and truly discovered that glasses are not an exception from the growing list of products that people go online to buy.

If you read our Caterpillar Marathon Run World Record Attempt With Glasses Direct’s Jamie post, you will be happy to hear that we did it! Months of rigorous training for the Virgin Marathon Caterpillar run paid off when we broke the world record with 34 runners, all finishing in 5hr 13 mins 4 secs. A huge thanks to all those who have supported us and donated, we have raised £277,088 so far (and still counting). Not far off our ¼ of a million pounds target! Check out our tired-looking and rather relieved photos of the amazing day on our website here Caterpillar Run. Until next year… maybe more members of the Glasses Direct team will join me… GULP!

This weekend I’m going to be struggling round running the London Marathon. I’ve had 11 weeks of training which I hope has brought my fitness level from about the lowest in my life, to the fittest I’ve ever been. Certainly it is nowhere near as able as other serious runners in optics – such as @glasses_Kevin – who left me standing, huffing and puffing after a few miles, as he sprinted off into the distance the last time we ran together, @dvc who stepped in to help us complete our Silverstone half marathon and promptly put us all to shame, or Chris Bennett, Editor of the Optician magazine, whose Ironman and Triathlons come to mind.

I’m running as a part of a team trying to break the world record for the most people linked together. We run 2 abreast and there are 34 of us in total. (the current world record is 32, set by a German team only a few weeks ago). We have 3 bungee cords which attach each of us to the runner in front, beside, and behind. We use a couple of us to set the pace with special watches that tell your speed (how many minutes per mile you are running at). Our goal is 11.5 minute miles. Other gadgets we are using to co-ordinate a caterpillar about 16 metres long round 26.2 miles are walky-talky watches that a few people have so the front of the caterpillar can talk to the back. In the final line up, I am running in the third row from the back on the left, next to a great friend and early Glasses Direct team member Julian Erleigh. The challenge is to work as a team in terms of pace, breaks, communication, and my own personal goal – not being a point of failure for 34 people. All this in a sport that is usually quite an individual challenge.

With all those evening runs round Hyde park and the 18 miler in the great park last weekend now behind us, I’m looking forward to the big day. And to motivate me into carrying myself one mile further on the day I am dedicating each of my 26 miles to different people. I am dedicating mile number 15 to my customers and team here at Glasses Direct – you’ll all be on my mind on Westferry road, through docklands towards Millwall. If there’s any of you running, who I should look out for on the day, let me know in the comments below. Also if you’d like to find out more about our caterpillar, or even donate, have a look at our website which shows details of the charities we are trying to raise £250,000 for.

In the meantime, here are my recomendations for running and sport glasses:

Bolle Recoil

Recoil is part of Bolle’s stylish Sports collection, developed for multisport and active lifestyles. Made from Nylon and boasting Thermo-grip technology which has moisture absorbing properties to give you solid yet soft adhesion at all times. These come with Polarized lenses.

Polaroid P8917

Available in classic black or deep olive, these stylishly sporty wrap-around sunglasses will be your essential accessory this summer. Whether for sports, driving or just to hide those tired eyes, these sunglasses look the part every time. Available as prescription sunglasses also.

Fat Face Lanikai

Creating yet another fabulously on-trend wrap-around pair of shades, these sunglasses are enough to set off any outfit in real style. These are available in three fashionable colours perfect for the outdoors in the summer season. Available as prescription sunglasses also.

Diesel Sun DS 0090

These sunglasses for males are kept sleek and streamline with a smooth and easy appearance, making these the ideal frames for the outdoors this summer. Diesel makes effortless look easy with this model.

Check out more of our great sports glasses collection available as prescription and as sunglasses…

What do Superman, Harry Potter, and Pokeman all have in common? All titles featured X-ray glasses in them, which are recognised as a figment of comic-book writers and children’s imagination- up till now.

An American company, ‘Advanced Intelligence’ claims to have designed a pair of X ray glasses that allow the user to see, in real-time (and record if needed), ‘…through some type of materials making it possible to see through clothes that in the same condition cannot be seen by the naked eye.’ From this quote and the look of their website, clearly the inventor has a certain rather lurid, and probably illegal, type of use in mind that would never have crossed Harry Potter’s mind.

I suspect that this is a sham load of tosh but we havent tried these glasses and cant vouch for whether they do or dont work. At $2,400 a pop we’re sure you probably won’t take a gamble to find out either. And as for how advanced, Advanced Intelligence’s technology really is, what they’re selling at the moment doesn’t look like the kind of rocket science you’d expect if and when the real deal is invented.

X-ray vision is in the news a lot at the moment. The full body scanners currently being trialled at some airports to enhance security on flights, according to the BBC, ‘work by beaming electromagnetic waves on to passengers while they stand in a booth. A virtual three-dimensional image is then created from the reflected energy.’ They cost about £80,000 each and are developed by Qinetiq.

If you know of any other examples of this kind of technology, or have actually tried a pair of the ‘x-ray glasses’, do let us know what you think below.

Recently featured in Wired magazine, you will need a microscope to see these glasses. This is a 2mm frames sporting a 0.1mm logo, seen here pictured on a house-fly. The logo is the equivalent size of a human hair, and was lazered onto the frames using, from a stationary machine, whilst the frames were moved around using a positioning machine.

Looks as though this was a warm-up act by German company Micreon for their next trick: to engrave tiny lettering onto watch faces. Reminds me of the artist Willard Wigan, who creates sculptures too small for the human eye to see. One of his works that I saw was set on a plinth which was the eye of a needle, and the sculpture itself was of a ship whose ropes were made out of spiders web strands. He gives a fascinating talk here.

We’ll be sticking to the day job of choosing the best styles and designs that suit your eyes and wardrobe, which means you probably won’t find these bug-eyed glasses at Glasses Direct for the foreseeable future

We’re doing something different here at Glasses Direct and it’s always nice to be recognised for it. We’ve been included in the Top 20 of a prestigious awards table that looks at the fastest growing technology companies in the UK.

The Deloitte Technology Fast 50 is based on official financial reports for technology companies over five years. Glasses Direct is in at 19th position with a turnover growth of 2098% over the past 5 years.

This is fantastic news for us and we’re delighted that Glasses Direct has received so much support in a tough economic climate. Consistent value for our customers and new ways to shop (like our home trial service) means that more and more people are choosing to buy from us. More futuristic ideas, such as the video mirror, allow us to keep ahead of competitors and grow during this time of economic uncertainty.

Thanks to all the staff, partners and (most importantly of all), our customers who helped make this happen. Here’s to the next 5 years!

Today is World Sight Day and I want to tell you about a plan I discovered over the Summer and ask for you to consider supporting it.

In West Africa, there is an estimated 2.6m people who are blind. 80% of blind people affected suffer needlessly in developing countries. Their blindness is completely treatable and/or preventable in the first place – sometimes in operations that can take minutes.

Once a person is cured of blindness, they can provide more support to their families, perhaps by returning to work. Everyone benefits, not just the sufferer.

Moorfields, one of the oldest and largest centres for eye health in the world, has committed to developing an integrated eye and surgical training unit that is to be based at the main teaching hospital in Ghana’s capital, Accra. You can see some of the fantastic work they do in the photos on our Flickr page.

This unique facility will enable eye specialists from across West Africa to be trained, in safe and high volume surgery, which is desperately needed to help eliminate cataract blindness or to deliver sight saving treatments for people with glaucoma.

Encouragingly, the hospital has raised about 75% of the £3m it needs already and expects to be in a position to begin construction by the summer of next year, assuming that it is able to raise the remaining 25%.

Please join me in donating to Moorfields’ campaign. This is the first time that we have made a direct appeal to all Glasses Direct customers and with your support we can help ensure the plan takes off.

I am asking everyone to consider giving small amounts that won’t hurt the pocket, but collectively will make a big difference.

You can make a donation using the link below:

http://www.justgiving.com/glassesdirect/

Yours,

Jamie Murray Wells
Founder and Executive Chairman, Glasses Direct

Orbis is a nonprofit organization fighting blindness in developing countries, where 90 percent of the blind reside and yet 80 percent of those 45 million people suffer needlessly because their blindness is curable – often easily and quickly with the right skills and equipment. Once cured, the patient can often return to work, improving the quality of life not just for them but also for their dependents. Orbis fly a refurbished DC-10 jet aircraft, where local doctors, nurses and technicians work alongside an international medical team to exchange knowledge and improve skills, and carry out operations.

Over the last year or so, you might have noticed that selected frames on our site were earmarked as eligeable for a £1 donation to be made, for each purchase, to the charity Orbis. The funds raised from customers through sales of these glasses amounted to £8,610 which we have passed over to Orbis. On behalf of them and us, many thanks!

In September when the plane is due to be at Stansted, I’ve been invited to tour the plane and meet the medical team who will be able to update us on how your funds have been used to support the trachoma eradication programme in southern Ethiopia, a project that hopes to wipe out this particular cause of unnecessary blindness.

Today, I visited Moorfield’s eye hospital, and looked round their new Children’s Eye Centre which is a remarkable and fun place to be – another organisation doing great things related to our field of work.