Where did it start?

An article by andy    2 Comments

Optics had been my families business for many years with my father starting his lens manufacturing company before I was born. It started out with lenses being ground to a prescription by hand via a diamond rock and then the surface was then polished to produce a clear lens. As you can imagine tolerances were somewhat reduced compared to today’s high standards. It was also a very dangerous occupation with many stories of craftsman losing fingers during the grinding process! Over time technology has played it’s part to automate the industry, reducing costs, increasing volumes and most most importantly increasing the precision of the lens. In future posts I’ll go into more detail of the manufacturing process as it is today.

So onto iWearGlasses.. My background is technology and it seemed like a great match to bring the world of ecommerce to optics. With this in mind, I teamed up with a good friend and excellent technologist – Adam – and set about designing the online glasses company to distribute directly to the public. In addition I had the fortune to know the markups placed on the lenses (specifically the more complex lenses such as high index or varifocal lenses) by the high street. It is not uncommon to see a lens that may cost £100 to produce retailing for £400 or more which indicated a clear business opportunity.