Eschewing the usual post-university treadmill of milkround job interviews and graduate trainee schemes, Jamie Murray Wells dared to take on the high street opticians instead, by offering value glasses through his website Glasses Direct.
But unlike many who dream of starting their own business, Murray Wells, now 25, wasn’t fixed on one idea. In fact, the online glasses retail concept wasn’t his first choice.
“I’d tried out a couple of other business ideas; I’d researched them, and bounced them off friends and Glasses Direct was third time lucky. I was able to set up Glasses Direct because I didn’t get sentimental about the ideas that didn’t work. So I was able to skip through them, where others see them as their baby,” says Murray Wells.
And as with so many great entrepreneurial ideas, the inspiration was born from personal need. While searching for new glasses, Murray Wells was struck by the incongruity of the high cost for a product whose raw materials were simply glass and wire.
“When I looked into it I found this laboratory in Lancashire that would help. I sent them my prescription and received a pair of glasses. So in one hand I was holding a pair of £150 glasses and in the other these for £6 – and they were exactly the same quality,” he explains.
And so the genesis of Glasses Direct came about. The web was the obvious choice of channel, providing the means for him to establish the business with relatively little funds. With the arrogance of youth and a ready supply of cheap student labour Murray Wells got the ball rolling.
“At university I knew a web designer who I paid £6 to £7 an hour. The web was a great way to get an idea out to a national audience quickly without risking too much. For me, I was at university, I had time and resource – people around me were specialists in their field – and I could work part time and invest my student loan in the business.”
With the help of very accommodating parents who let him run the business from their home, and his £1,000 student loan, Glasses Direct came into being in 2004. “I ran it from my bedroom. There were people working there, the hallway was the dispatch, Mum and Dad were cooking bacon sandwiches like the works canteen. It was crazy, a real rollercoaster,” he recalls.
Rattling the competition
The business grew rapidly, not least because the company was saving people up to £150 on the price of high street glasses. Before long they were shifting up to 100 pairs a day and his parents were left in peace when office space was secured.
But unsurprisingly this business – which now has a multi-million pound annual turnover and employs 60 people – rattled the high street opticians. Murray Wells admits the pressure they exerted was his biggest challenge.
“The high street optician saw a big competitor coming in, undermining its business model, exposing the high margins, and it didn’t like it. They put every obstacle in our way in the early years. They forced our suppliers to stop doing business with us, to such an extent that our website had to go down for a few weeks when we’d just started.
“Small businesses are just as susceptible to dirty tricks as the big boys. Anybody doing anything very disruptive needs to be aware of that. The more they kick and scream the more you know you’re doing something right. At the end of the day it’s the consumer that wins,” he says.
He acknowledges that the two major barriers to the business have been the fact that shoppers can’t try on the glasses and that they tend to be loyal to their optician. The latter is mostly overcome by the value proposition and is also helped by a more entrenched mindset in consumers to shop around for the best deal.
Virtual fitting service
Murray Wells has turned to technology to help overcome the issue of trying on. The site now offers a 3D virtual mirror, which allows shoppers to use their webcam to see themselves on the computer wearing their chosen style of glasses.
“It’s taking the high street shopping experience and improving it. Online you can take your time, share it with friends to get their opinion,” he says. For those less technology-savvy there is also an at-home service where the frames are delivered for the customer to try and then return.
It was tough in the early days, admits Murray Wells. Not only was there the onslaught from the established opticians, but there was also the disadvantage of his youth and being taken seriously by suppliers. But he’s in a different position with Glasses Direct today.
“Now we’re an established player and have the designer brands falling over themselves to do business with us, laboratories wanting to supply us. People have come to accept that, like in travel and banking, online is here to stay,” he says.
Jamie Murray Wells’ five top tips for running a business solely online
- The online market is ideal for taking low-cost risks. Take advantage of it.
- Choose a completely new concept or improve on an existing one. Find a problem and engineer a solution that removes the pain to create a disruptive business.
- Grow organically. Don’t go to Canary Wharf straight away. There’s no stigma attached to starting in your garage. It will also keep your risks low.
- Let your business expand at the pace it needs to. Don’t stifle it by hanging on to your equity. Instead make sure you raise capital when you need it.
- Start networking. There are lots of people looking for opportunities to collaborate, and events such as Second Chance Tuesday, a drinks party for online entrepreneurs, will help you find them.
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