Glasses direct blog

When I arrived into the office this morning I was greeted with a fairly bulky parcel on my desk, something that I’m not entirely used to considering I do everything online. So like a child at Christmas I couldn’t wait to get it open. After much fiddling about with a plenitude of sticky tape (it was well wrapped), with my eager anticipation slowing me down somewhat, I eventually made it into the package. To my great surprise, out came a hefty chunk of an Econsultancy award for innovation in E-commerce.

I didn’t even know such an award existed let alone that we had been shortlisted as a potential winner for the Econsultancy Innovation Awards 2009, so it was a nice suprise to see that the industry recognises all of the innovation and hard work that has and continues to go into building the site and services, our aim is to ensure that as many people out there have the option available to them to buy their glasses online with 100% confidence and that they will get a top service and quality pair (or pairs with our 2 for 1 offer) of glasses at much less cost than the high street can or will offer.

Whilst I would dearly love to take all of the credit for winning this award I am truly only part of the picture, this award goes to each and every person that makes up the company for all the hard work and attention they have put into their respective areas, from development, customer services, dispatch through to the dispensing opticians, for making the company what it is today, so on behalf of the whole company I would like to say a massive thank you to Econsultancy we accept this award with eternal gratitude and hope to continue to innovate long into the 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!

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.

Free glasses for life I hear you say? That’s right, you heard correctly – you may never have to pay for prescription glasses ever again.

Glasses Direct introduce Free Glasses for Life, a prize draw where up to 8 lucky winners will win a new pair of glasses every year for the rest of their lives. Winners can choose any style from our own-brand range once a year and we’ll expertly make them up to their prescription with their choice of lenses and coatings – a saving of thousands of pounds!

More about the draw…

We are the UK’s largest internet prescription glasses retailer. Until we started causing a stir in a stuffy industry in 2004, buying prescription glasses was expensive – up to £400 for designer spectacles. Not anymore. Through us, you can buy the frames and lenses you’ll find on the high street, but from £19. Which means you can now afford to have fun with your glasses, buying your favourites in several colours, and different styles for different occasions.

We came up with the Free Glasses for Life idea to get people thinking about how much they spend on glasses, and how much they can potentially save, even if they don’t win. Every entrant will qualify for an immediate 10% saving off our already low prices.

How do we do it?

Because we don’t have to pay for middlemen, stores, or the expensive machinery needed to offer eye tests, we save our customers a small fortune. We use the same frames, lenses and laboratories that the big opticians do, and our all our dispensing opticians are registered with the General Optical Council, so quality is guaranteed. You just pay less, and have more choice. A win/win situation if ever we laid eyes on one! We even offer a 30 day no-quibble money back guarantee.

Multiply your chances by five or ten times…

There’s a chance to make one of your friends very happy. You can register friends for the draw too and if one of them wins, you will both win Free Glasses for life so the more friends you add, the more chances you have of winning!

You will be given the option to do this after you enter your email address into the draw, we will send them an email about the draw on your behalf – they will not be added into the draw without their approval so don’t have to worry about us spamming them.

So go ahead and enter the draw by going to the Free Glasses for Life site now and you never know your luck, don’t forget to tell all your friends that wear glasses too – it’s a chance in a lifetime offer.

The Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion (QAEP) celebrates and recognises the activities of individuals who have played an outstanding and significant role in promoting enterprise skills and attitudes to others in the UK.

Jamie Murray Wells, Glasses Direct’s founder, has been recognised for his great vision and expertise and will be decorated with the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion at the age of 26, making him the youngest ever recipient of this coveted award.

In 2004 Jamie Murray Wells started Glasses Direct from his parent’s sitting room at the age of 21, and his business has now become the world’s largest online retailer of prescription glasses shipping a pair every few minutes around the clock, with sales now over 250,000 pairs, and saving the UK public in excess of an estimated £30 million on their prescription glasses.

How does Jamie promote enterprise? Even though he has headed up the company on a fulltime basis for four and a half years throughout this period of intense growth, Jamie has also found the time to help other people make it in business, using the experience he has had bringing his business from the bedroom to the boardroom. Enterprise Promotion to students, budding businessmen, FTSE 100 executives, underpriviledged, SME’s, schools, universities, and cabinet politicians alike has been a top priority throughout his journey so far, where other entrepreneurs might have focused single-mindedly on their business instead.

Despite founding and driving his company to a position where it is now the world’s largest online retailer of prescription glasses, Jamie Murray Wells has dedicated significant amount of his time and energies to helping UK PLC by make enterprise promotion a top priority, at such an early part of his career, relative to other enterprise promoters. His commitment to helping young entrepreneurs covers a wide variety of bases and comes in many different guises, including judging for awards programmes, mentoring, speaking engagements, writing in newspapers and magazines, advisory roles to Government level, and investment in new and emerging young entrepreneurs.

The Prime Minister Gordon Brown recommended to the Queen last month that Jamie be presented with the QAEP award. Jamie will be presented with an Engraved chalice and Grant of Appointment at a reception hosted by Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace on July 13th. Jamie is one of the youngest ever people to be on the list of Queen’s Birthday Awards announced today, on the Queen’s birthday, in the London Gazette. This makes him holder of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion.

Ever since we first made buying spectacles over the web possible, we’ve been searching for innovative ways to let you ‘try before you buy’. Back in 2005 we launched the world’s first virtual mirror on our website. Today, we’ve created something just as revolutionary – our 10-day Home Trial.

This new service is now live and allows you to order up to four pairs of glasses to try on at home or work. Once ordered the glasses are delivered by post in a cool box that opens out into a pop-up stand, enabling you the opportunity to experience and try on glasses anyway, anyhow, anywhere you want. You send the glasses back to us in that same box, freepost, when you’re done.

Whenever I’m in a high street opticians store, I always want to make a shortlist of frames, and then take them home to show people and get their opinion. But you cant do that. I dont expect Dolland and Aitchison would be happy if we just walked out with a handful of frames! Equally, you might get strange looks if you took a suitcase of clothes into your high street optician and tried on 4 pairs of different glasses with different outfits. Now however, you can shop like a celebrity and have the glasses sent directly to you.

We want this service to provide you with a superior shopping experience to the high street.

It costs just £5 to have up to four pairs sent to you at home or work. When you find the glasses that are right for you, pop the box back in the post and we’ll make them up to your prescription. We’ll also reimburse the small fee once you’ve placed an order.

Why not show us your trial specs or your new glasses once you’ve ordered them? You can upload pics to our Flickr group My new glasses!

Everybody Needs A Mentor

Are you looking to start a business but don’t know where to start? Don’t worry, help is at hand, the Times are now giving you the opportunity to be mentored by one of five experts at the top of their fields, one of those mentors being our very own Jamie Murray-Wells. Each mentor is giving away their time for free for at least one hour a month for a whole twelve months which is an amazing opportunity for five lucky people.

If you’re feeling inspired but need that extra nudge in the right direction then read Jamie’s story and see that you are in for a lot of hard work, ups and downs but with the right mentors behind you, you can and will be successful just like him.

Starting up a business: Jamie Murray-Wells, 25, CEO and founder of Glasses Direct

I caught the bug for my own business as a student of English at the University of the West of England. I was always looking for opportunities. Glasses was my third idea. I’d researched a gambling model and property but, while ideas kept coming, I knew that I couldn’t afford to get too sentimental. So when they didn’t work, I ditched them. I stumbled over glasses by accident.

While studying, I needed to buy a pair for reading. I visited an optician, bought some with metal frames and came out £150 worse off. I couldn’t understand why they were so expensive, so I did some research. Manufacturers were loath to give up their secrets but finally one revealed that the average pair of glasses is made for just £7. They agreed to supply me and I set up a website selling glasses from £15.

I set up the company with £1,100, the last instalment of my student loan. All the cost went on the web design. I put a notice on the board at uni, paid a guy £7 an hour to help to set up the business and persuaded the lab to hold the stock. When the orders came in, I’d got the cash upfront and the lab sent the glasses to the customer. The lab asked for money a month later, so I had two months before handing it over.

I started up in a student house in Bristol, then moved to my parents’ house in Malmesbury. At one point we had eight people at home; we chucked my sister out of her room and Mum and Dad were doing bacon rolls like a staff canteen.

The eureka moment came a fortnight after we’d started and the messages were coming in on the answer machine faster than I could delete them. We’d done no advertising, except to hand out leaflets at the local station. The biggest risk is putting your money where your mouth is and so signing a six-month lease on a converted barn, six weeks in, was terrifying.

In the first year, we had a turnover of £1 million and last year, it was £5 million. We are now selling one pair of glasses every three to four minutes, or 450 pairs a day, 3,500 a week. We’ve grown 50 to 100 per cent year-on-year and have probably saved the British public £50 million on prescription glasses.

Why I want to help

One of the biggest hurdles facing a person setting up his or her own business, is raising finance. In our case, we found that you don’t get a £5 million turnover with just £1,100. So by the summer of 2007 we found that we had to raise £3 million from venture capitalists. These outfits invest only in seven or eight companies a year, and positioning ourselves took a lot of time and hard work. On the day that we completed, our money was running out. It was terrifying. So in the morning we were preparing for the worst, and by the evening we were celebrating with £3 million in the bank.

When I was starting up ten business angels invested in me. They offered finance but also gave valuable advice. I’m keen to extend that ladder, partly because I feel that, as a young entrepreneur, I could really add to the experiences of others. I can talk about which investment or marketing methods worked for me and give advice accordingly. Ideally, the person I mentor would be interested in setting up a disruptive business, ie, one like mine that will change the marketplace, rather than an hotel which is more of the same. Starting out on your own is a big risk. He or she has to be passionate about the project before them, be open to new ideas and be prepared for the ups and downs.

Above all, it’s got to be cracking idea – a category-killing idea.

How to apply

In no more than 300 words, explain what your project is and in what ways you hope Jamie will help you. Then send your e-mail to the email address below. The selection process will take about a month, at which stage the winning entrants will meet Jamie for the first time. Your progess will be featured in a year-long series of follow-up articles in times2 and in this blog too.

mentor-james@thetimes.co.uk

Don’t delay, get those killer ideas across to Jamie today and good luck to you all.

Picture by tahir

A massive milestone in our company’s development happened today

Hats off to the IT guys who made it happen, who are now bleary eyed and clutching Eat Breakfast rolls.

If you visited the website from 11pm-12pm you will have noticed an ‘out to lunch message’ instead of the homepage. In fact, the lights were on in our offices above Baker Street until 4am as the ‘classic’ website which has served us since 2004 was relegated and the website we referred to as ‘Beta’ became the new Glasses Direct.

What you see now as our website represents a significant step forward in customer experience . Here are my top 5 new features:

1. Our Virtual Mirror software. Developed in France by our brilliant facial recognition experts – what you see online now represents the pinnacle of innovation in try-on technology. The most exciting bit is that what’s live now is actually just the first iteration and there is much, much more to come. 3D try-on and exact measurement scaling is only a breath away, so watch this space.

2. More categories – you can now shop for glasses in many different ways. On the high street you look at shelves marked ‘semi-rimless, rimless, designer etc’ but not everyone wants to shop for glasses using those categories. Now we let you shop by gender, price, material, lens type, whether they are rock ‘n roll glasses, designer brand – and many more which we are still working on such as face shape.

3. Reviews, videos, measurements, data – we give you much more information than you will ever find on the high street about our products. No sales rep in Specsavers can furnish you with the amount of data the web can…. And we’re building up a library of it. You will soon find celebrities who wear similar pairs of glasses to the one you’re looking at, staff reviews from GD, and also we are going to let you know in more detail what other customers are buying. I particularly like the bendable video David did to illustrate the indestructibility of those frames. More to come

4. Inputting your prescription and choosing lenses. We have undoubtedly the most advanced system to prompt you and help you as you enter your prescription and choose lenses. We’ve been on our backs underneath the car since day one, fiddling with the nuts and bolts, chopping and changing and finding the best way we can help you to checkout. 4 years of experience is rolled into this new order process and we hope that you like it. Because it’s not exactly simple –all this – and our mission is to make it so.

5. This blog! David and Ran are the mainstays of this blog, doing a fine job producing great articles. Keep checking and contributing.

There is so much more that goes behind the website –which tracks your glasses through the laboratory, which gives our customer service teams the information they need when you call, that tells us how many pairs we have left till we run out….. but today represents a big big step forward for the front-end customer experience. Round of applause for the David Carruthers, Head of User Experience and the IT team that made it all happen!

Noticed something different about us http://beta.glassesdirect.co.uk? The jazzier look, the spring in our step… It’s all rather exciting here at Glasses Direct. It was time for a change, and we’ve spread our wings in time for summer with a fresh new look we hope inspires you.

Rest assured our values are the same. Our priority remains giving you excellent glasses and service, while helping you save money. That’s why our glasses still start at £15, and why you can now search for them five– yes five– ways:

- by gender (men’s, women’s, unisex)
- by price
- by material (plastic or metal)
- by lens type, and
- by brand.

About time, don’t you think? No more feeling pressurised to spend lots of money on a single pair of glasses in a claustrophobic high street optician’s for us, thankyouverymuch. Now we feel totally in control of choosing the clever little bits of plastic and metal that make a difference to our lives. And we hope you come to feel the same way too. We don’t think of ourselves as revolutionising the glasses market for nothing…

We’ve also revamped the How to Order glasses section, and added informative features about how to get your prescription, the history of glasses (more interesting than you might think), and more.

Have you seen our latest catalogue, too? It has – for the first time – a range of designer non-prescription sunglasses from CliC, Kangol, and Bollé among others. Plus the order form’s now simpler to fill in. You can order a free glasses catalogue here.

We hope you’re as happy with the new us as we are. We’re open to any and all ideas that might make us better. Send thoughts, sketches or moments of genius to
feedback@glassesdirect.co.uk.

It’s not always serious here at Glasses Direct – we know how to have fun and now you can join us. To celebrate the launch of our new retro fashion glasses range, we created an addictive game everyone can play. Your goal is to use your glasses to shoot down the letters before they get to you. Create a private league between your friends or compete in a public league for your chance to win a discount code across the range. Who said shopping and play don’t mix… start playing the retro invasion game.