The Direct challenge

Last summer a rare thing happened to the optical profession. An outsider came along and told it that the way it sold glasses was wrong. What's more the popular media agreed. James Murray Wells tells Rob Moss why his company Glasses Direct is here to stay

There are few people involved in selling glasses who have not followed the well-worn paths through optometry or dispensing colleges. So who would have predicted that a 21-year-old English graduate would have caused much ado about something like James Murray Wells has managed in the past eight months?

In that short time, he has challenged not only the might of the multiples, but also the entire business model upon which optics is built.

The story of how Murray Wells started Glasses Direct will be known to most readers already ... student needs new glasses, is shocked at price, researches market, finds that cost price is less than £7, sets up website.

The business began with a few flyers handed out in Bristol and the message spread by word of mouth until a Daily Telegraph journalist ran with the story on August 18. By September 1, the publicity from the 'silly season' article, as one industry commentator dismissed it at the time, had snowballed. Murray Wells appeared on radio and TV and the message was spreading.

Since then, other than a slight copyright hitch with product images used on the site, everything has gone exactly the way a dot-com entrepreneur would want it to.

Last month saw another wave of publicity: when you suddenly start offering people a product for around 5-10 per cent of the price people are used to, the press will sit up and take notice.

The difference between last August's publicity and that of the past few weeks, says Murray Wells, is that last summer it did not focus so much on the price. 'At no point have we actually pushed this publicity on the price of glasses being at an extortionate level. This is something the press have picked up on. We've sold the story of our business and they've gone out and done the research and decided the price of glasses is extortionate.'

What has riled much of the profession, however, is how few column inches have been allocated to explain why opticians use such high margins on their product, ie to subsidise the cost of their professional time. So does he agree with the popular media's opinion that high-street opticians routinely profiteer?

'The kinds of margins that we're talking about in glasses are much more than the average consumer would expect from a retail product. But we know why that is. Whether or not I think that the prices are justified is a different matter. I mean, of course I'm aware that opticians have other overheads to fund and whatever else, but on the surface of it they are hugely inflated prices.'

Murray Wells believes that until opticians introduce a system whereby the patient pays a fair price for professional time and for products, they will always be susceptible to rip-off allegations.

'Free eye tests' and the £18.39 reimbursed by the DoH for NHS sight test both only serve to devalue the optometrist's input into the healthcare system. 'Then the emphasis changes from being on the optometrist to put up his fees to being on the Government to put up the remuneration.

And I think there would be some serious weight there, opticians have to stand up for themselves in this respect.

'My guess would be if the consultancy fees were put up and opticians stuck to it and held resolute then the Government would be forced to pay for it.'

None of this, however, is Murray Wells' problem, as he looks at it from the consumers' point of view. Multiples' buy-one-get-one-free offers ... which he describes as 'patronising' ... only serve to confuse consumers. 'Customers won't understand why they can get £15 glasses from Glasses Direct and why they have to pay £90 for the same pair at Boots. They won't understand why opticians can afford to give away one pair of glasses, if the first one costs £100.

'There's a serious case here, not just for business model change, but also for honesty and integrity when dealing with patients. The customer is being deceived into believing that they're paying for something that they're not. There's a serious case here of non-transparencyÉif opticians are going to be honest with their patients, then they're going to make the glasses at normal retail price and they're going to make the sight test at the correct fee.'