Online optician is making high-street chains see red
Glasses Direct, founded by a 21-year-old student, is undercutting the established industry. Matthew Goodman reports
STUDENTS traditionally use alcohol to fuel their mischief-making but 21-year-old budding entrepreneur James Murray Wells is hellbent on causing trouble in a different kind of way. With his newly launched online firm Glasses Direct, he has lobbed a hand grenade into the cosy world of the high-street optician.
Murray Wells... launched his website last summer to sell spectacles at prices far below those of high-street chains such as Boots and Vision Express.
Boots charges £99 for its Alice C1 glasses. Murray Wells said he sells the equivalent for £15. Unsurprisingly, such prices are proving popular and Glasses Direct looks likely to be a hit.
The young entrepreneur set up Glasses Direct when he was in his final year at the University of West of England.
“I went to my optician in Harrow [he studied at the public school there] and I needed some glasses for reading. I wanted a pair of semi-rimless glasses. They cost £149.99. That was half a month’s rent and a hell of a lot of money for a student.”
That expensive eye check-up led Murray Wells to begin investigating why it costs so much to make a pair of specs. All the manufacturers and laboratories he approached for advice stonewalled him. He was on the verge of giving up when one lab in the north of England — Murray Wells won’t reveal which one — gave him the pricing information he so desperately needed.
The student entrepreneur began swapping ideas with his lab contact over several weeks and at one point wanted to see if his germ of a business idea might work. So he sent the lab the prescription for his glasses. It made the glasses for him at a fraction of the price his optician in Harrow had charged. At that point Murray Wells realised he had a potential business on his hands.
After hiring a couple of IT experts through an ad on the university noticeboard, Murray Wells set up shop in the playroom at his parents’ house.
“That was the most exciting period. It’s not the economics that thrills me. It’s the creative side — being able to look over the shoulder of a computer programmer and design a website,” he said.
Murray Wells’s original intention was that the site would “get me a bit of pocket money while I was at university”.
He had been planning to go to a law conversion course at Bristol.
But, as word spread, it soon became clear Glasses Direct was going to be more than a hobby. Initially, Murray Wells would check the site when he went out in the morning and came in at night, responding to any orders that had been placed. “It wasn’t a full-time job, not even for one person.”
Before disappearing for a week’s holiday in Tuscany, Murray Wells handed out a few flyers at Bristol station and placed an ad in a local business directory. By the time he got back, the level of responses had leapt. Soon the operation was taking up four rooms in the house, his mother was feeding a team of eight staff and trying hard to avoid tripping over the web of computer and phone cables.
Murray Wells is coy when it comes to talking numbers, but he reveals that Glasses Direct is selling more than 300 pairs a day and has more than 8,000 customers. Observers estimate that the company’s sales are well over £150,000 and investment has been minimal. But the fledgling venture has not been without hiccups, not least from the established industry, which is understandably wary at the rise of Glasses Direct.
One supplier abruptly refused to do any more work for Murray Wells, without giving a reason. The young entrepreneur suspects it may have come under pressure from one of the traditional opticians.
And the high-street chains are distinctly sniffy about Glasses Direct. A Boots spokesman said that the high-street chain’s prices reflected the level of skill needed to have glasses fitted properly, a service that Glasses Direct does not provide.
Murray Wells holds out the prospect that he could end up being taken over by one of the big boys. He said he was visited last November by three senior directors from one of the top five American chains.
In September Glasses Direct moved to a site outside Malmesbury in Wiltshire and the team has grown to 11. There is also talk of buying a laboratory to make prescription lenses.
“We haven’t even started yet,” said Murray Wells. “What can you expect from us in future? Contact lenses and specialist sports eyewear. We’re working on getting some technology on to the website so customers can see what they look like wearing different glasses.”
As befits a spectacles seller, the vision looks good.