The Chancellor gave a shot of adrenaline to start-ups and small firms in his budget last week with sweeping changes to EIS and Entrepreneurs Relief, sensing that they are the engine of the economy and will be vital to our recovery, providing nearly 60% of all private sector jobs, and nearly 50% of private sector GVA.

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But business is hard and business men and women  are realists –we appreciate all the competent help we can get, especially business and employment tax reductions, and pruning of prohibitive regulation.  But when you’re up to your elbows in cash flow predictions, chasing late paying customers, or figuring out how to get financing for your StartUp, it is critically important to find the right support as well. I had no formal business training when I started Glasses Direct. P&Ls and organisation charts seemed completely alien to me at university. I learnt the ropes through being lucky enough to find supportive mentors, online support services and book recommendations. Some are not so lucky.

The last government’s solution to this was to try to deliver all functions of business support itself. From face-to-face consultations to seminars, creating endless online content, and a regional infrastructure, hundreds of millions of pounds was spent delivering it.

Witnessing this over the last few years, I feel that Britain needs a free-market approach to enterprise support and promotion which would involve open-sourcing these services instead of delivering them, using what’s already out there, and working with corporates to assemble a toolkit of offers to help British start-ups get going. And where there are gaps in support, to work and partner with government and business to find solutions.

I teamed up with a group of entrepreneurs who also recognised that the private sector and private individuals, society, could and should ultimately shoulder some of that responsibility alongside, or in some cases potentially instead of government and we decided to look at each constituent part of enterprise support and begin to see if it were possible in each area to provide the same or better, at no cost, or reduced cost to the taxpayer.

Our view was shared by No.10 who have helped turn this vision into a reality. Announced in the Chancellor’s budget speech last week, and launched on Monday 28^th March 2011, StartUp Britain has the full backing of the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and HM Government and has so far gathered the support of over 50 leading national brands.

Ideas for services we’d like to promote include mentoring. We believe that face to face support does not have to be delivered by our own employees or consultants; we believe in the business owner round the corner who wants to advise other entrepreneurs, so our vision for that service could be to see a marketplace online where they can meet each other.

We don’t want to lay on conferences and master classes of our own, because we know that there are already great events being organised across the country. We would prefer to offer a platform, a calendar, to discover and offer your own, and partner with some of them – perhaps a map of Britain showing events up and down the country.

And we don’t want to re-invent the wheel by producing web content, apps, awards, books and videos, but instead signpost, curate, and shine a light on the great resources out there. So we imagined an iTunes-style catalogue of the best of the enterprise-web.

While we were not able to offer all of those ideas at launch, we made a start. We aimed to work quickly and effectively to launch – and with the backing of significant international brands including Google, Microsoft, McKinsey & Co., Barclays, Virgin Media and Yell – we have already, for example, started compiling a benefit package for every start-up in Britain. Some offers will be more useful to others depending on the type of business, but I hope that they may prompt people to take the first steps to go into business. Pledges in week 1 include services and benefits comprising advertising and marketing collateral, office space, broadband, finance and mentoring support for start-up companies. I am offering 25 hours of mentoring sessions, on a first come first served basis. If it is popular I will do more. I’ve spent a fair amount of my time mentoring, since starting Glasses Direct- ever since I reached the point where I felt I had something to teach.  I believe in it. I hope more organisations will come forward, like my co-founders and the corporates who have pledged offers and operational support to us. What you see on the website is just the start.

Similarly, we decided to begin starting to circulate the best useful content to startups by selecting 230 links to great content. We know this represents a fraction of what is already out there, but it is a start, and a start that doesn’t compromise our philosophy of not creating the content ourselves.

Those two functions are all there is to see at the moment at startupbritain.org, but in true Startup mentality, we decided to put them out there, as an ‘alpha’ version of the site, then to iterate and improve the platform based on suggestions and feedback. We want to develop the site in an agile way towards something that could, in time, become a transformative starting point for any business. As we build out the StartUp Britain offering over the next year and beyond, I will ensure that this non-profit making organisation remains stays true to our founding philosophy: that a better model for enterprise promotion consists of knowing what not to do, not competing with the private sector, taking responsibility from the government for delivering some services that they shouldn’t be trying to deliver, and the taxpayer shouldn’t have to fund in their entirety. StartUp Britain will give us the ability, knowing the needs of our businesses and communities to take control in supporting each other. It’s effective, public-spirited, and it can be a big part of restoring a sense of community to Britain.

Last week I visited Westonbirt school near Glasses Direct’s birthplace in Gloucestershire, to speak to the pupils about how I started the online company at university, and the story of how we have got to where we are today. I’m always keen to share my experiences and to help young people find the confidence to go out on their own and make it happen.

I also talked about Orbis,  an eye care charity aimed at preventing blindness and saving sight all over the world, who we support at Glasses Direct. The charity fly to developing countries and carry out surgery on board their plane, which restores sight to the blind, enabling whole families and communities to benefit when the person returns to work/support them. We have raised over £8k for the charity over the years, thanks to the generosity of our customers, and continue to raise awareness of and money for their projects. The school’s audience were incredibly giving with their donations, with a total of £246.56 in collections after the talk which I’d like to thank them again for and have passed on to Orbis. It was an enjoyable visit and one I’d be happy to do again.

Check out this very cool new frame design from Prada’s eyewear collection spotted in the Evening Standard and Grazia magazine today. You can view our retro frame collection here.

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