Glasses direct blog

Congratulatons to Nick Blatcher for being our second free glasses for life winner.

When we contacted him he had this to say:

“Thanks a lot, I have only ever won a box of Matchmakers at the school fete before, so this is brilliant.”

We’re so happy that we can bring this kind of joy to people and very much look forward to giving even more free glasses for life away over the next few weeks.

There’s two more weeks left to run in the free glasses for life competition which is drawn at noon every Wednesday, so if you want to win you need to enter the draw which you can do here

Don’t forget you can increase your chance of winning if you refer all of your glasses wearing friends … if they win, you win!!

Our job is to bring the cost of prescription glasses down and to help you enjoy your choice of glasses more.

We’ve gone one step further with a Free Glasses For Life prize draw.

Of all the people we’d love to enter the draw, here are a few of our favourite online personalities and bloggers – what do you say guys, will you enter our draw? We’re not saying your current ones are bad, we’d just love to see you in our Glasses Direct frames!

Top 10 glasses wearers we’d love to enter our draw…

1. Mike Butcher – Always seen out and about at the latest startup and tech business events in his stylish specs, if Mike won he’d never have to ‘invest’ in another pair of glasses again!

2. Stephen Fry – The cream of the Twitterati, Stephen might like a chance of winning some glasses to help him read the thousands of 140 characters messages he gets every day.

3. Hermione Way – Techfluff.tv wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t for Hermione’s signature specs. Perhaps some Ray-Ban style specs will help her stand out when she’s looking for celebs to interview?

4. Jack Schofield – We’d like to ‘Ask Jack’ what glasses he would choose if he won a free pair of glasses for life. It’s a pity we can’t offer him a free smoking pipe for life!

5. Bill Thompson – While there haven’t been any glasses invented to see into the future (yet), no doubt Bill T will be the first person to get his hands on them when they do.

6. Biz Stone – Best known as one of the co-founders of micro-blogging service Twitter, this glasses-wearing entrepreneur also helped make Xanga, Blogger, Odeo, and Obvious. Biz is based in the USA but if he wanted a pair of glasses from us next time he’s in the UK we’d be able to help

7. Charlie Leadbeater – Author of ‘We-think’, Charles is a leading authority on innovation and creativity.  Charlie’s got some really cool black glasses so maybe he’d be interested in trying some of our colourful styles.

8. Cory Doctorow – He’s a busy man: science fiction novelist, blogger, technology activist, co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing (boingboing.net) amongst others. For such a busy man, our home trials service and online ordering are a must!

9. Andy McLoughlin – we could have chosen Andy or his co-founder Alistair but we love the work that Andy and his team at Huddle are doing around web innovation. They’re based in London so will want some of our most classy designer-style frames.

10. Dan Martin – The Editor of BusinessZone.co.uk, advice for small businesses in the UK. Dan seems to prefer the titanium style glasses so he might like to try one of our black, acetate ranges to see how he likes them.

Here are the details of the draw: up to 8 people will never pay for glasses again, we’ll give them new prescription glasses every year for the rest of their life. You can enter the prize draw at www.freeglassesforlife.co.uk

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.

This year we asked for ideas, pictures, suggestions for the design on the front of our free microfibre cleaning cloth that comes with each pair of specs that we ship. You can see the original post about the competion here.

The competition closed on February the 27th and we had tons of entries. We’ve tried to get in touch with everyone who took the time to send us their ideas to say thank you as I’ve been overwhelmed by the response. Some of the people we’ve been in touch with said that we could publish their entry on our blog, so Paula Norris our graphic designer, has knocked them up into a big mosaic. Now for the difficult part of choosing the winner. Stay tuned for a further update…

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.

We send out a free microfibre cleaning cloth with every pair of glasses we sell. This year we will be redesigning it, and I thought that it would be best if the challenge of designing it was opened up to you, as well as us

My own entry will be based on inspiration from Damien Hirst’s dots – I think the picture’s called Opium…

If you’re up for this then you’ll need to email me your entry. This can be either a fully fledged photoshop file, a link to something that provides inspiration, a scan of a doodle on the back of an envelope, or anything really that conveys the idea for the design. We can do the final artwork. Make sure that you send it to Cloth Design Competition by Friday 27th February at 6pm. We’ll then set about the task of picking the winner.

In return, well, all we can offer you is the immense sense of satisfaction from seeing your design/doodle/creation end up on our cleaning cloths for at least a year, with a namecheck at the bottom ‘Cloth design by [your name]‘, a blog post putting you and your design on a podium, and a lifetime’s supply of cleaning cloths! We’ll also throw in a pair of glasses of your choosing from the website to the lucky winner.

Good luck!