Christmas shoppers visiting the Lakeside Shopping Centre east of London have been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of an iconic character dressed in red and famous for generous giveaways.
This was, of course, Specsavers founder Dame Mary Perkins, who arrived in Essex to open the multiple's 680th practice in the UK and first ever in a large-scale mall environment.
'It's slightly different to a normal high street because people are possibly more concentrated on doing their Christmas shopping rather than looking after their eyes,' Dame Mary said. 'That being said there are different promotions one can do to get people in over Christmas time.'
The long opening hours, extended to 11pm during the festive period, and high rentals make mall openings a more substantial commitment for retailers, as the empty sight of a closed optical practice across the shiny-floored thoroughfare goes to show.
However, the new Specsavers practice made 450 appointments on its first day of opening. This will go some way to reassuring Dame Mary, who together with husband Doug ranks eighth on the Sunday Times Rich List, that she has made another wise investment.
The Lakeside practice has an Eye Bar area near the frame displays using tablet dispensing tools, in addition to eight dispensing cubicles. A total of 25 practice workers have been hired, with 15-18 staff on shift at any given time including four optometrists.
Managed by two store directors, the practice has eight ergonomic test rooms equipped with sliding fixtures to free up space, while a clinical assessment area has a DRS fundus camera piping retinal images into the test rooms.
In opening the modern practice, Dame Mary was positive about the current cost of such equipment and called on manufacturers to keep prices down for the common good.
She said: 'I think that technology is getting better and better. It's also getting more affordable for optometrists and businesses to buy or lease. Independent opticians can't remortgage their house to buy new equipment, so it's got to become more affordable for everyone, so that more people will buy the affordable equipment, the equipment manufacturers will do well and bring down the prices. That's good for the consumer and good for optics.'
Speaking in one of the new test rooms, Dame Mary added support for independent practices, and said they could even benefit from marketing drives by larger corporate rivals.
'There are people who would perhaps want to see the man round the corner from where they live, the independent, and spend maybe a couple of hours with him or her,' she said. 'It's horses for courses, there's always room for independents and I think they've benefited from all the advertising from the multiples. It's just made people more aware they need a new pair of glasses.'
Over the years many independents have bemoaned the entry of powerful multiples, but Dame Mary also noted that independent practices continued to supply a large chunk of the profession's voucher and health service work. 'I would think they'd find it very difficult to compete with the buying power of multiples, so they have to find what their customers want and what their niche is going to be,' she added.
A heightened public regard for eye health and the purchase of glasses as fashion items were said to have been central to Specsavers' own growth in recent years.
Dame Mary said: 'That's why optics is so different to any retailing outlet because it marries up that professional eye care health side into a modern retail fashion element. You didn't get that years ago, but now it's about trying to get that balance and your staff to work within that balance.'
Meanwhile, the steady flow of desirable fashion frames had made re-glazes largely a thing of the past, she added. 'Now fashion comes into it and, if people are wearing glasses all the time, two years on your face is quite a long time. I suppose that's the consumer era we live in, it goes with clothes, it goes with shoes, it goes with cars and it goes with iPhones.'
Specsavers has also continued to profit from buy-one-get-one-free offers on frames, an idea imported from the US that has also caused a stir on the high street. 'It started off with people just having a spare pair but to be honest it really is about having two different pairs of glasses for different things - go to work in one and go out in something different,' said Dame Mary.
The Specsavers brand has now reached nine global markets outside the UK, with 1,513 optical stores globally, but Dame Mary gave little away about where it was heading next. The short hop from Guernsey to France remains unlikely, however, due to a different professional model whereby ophthalmologists conduct the eye exam.
She said: 'We prefer to have what I would call a one-stop-shop, with the optometrists to the UK standard. This standard is very, very good and we're very strong supporters of optometry in the UK.'
In addition, Specsavers already had 'a lot to do' in the countries it already operates in, which include Ireland, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Spain, Finland, Australia and New Zealand, and so would not take further expansion lightly.
'We're not really in a numbers game. The easiest thing in the world is to open up a box but the more important thing is whether that's successful because all our owners are joint ventures so we have to be successful for them - their whole life depends on it,' Dame Mary added.
'We're sort of marketing-led, as you might imagine with our advertising, but our most important thing is our joint venture partnerships, the support that we give them and how we work together.'
By Joe Ayling, news editor.