Letters: Specsavers has just woken up to reality

Doug Perkins revolutionised the retail spectacle market, delivering spectacles to the public at a price that frightened the traditional optometric practices of that time, but delighted the public.

Since then Specsavers has grown at a phenomenal rate, using various tools to drive volume, and thus turnover, and thereafter utilising its ever-growing franchise revenue, to expand, not alone throughout the UK, but worldwide.

The model proved so successful that it was not long before other UK multiples sought to gain a share of this new world. Hence most people in the UK have no concept or experience of optometry other than that provided by the multiples.