In April, Specscart founder Sid Sethi was named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list among the most promising entrepreneurs and leaders.
Next came recognition from The Sunday Times in July when the national newspaper identified the Manchester-based business as Ones to Watch because of its growth potential.
Sethi told Optician that being selected was validation that he and his colleagues were doing the right thing. ‘I’ve spoken to optical industry people and often they do not like your ideas because a lot of the time people think about doing things in the old fashioned way.
‘When you hear this, you start doubting yourself but these awards and getting featured on that list were the biggest validation that I could have received. I’m deserving to be the CEO and managing director of the company and I’m leading it in the right direction,’ he explained.
When Specscart launched in 2018, Sethi received disparaging comments about quick growth being unsustainable and was questioned about the services offered.
However, Sethi said he was driven by data and a significant number of people were searching online for next day delivery of spectacles. Today, Specscart provides that service and ships to 120 countries.
Building a Brand
The Specscart story started when Sethi broke a pair of frames two days before his last accounting exam when studying at the University of Manchester.
He realised that as a student, the average pair of glasses at all the multiples could cost him between £150-250 without extras or choosing a designer frame, which he said would have taken the price to as much as the latest iPhone at the time.
Sethi also found the user experience to be poor with frames locked away on display and waiting weeks for his order to arrive. He started to research the optical industry and thought he could deliver an enjoyable shopping experience where shoppers would have transparency over pricing and a quicker service.
Sethi received a start-up award from the Albert Gubay Foundation, which included a rent-free space in Manchester’s Walkden town centre, and so his journey began.
He eventually moved into B2B wholesale as a sales rep, visiting independent optical practices across the country to showcase frames. However, his end goal was to create a website that was an e-commerce marketplace because he had identified that the eyewear industry was shifting online.
‘The whole point was to change the way people think about glasses. Glasses are more than just a medical instrument. The main purpose is for sight correction but if you look at it from a different perspective, the entire planet wears sunglasses. So, why shouldn’t spectacles also be worn by people as a fashion accessory?’ he said.
Sethi’s first step was to eliminate the middleman and save customers money by handling part of the manufacturing himself and launching a laboratory, which he claimed was one of the fastest and best in the country.
He also designed a 'try at home' service where four frames were sent with three lenses and an ultraviolet laser, so customers can try an everyday lens, a photochromic lens or a digital lens.
Marginal gains
Sethi said most multiples at the time had centralised their labs and moved them abroad, while Specscart’s lab in Bury helped them achieve ‘an efficiency rate that nobody can think of’.
‘We started running our lab thinking about how a restaurant or a high-end coffee shop operates. Because in the end you have different processes; tray glazing, edging, mounting, then fitting and checking. We streamlined every single process,’ he said.
Sethi explained he used his background in IT and business to create custom software that worked with its practices and website to communicate with the lab before an order comes in.
He loaded that software onto an Essilor Mr Blue machine, so that it knew what job was coming, what type of job it was and what configuration it needed edging at.
‘Over Christmas and New Year, I went into the lab when we were shut for a week because I knew when we’d come back, there would be loads of orders. Usually, our orders dip in December but this year somehow our orders skyrocketed. Instead of bothering my team, I went in myself, ran the machine and did data entry,’ he said.
Sethi realised he did not know half of the information because he needed the experience of his technicians. He also saw that he could only run the machine on its three default settings.
‘I got inside the box and got help from Essilor’s IT team. I learned from the past 80,000 jobs and applied machine learning on it. A couple of weeks ago, we made the software live that we have customised for our lab. Now, the lab already knows what our technicians would do when a minus seven comes in and if it’s a supra.
‘The machine’s constantly learning from what they’re doing and the next time when that job comes in, their expertise gets applied in those machines. That’s how we’ve achieved consistent quality, the speed that we are doing within 24 hours and still being able to minimise costs with product produced in the UK,’ he said.
Serving the nation
The Specscart bricks and mortar practices offer a relaxed environment because Sethi believed patients should not feel intimidated.
‘We should normalise things so that going to an optician becomes fun, it becomes enjoyable. Shopping for glasses is something that people look forward to at Specscart,’ he added.
With three practices open currently, Sethi has plans to slowly expand in the northwest and then nationwide over the next five years.
‘Our target is to hit £5m so that next year we can be on The Sunday Times top hundred private companies list. Our target is to become a decacorn. We are currently achieving 120% year on year growth,’ he said.
‘Within the next five years, our plan is to have 18 practices nationwide. Instead of having loads of practices in a single county, we would spread out our practices nationwide, but those practices are going to be as big as our Walkden or Bury stores today.’
Sethi has created an omnichannel business model where its website drives sight tests in store and patients can conveniently order online when needed.
‘Let’s say you come into the store and you had your eye test, you buy a pair of glasses and maybe six months later you’ve lost them. There is a level of friction for you to go to the opticians again. Whilst at Specscart, we have every single thing saved on our system. What did we dispense? What were your measurements? You can just pull up the website, log in, hit buy again and your glasses will be shipped,’ he explained.
Simultaneously, he added, the website also allowed Specscart to service the entire nation whilst it was expanding. ‘Our practices are in Manchester but right now we’re servicing the entire nation through our website. You can see that we have already shipped glasses to 120 countries through our e-commerce marketplace.
‘People are ordering glasses because they know they’re made in Bury and they know that we’re practising British quality standards in our lab and we’ve got fantastic looking glasses. It helps us reach a wider audience and simultaneously drive traffic,’ Sethi said.
Hybrid model
Clinically, Specscart works under the mantra that eye care comes before eyewear and Sethi said they ensure patients get a quality eye test with 30 minute testing times, or longer if required.
‘Optometrists are not pressurised at Specscart. They take their time to do all the necessary testing. We have world-class equipment and are performing fields on almost every single patient because some of our optoms are concerned about the emerging cases of glaucoma in the area. At the moment, as an offer we are also doing free eye tests. That’s just to increase brand awareness,’ he highlighted.
As well as in the lab, Sethi said machine-learning had been applied in practice so optometrists can spend more time explaining their findings and recommendations to the patient.
‘Shaving off a few minutes here and there, when you combine it, all of a sudden you realise that you have 10 additional minutes for each patient,’ he said.
By eliminating time-consuming tasks for optometrists, manufacturing the lenses in-house and the online element of the business, a higher conversion rate has been achieved.
Sethi said a multiple might have shorter testing times for quick turnarounds, which would achieve a conversion rate of 40-60%, and an independent has longer testing times but patients value the service, so the conversion rate sat at around 80-90%.
Specscart was trying to achieve a hybrid model with a testing time length in between a multiple and an independent but with the conversion rate of an independent.
Sethi said it has been around 80% and even reached 87% in the last month because measures have been taken across the business to improve efficiency.
The lab upgrade has taken their production from 150 frames a day to between 250 and 300, but Sethi does not want to place a limit on expansion. He said to achieve that level of quality, Specscart needed to build its team, policies, procedures and values.
‘We want to change the entire industry. The major aim of Specscart is to be amongst the top three players and we’ll give our best shot at that. No matter what comes our way, we’ll keep on working hard, we’ll keep on innovating in the industry, keep on bringing new products and I believe that we’ll be there. There’s no doubt about that. We don’t follow the existing rules of the industry and that’s how we are different,’ Sethi added.
