You know what that means? Nope, we’re not joining Greenpeace and don’t expect you to either (you can if you want- send us a postcard or something). BUT, we are going to think long and hard about what we can do to look after our Earth that little bit more this year and continue with the do-gooding. You see, we learnt a lot from designing our own eco-conscious range, Element earlier on this year and it felt great knowing that our range of glasses were helping sustain the world’s resources.
Everyday can be a day that’s a do-good day (try saying that after a shandy!) From taking re-useable bags or old plastic bags to the shops instead of using their plastic bags, to turning off the lights when we leave the room. It’s the little things that count towards keeping the Earth ticking over. We’d like to hear about what it is you’ll be doing more or less of to help conserve our planet.
Tell us and spread the love. Now go hug a tree….
Turn those lights off!
(80s manicure optional)
Re-use your plastic bags… for anything you fancy.
Opt for recycled frames…..
Element Eyewear- The Caprio
…and responsibly made threads, ladies (any excuse to shop,eh?)
H&M's New SS12 Ad Campaign
What are you going to do? We want to hear ALLLLL about it!
Posted on: April 17th, 2012 by Sarah
For all you tech-loving people out there, our Chief Technology Officer, Mark Wood explains the ins and outs of what goes on behind the scenes at GD. Literally.
‘Since starting here in April 2011 I’ve had the opportunity (and challenge!) to completely build the technology team back up from a base where the existing team was failing and the Technology team was not delivering change and driving GlassesDirect forward. Building new teams is something that I’ve been lucky enough to do a few time before, especially during my time at Betfair but this was my first time as an organisation’s CTO. There are many aspects to building a successful new team from bringing in the right talent to choosing which fires to fight first to implementing the right processes and tackling inertia already within an organisation but for the purpose of this first posting I’ll tackle a subject close to my heart, the product deliver process. In my opinion software development is a modern day manufacturing process, in the way that car production or other factory based manufacturing is seen and I am a firm believer that if the business approaches it with this mentality it this will help drive the business in the right direction in terms of interacting and thinking about how to use this valuable resource but still appreciating the human aspect of it.
The delivery process we have chosen is agile.During my time at Tradefair and then subsequently back at Betfair I worked to roll out agile (SCRUM specifically) development to teams and that is what we have implemented here at GlassesDirect. My experience of this methodology really showed me this was the way to provide the stakeholders and customers with control of WHAT gets built, ensures they are EMPOWERED to make the PRIORITY calls and understand the COST of the requests that are raised. It crucially also really helps promote responsibility and accountability for story delivery and issue resolution within the Technology team whilst also avoiding death marches and unsatisfied stakeholders.
So what size team is involved in the change here at GlassesDirect.com? It has fluctuated, but currently 1 x QA, 8 x Dev / Architecture / FE and 1 product manager plus a 2 x Dev Ops / Sys Admin / office support team. I like to think of it as small but incredibly nicely formed. We have followed the SCRUM process tightly but now, after 9 months of running with this, the team is really starting to flavour the ceremonies and processes to the way we want to work and the specific challenges we have to face. Whether this is through the daily pointing of stories with integrated tasking, or through the revolving of the ScrumMaster function (we don’t have a dedicated ScrumMaster here) throughout the team.
It has taken a while to roll out Scrum within the organisation. Rolling a new process out to a technology team poses one set of issues, but we had another challenge which was establishing a product function and then get the stakeholders to understand and start playing by the new rules. I’m pleased to say that this is something that is really getting traction within the organisation now and the route from idea through to delivered product is well understood and has become part of people’s thinking. The process feels current and it is as simple as it could be, although there is always room for improvement (I’ll be writing a blog on retrospectives and why all teams should have them later on). Within our 2 week sprints we can see products moving rapidly from idea to production and start gaining immediate business benefit. And, if I take the months of Feb and March we have delivered 129 points worth of stories and 67 new features / defect fixes have been deployed to production.
We’ve decided to go with Rally (http://www.rallydev.com/) as our agile management tool of choice. It is built specifically for Scrum and after a learning period which, was as much about learning the new Scrum process as the tool itself we now see it as an integral part of our tool set which helps us deliver to the level we do.
The GD Tech Team's Link Wall
Changing or implementing a new process is never easy, especially if people already have preconceived ideas about what agile ‘means’. My experience here was that agile/Scrum was very confused with hot housing a team and creating a new, rapidly evolved product in a very short time-boxed period. This took time to change but the real catalyst was when people began to see the changes both in process but also in the delivery of new features. Personally, I’m excited by the next level we are moving toward technically, which is the ability to take more advantage of our excellent automated test coverage, development processes and to push on towards continuous deployment (we’re getting really quite close)!
Maybe the next blog should be about the toolset and the development mentality we have here, would that be of interest? Please let me know and if you’d like to discuss this or anything else in the tech blog please feel free to drop me a mail – mark.wood@glassesdirect.com
Posted on: April 13th, 2012 by Sarah
Last week Kevin, Bob, and I were lucky enough to visit Zappos, a US company who sell a huge amount of shoes online, and spent half a day touring their facilities and spending time with a couple guys who work there.
Here is what I think are the most remarkable things about Zappos, which provide inspiration to us and are relevant to any consumer company:
1. The powerful and truthful brand that the whole company upholds. Their brand is founded on Core Values – we call them principles at GD- and are religiously subscribed too. They do not claim to do too much, but what they say they do, they do 110%. External brand agencies have not been let anywhere near it. Their brand has been allowed to evolve over 10 years and pervades company culture to an extent I have never witnessed. The best effect of this in my opinion is that commercial decisions become no-brainers with the backdrop of such a prevalent sense of reason d’etre.
2. All areas of the business are focused on Wow’ing their customers – striving to create a ‘personal emotional connection’. Their ‘Wows’ please customers, and the obvious offshoot of this is that they drive talkability, repeat purchase (and therefore lower costs of acquiring customers) – because everyone is focused on creating new wow’s, the whole company orientates their thinking (and, their spending) naturally towards the customer. At GD, our customer is our boss- and it is great to see a company that truly believes that their customer is more important than their management, shareholders, board and themselves, as well. And they go about every day and decision proving that. Zappos spends approximately just 2% of it’s annual revenues ($18m last year) on marketing. Wows are the reason why.
3. In terms of literal customer service, they’ve renamed it ‘Customer Loyalty’. Customer Loyalty is not a call center, but an extension for them of brand marketing. CL agents are brand marketers driving loyalty – and they really do; 75% of sales revenues come from existing customers, which is a figure that we aim to one day achieve. Rather then spend their bucks on re-acquiring customers, they make absolutely customers have such a good experience that they come back.
The data speaks for itself in terms of results. In all 3 of the points above Zappos, ‘a service company that happens to sell shoes’, is stronger in my opinion than the ecommerce ‘gold standard’ Amazon which even if it is predominently in other verticals, already looks dangerously like the vulnerable incumbant. Companies like ours should study Zappos now to understand the future of ecommerce.
Posted on: February 17th, 2009 by Jamie
The Opus Design Award is a Japanese based competition for people wishing to ‘Deliberate Today through the subject of eyewear’ if you please.
There’s some lovely ideas. Who knows how many we’ll see on sale at Glasses Direct in the future?
This years winner was ‘Switch’, a photochromic pair of glasses where the entire pair change in sunlight, not just the lenses.
Project here
The silver prize went to the thought provoking idea of glasses for blind people – so that the glasses actually indicate the blindness instead of/as well as the stick:
Project here
These are slightly scary. Clamping to your face.
Project here
However the best for my money are these, if only for the dodgy translation. They’re glasses designed to counter the problem of the lenses steaming up when eating hot food.
When you eating hot food,
the misty in glesses is the most besetment for people
who put on a pair of glesses.
But it is discourteous that somebody usually shave the glesses.
Easy to shave the glesses not only well-mannered but also elegance
Project here
Here’s one that went from crazy design in 2002, into production
Let us know any you think are particularly good.
Note: the main awards site does have a few broken links on it, but it’s worth persevering.
Posted on: January 20th, 2009 by Mark H
All companies make mistakes in their advertising from time to time (I recall roping in Nancy Sorrell in 2005 as a one-time model which generated very little awareness for us and cost a fortune) but most companies learn from their mistakes and react quickly to them.
2009 has brought with it a wave of repeat broadcasts of the Specsavers TV ad featuring Edith Piaf. I dont listen to her music, but like many people (especially since the recent film about her life La Vie en Rose) I am aware of her talent as arguablly France’s greatest popular music singer ever, and her tragic and premature death.
Edith Piaf would be turning in her grave if she could see this advert. This is a song that the French regard as something of a national anthem, about someone who was a chronic alcoholic and drug user looking back on her life, and saying that she regrets nothing; that all the pain was worth it for her to become the person she now is. It is poignant and heartfelt. (reference)
Whoever sold her out to Specsavers must regret doing so – I’m just suprised Specsavers hasnt stopped broadcasting this once it became clear how misguided it was. The Guardian called it ‘sacrilege, vandalism, and just plain wrong‘. I just did a google search, and it looks like it’s been shorlisted by someone as one of ‘TV’s worst adverts’ and someone else on page 1 of the listings calls it ‘evil’ . As I speak, the latest comment on youtube reads ‘I’m sure I’ve seen a worse ad than this. But I can’t think what it is. ‘.
Specsavers’ advertising can be impressive, like the viral Barclaycard style ad, but surely it’s time for these particular broadcasts to stop?
Posted on: January 8th, 2009 by Jamie
Image courtesy of Word Freak
I have to say it’s not a stereotype that I’ve noticed being true, apart from in movies & on the TV, but it’s nice to have conclusive evidence that backs it up:
“We have literally busted the myth that people who wear glasses are introverted or have particular personality characteristics. They are more likely to be agreeable and open, rather than closed and introverted,” said A/Prof Paul Baird of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Eye Research Australia.
Generally a nice bunch then. Up the speccies!
It does however go on to say that there are some serious points for eye health, as some younger people resist wearing glasses because of the fear of preconceptions that others have.
“This shows that people, particularly children, should not avoid or delay wearing glasses due to preconceived ideas about what it would imply about their personalities.”
It did make me think that although the wearing of glasses in itself doesn’t imply particular personality traits, what does my choice of glasses get across about my mood on a particular day?
I think that deserves a post of it’s own.
Link to the research:
http://uninews.unimelb.edu.au/articleid_5073.html
Posted on: April 18th, 2008 by Mark H
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