glasses direct blog

After 4 years of heading up Glasses Direct, I have pleasure in announcing that we have begun a search to find a CEO to help me lead the company as we continue to establish the brand as a global leader in our industry.

As Executive Chairman, I will form a partnership with the new CEO, driving the business forward at all levels, with particular focus on external relations, internationalisation, fundraising, industry and regulator relations, business development, as well as ensuring the brand principles are upheld.

Over the last four years I have been privileged to lead our company, as we broke into the sector and established ourselves despite severe opposition from high-street opticians.

The first people to sell prescription glasses online, we are now a credible and recognised force in the optical and retail industry shipping many hundreds of pairs per day to a customer database approaching half a million people, with a multi-million pound turnover.

None of this could have been done without the great people behind the company. There have been several investment rounds where we have acquired many supportive shareholders and world leading VC’s, raising over £6m so far to help grow the company.

Complemented by this committed group of investors, we have built a talented team of over fifty people; many of the people who helped me start the company are still with us today. All of us will work hard to integrate the new CEO into the business over the next year.

There are exciting developments lined up for the next few months, and I am pleased to take this opportunity to tell you about just one of them: Our new branding which will be unveiled shortly.

You can see a taster (this is WIP!) of it to the left. With the affordability of the products that we have created -offering glasses from £15- we have enabled prescription glasses to become a fashion accessory for many people, rather than just a utility.

Our new brand reflects changing attitudes to glasses and their new position as fun, funky, and affordable accessories.

You may have noticed that many people now have as many pairs of glasses as shoes, and we hope that our new positioning will accelerate this phenomenon, so that soon every wardrobe will contain a glasses collection as extensive as Ivana Trump’s shoe collection.

Like rolling-out our new branding, our other principal objectives for this coming year remain unchanged and I expect to be able to announce the CEO appointment in the next few months.

Jamie Murray Wells

‘Jamie is an exceptionally talented and inspirational young entrepreneur. In the best tradition of great founders, he has turned an inspired insight into a great business by delivering an amazing proposition to customers which has sent shivers through the traditional optical market. We are thrilled to keep working with Jamie to build an exceptional team and continue to revolutionize this very large and international market’ Saul Klein, Partner, Index Ventures.

‘We are delighted to be partnered with Jamie at Glasses Direct. His entrepreneurship and vision have take the company very far in a short period of time and he has set the stage for a world class CEO to join him in taking the company through the next stage of growth. We support Jamie’s initiative and applaud his foresight in moving to bring on board a new CEO which is another example of his laser focus on driving Glasses Direct to achieve its full potential and on optimizing shareholder value.’ Fergal Mullen, General Partner, Highland Capital Partners.

‘This guy drinks rocket fuel. Now he’s come up with a plan to grow Glasses Direct at warp speed. He’s making it impossible for competitors to catch up.’ David Magliano, Director, Glasses Direct.

Update 06/08/2008: I am really pleased to announce the appointment of Kevin Cornils (cc’d) in this role. Kevin joins Glasses Direct with a legacy of dotcom career successes: Most recently he was brought into Buy.at, now the UK’s leading specialist affiliate advertising network, following an investment by venture capitalists to work alongside the two founders as CEO. Kevin and the team more than tripled the size of the business there, including a launch into the US market and negotiating a strategic acquisition. In February this year, he successfully led the sale of the business to AOL’s Advertising.com. AOL then extended his role to UK Managing Director of Advertising.com, which operates the industry’s largest advertising network, before he took the role with us. Prior to his Buy.at/AOL roles, Kevin spent 4 years with consumer internet blue-chip Match.com where he was ultimately Managing Director, Europe and successfully led the development of the business to become the European market leader in online dating.

For media enquiries please contact Rania Elhefian at rania@brianmaclaurin.com or on 020 8834 1806.
For any other enquiry please contact me directly at jamie@glassesdirect.co.uk or below in the comments…

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 2:01 pm by Jamieand is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.