Glasses direct blog

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…

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!

5 years ago to this day, I first registered Prescription Eyewear Ltd, which is the company that trades as Glasses Direct. On our birthday I thought I’d jot down 10 personally memorable points along the way:

• June 2004 – Launched from my bedroom at University of the West of England and expanded into my parent’s house in Gloucestershire.
• August 2004 – Daily Telegraph runs feature on what we were up to, jump-starting public awareness in the business and beginning a history of media interest in the savings at GD compared with the high street.
• March 2005 – World’s first Virtual Mirror launched, named ‘customeyes’, which was immediately featured on Tonight with Trevor Macdonald and we continued to develop over the following years and can now be seen on our product pages.
• November 2005 – Picked up the UK Shell LiveWire Award with Deidre Walker (our first Finance Manager) and my proud Mother in the audience (almost the entire team at that point!). A great stamp of approval from a fantastic organisation and a real testament to the great work the team had done. The business went on to win a number of other business awards, but this one stands out as the first.
• November 2006 – Gordon Brown talks about Glasses Direct as a symbol of UK entrepreneurship success in Enterprise Week speech. We are often asked to contribute and work with researchers for speeches, degree programs, MBA’s, etc and it’s an honour for our business to be used as a role model.
• September 2007 – Oriental themed Glasses Party on the lawn outside our office barn, at Charlton Park to celebrate first VC investment received. I remember signing the final investment documentation with one of my longest standing angel investors and mentors, Ian McCallum on a picnic table outside the tent. The total we have now raised in the company stands at about £16m.
• September 2008 – Management team recruited, including Kevin Cornils ex- CEO buy.at, and MD EMEA match.com and Howard Bryant, ex-CFO of ecommerce success figleaves.com
• March 2009 – With over 35 different designer brands on the site, designer frames now account for a significant proportion of our sales. We started purely own-brand with ambitions to sell every frame a customer could want. Due to our established position in the optical industry and the quality of our team who work with them, this is now looking possible.
• May 2009 – Double whammy: A hugely upgraded Home Trials offering goes live, allowing you to select up to 4 pairs to demo, and have them delivered to your door in a box, before you buy them. AND we glaze our first pair of glasses in-house using robotic machinery from Weco, in Germany
• May 2009 – With over 250,000 pairs of glasses sold, GD continues to pioneer what Marketing Week recently described as etail 3.0 along with a tremendous peer group of other companies breaking new ground in ecommerce.

Apparently 8 out of every 10 businesses fail in the first 5 years – we have done well to beat the statistics but we know we still have a huge amount of growth ahead of us. The journey so far has been a complete thrill and tonight I will be drinking to/with the team that I’ve been lucky enough to work alongside. Long may it continue.

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!

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.

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?

CrunchGear.com user Billy May sent them these concept sketches for the Nike Hindsight, specially design biking glasses with specifically tuned Fresnel lenses for keeping an eye on approaching taxis/cars/baby strollers. with so many people especially in our London office cycling to work everyday, we think those would make a great product, though the technology won’t be available for a while longer.

We better start saving up

One major issue that lots of people have with trying glasses online is wondering what they’ll look like on your face.

At Glasses Direct we have the most advanced facial recognition software in the UK industry on our site – which we will be developing. Rather than you having to put glasses on your face, our software recognises your facial features and then fits a 3-D model of the glasses onto your face at the appropriate angle.

I grabbed a couple of photos of famous faces – particularly various incarnations of Arnie – to see how it would cope.

All of these have had the glasses added by our software on our site.

The Governator in some cowboy aviators

Conan the specs wearer in margaritas

He can see the predator better if he’s wearing his glasses (lennox £15)

Kate Bosworth looking very alluring in some slightly manly specs (lennox £15 again)

Britney looking super sexy in a pair of Paris

Ms Spears in some Livewires (£25)

Lilo looking good in a pair of Prague (£25)

Who else do you think we should try?

Have a go yourself at www.glassesdirect.co.uk/virtual_mirror.

Try yourself, your mates, or any other celebs you think should be ’specced’. Send us in any images you end up with.

Our lead developer found it even worked for his cat, but our head of IT had less joy with a picture of a dog.

We find the process of how prescription glasses are made fascinating and we think you may too after you read this article. The process of how prescription glasses are made is quite complex, though at Glasses Direct the prices are still lower than the price on the high street as you can see in our comparison table.

The more complex glasses prescriptions go through the following stages, although simpler prescriptions may skip some of the earlier stages:

Stage 1 – The laboratory select the lenses from a number of basic variants. These are pre-formed plastic blocks.

Stage 2 – The lenses are ‘blocked’ and semi-finished so they can be held in the generator – the machine that grinds the lens to shape.

Stage 3 – Your individual lenses are created from a template.

Stage 4 – They’re ‘generated’ – a process which grinds away much of the material of the lens, so that it is the right prescription and shape.

Stage 5 – Next they are polished so they become optically blemish-free.

Stage 6 – The lenses are then edged and marked up – which means their matched with their frame, and verified as being the right prescription.
Stage 7 – Lenses are cut to the right shape.
Stage 8 – Hand-edging removes any sharp edges and ensures a perfect fit with your glasses frame.
Stage 9 – Tints and coatings are added by dipping the lenses in dye or coating chemicals that bond to the lens surface
Stage 10 – The glasses are checked against your prescription for accuracy.

Further checking at Glasses Direct

When the glasses return from the laboratory, they go through a further set of stringent checks by our own quality assurance team who verify they’re the right frames with the correct prescription. We think this final stage is so important that we introduce you to the person who checked your glasses by including a card with your order showing the checks they completed. Once he or she is happy, your glasses are placed in their case with a cleaning cloth, plus any other items in your order, and dispatched via next day delivery. We use a courier so that we can trace the glasses right to your door.

Custom made prescription glasses from just £15!