Direct-to-consumer eyewear brands have been on an interesting journey over the past decade. Probably the most well-known example remains Warby Parker in the US, which ripped up the online eyewear retail manual at the start of the 2010s with a $99 frame and single vision lens offering.
However, it quickly discovered that ‘traditional’ optical practices were not particularly happy with consumers coming in and asking for fitting of their glasses they had purchased online. The company had to pivot, with a slew of bricks and mortar locations providing after sales support, leading to higher prices.
The journey for Scottish eyewear retailer Iolla has been more straightforward, but very much by the founders’ own design. Company co-founder and CEO Stefan Hunter says: ‘We’ve been quite resolute in the model, in that we don’t want a clinical experience, but an experience that changes the way that people buy eyewear. The minute you add a testing environment, we start to look like everyone else.’
Hunter founded Iolla, which means sight in Gaelic, in 2014, after working on an optical industry project during the final year of a business studies degree. It was at this point that Hunter was introduced to Brian McGuire, a former CEO and director of domiciliary provider Visioncall, and former Specsavers joint venture partner.
McGuire (pictured right) offered guidance on the lie of the land in the optical retail industry, giving Hunter as many ideas about what not to do as ideas that could be implemented successfully. McGuire saw promise in Hunter’s vision and the pair set up Iolla.
Creating that experience of buying a pair of glasses that customers would not have experienced before started with a clear pricing strategy: £65 for a frame and single vision lens, and £125 for a frame and varifocal lens.
The in-store experience is where Iolla looks to further differentiate itself, with a no-pressure environment in which customers are encouraged to have fun when browsing for frames, and fashion trend displays join the dots between apparel, accessories and eyewear.
Hunter and McGuire are positive that word of mouth marketing and connections with local communities have been a cornerstone of Iolla’s growth. ‘I’ve had a father come in and shake my hand because our glasses have earned him the first compliment from his daughter in years,’ says Hunter. ‘What an amazing thing to be able to do. That’s the motivation for all of us and what we do and why we stick to what we do.’
Joint adventure
The brand has grown steadily over the past decade, but ambitions for expansion were always to do so when the moment was right. Iolla has four ‘showrooms’ (two in Glasgow, one in Edinburgh and one in Manchester), and now the company is looking to expand with the creation of a joint venture partnership (JVP) scheme.
With lots of experience in the JVP sector in the past, McGuire has seen businesses succeed and fail. He quickly addresses the issue of starting capital: ‘One of the absolutely critical parts of starting a JVP is keeping the costs as low as possible. I’ve seen people at the beginning with £200,000 shop fits, which is absolutely nuts.’
Prospective JVPs should expect to have around £20,000 liquid capital to start with, but there is flexibility in that figure, and McGuire and Hunter encourage potential partners to think a little differently when it comes to the physical location. One new partner is working on converting a shipping container, for example.
What is most important is the partners are part of the fabric of their local community. Because word of mouth marketing has been so successful for the brand thus far, new Iolla showroom owners will have to know local people, and their dogs, by name. Prospective JVPs will be plugged into the established Iolla support network for glazing logistics and will benefit from central marketing support.
Asked if there is a typical Iolla partner, McGuire says there has been a broad mix of backgrounds among the people that have showed an interest thus far. ‘We’re getting a good number of dispensing opticians and even optometrists that want to have conversations with us, possibly because it’s getting harder to become a young owner of a regular optical practice,’ he says.
Hunter adds: ‘We don’t necessarily hire from optics in our own stores because we’ve already shown different backgrounds work well in stores. When I started the business with Brian, I think that we had this great harmony because I was just curious and I wasn’t tainted, for want of a better word, by previous experience of the industry.’
