● Business and Numerical Data for the company

○ Company started out as an affordable option for people who were in need of
corrective glasses.
○ It was founded in 2004 by James Murray Wells, and offered a cheaper solution at
a time when all the other competitors offered the same product at double the
price (more than 100 pounds).
○ Kevin Cornils is the current listed CEO.
○ Company headquarters are located at Groundwell, Wiltshire, United Kingdom.
○ Glasses-direct has received a lot of funding from the following listed companies
and individuals:
■ Highland Capital partners
■ Index Ventures
■ Kreos Capital
■ Robin Klein
■ Frank Seehaus
○ Funding background - Company has received roughly 13 million USD in fundings
which was last reported in April of 2009. Highland Capital and Index Ventures
were the biggest investors.
○ Last reported, the glasses-direct team only consisted of 38 employees in total
(Reported on 2 websites and Linkedin has the same data as well). Some
websites also reported 250-300 employees.
○ Employees have a medium tenure of roughly 6.5 years which is a good time. It
can be concluded that the employees find the company serving them well and it
is a great environment to work in.
○ Awards and accolades:
■ Shell LiveWIRE award for entrepreneurship in 2005
■ 2005 startup award
■ 2005 Wales and West Country Entrepreneur of the Year award
■ 2005 Natwest Business of the Year and entrepreneur of the year award
■ 2009 Queen’s award for achievement in Enterprise promotion, youngest
person ever to win this award
■ Murray was also appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in
2015
○ Revenue is roughly along the lines of 35 million USD

● Products that the company offers

○ More than 800 styles at hand out of which roughly 60 percent are basic in nature
and are not meant for fashion purposes. Nevertheless, the quality that they offer
is great as seen through customer reviews.
○ Since most of the people are hell bent on saving money on a product like
glasses, glasses direct has been able to gather a large audience since it offers
the products with nearly no profit for themselves. Their profit lies in their sales
volume. With the majority of the market share, the volumes alone at cheaper
 prices are able to keep them afloat when compared with competitors who have a
great profit margin but have low sales.
○ Pricing is key - Products are priced extremely low compared to competitors.
Since the company is owned by Essilor, they have no costs of paying another
brand for lenses.
○ Frames start for 9 Euros at the bottom and go up to 250 Euros. The design at the
bottom of the price range is very simple and is for those people who need
glasses just for the purpose of seeing clearly and not for making a fashion
statement. Buying these glasses include a single vision lens as well.
○ Designer glasses start around 80 Euros and have an offer where you get one
free frame on purchase of a designer frame. Effectively cutting the cost down to
40 Euros a piece. You can see how cheap the production cost actually is for the
frames and there is a big mark-up in prices.
○ They do not offer free eye tests but have tie-ups with opticians who will conduct
the test. The price of this test is 25 Euros.
○ Free services that the company provides or any other perks -
■ Try upto 4 frames for a period of 7 days before you decide if you want to
buy a pair or not
■ Free 120 day return
■ Free delivery on transaction amounts of 75 Euros and above anywhere in
UK
■ Students get an extra 50 percent off no matter what they buy. It can also
be availed on 2-for-1 deals effectively reducing the cost of the frame by a
quarter of its original price
○ Frameworks: Django CSRF (Rapid development, d clean, pragmatic design)
○ Content Delivery Network: Amazon CloudFront (Gives developers and
businesses an easy way to distribute content to end users with low latency, high
data transfer speeds, etc.), Google Static Content, Cloudflare JS
○ Payment framework on website: Pound Sterling
○ Advertising: DoubleClick.net, Google Remarketing, Google Floodlight
Counter/Sales, Microsoft Advertising, Taboola
○ Web Hosting: Amazon cloud, Tiggee, DNS Made Easy
○ Web server: nginx
○ Analytics and Tracking: Qubit (Persuasive personalization for e-commerce. Also
lets you test A/B content delivery so that personalized content can be sent to a
specific group of visitors. Improves experience and drives conversions, Google
Analytics, Wordpress Stats, Hotjar, Google Conversion Linker, Google Floodlight
● Customers
○ Glasses Direct targets people who are in search of cheap glasses online. They
do have some great fashionable frames but are nowhere comparable to the likes
of Ace&Tate. They work as an e-commerce website who sell glasses and frames
at rates which are below the industry average.
○ Target audience is anyone who needs normal glasses at good prices. People
who are into fashion were not targeted before but with the help of new marketing
 campaigns, they are trying to enter the new field and are cementing a great name
for themselves with a huge customer base already.
○ Since the concept of using frames as a style statement is relatively new and not a
lot of people believe in it as of now, they have been able to create a loyal
customer base of users who want to be able to just see clearly and not have
extremely bad frames which break very often. Glasses-direct plays right into this.
○ Social Media platforms used to reach out to most of the audience in the region
■ Instagram - #glassesdirect which has a total of 5480 mentions.
Competitors have more mentions on instagram and a far better social
media presence than glasses-direct.
■ Twitter, Facebook - Similar content to instagram and is linked to instagram
posts as well. There are also situational news based marketing tweets as
well on twitter. Also tweet about recent events while promoting their
eyewear and discounts.
■ Pinterest - Retro frames on models, aesthetic pictures (Not a lot of
followers on this platform though - 170)

● Marketing and Sales

○ Company uses SEO pretty well and ranks top for cheap prescription based
glasses and simple glasses as well. It has become the largest retailer of online
glasses in this manner.
○ Spent 1.5 million USD for advertising purposes in 2019
○ Glasses-Direct markets its product with the help of influencers as well. They have
paired up with many famous people and also tag people on their instagram posts
who have a considerable amount of followers and wear their product.
○ Influencers:
■ Brand ambassador: Perri Kiely (Dancer, became famous in 2009, paired
with him because he is fashionable and wears glasses as a fashion
statement. Believes that glasses are not only for seeing, but also a
fashion accessory.)
■ @ginaatinukeknight - a verified instagram celebrity who has a business in
the fashion industry and sports glasses
○ Have paired up with other fashion brands as well to bring their name into limelight
as a fashion forward company.
○ Paired up with @katespadeny, which is a handbag company in the fashion
industry and has a big name
○ More than 1.2 million monthly site visitors. 97 percent of the audience is from the
UK. It is to be noted that the figure has dropped around 1.2 percent but is still the
highest number of website visits amongst the competitors.
○ There is a 0.9 percent decrease in the number of website visitors from the UK.
○ The average visit duration of a customer lasts upto 606 seconds which amounts
up to nearly 10 minutes per user. Nevertheless the time spent by each user on
the website has dropped upto 2 percent on a MoM basis.
 ○ Average number of pages that are visited have fallen 3 percent from a high of
roughly 10 pages per user. This is the highest number of pages visited amongst
the market competitors like Ace&Tate and Specsavers.
○ Bounce rate is significantly low at 37 percent and it is gradually coming down on
a MoM basis. This indicates that people who end up here by clicking on
advertisements are far less likely to switch websites immediately compared to
other eyewear websites. People stay on the website for a more dedicated period
of time.
○ Sales - Leading online retailer of glasses in the whole of UK
○

● Other strengths and weaknesses that have not been covered above
○ Acquired by French Lens maker Essilor in 2016
○

Strengths:
● Have already created a brand
name with a large customer base.
● Are known for good quality frames
and cheap lenses.
● Low production costs and
in-house production of lenses
since they are acquired by Essilor.
● Lot of funding behind them so it
wouldn’t hurt even if they don’t
make a lot of profit.
● Cheap products with great quality.
Weaknesses:
● Are not into fashionable frames
● The concept of stylish frames has
been acquired by other brands
and customers have become loyal
to them for the same reason
● A lot of competitors have shown
up and offer the same products at
slightly higher prices but with more
customer attention than
glasses-direct.

Opportunities:
● Could expand into the stylish
frames area since they already
have a good customer base.
● Should look to expand into more
international markets as they are
able to provide products at such
cheap rates. And because of high
volumes, they will have cheaper
products everywhere.
Threats:
● Market share could decrease as
more people run towards
fashionable frames and are able to
spend a little more money.
● It is possible that it could become
a stagnant company in terms of
revenue and start declining as
other brands take over.