How We Started A $100K/Month D2C Eyewear Brand In A Crowded Market
Hello! Who are you, and what business did you start?
Hi, I’m Ahmed Ejaz, and I founded Cambridge Spectacle Co in the UK. We make high-quality glasses at fair prices by cutting out the designer fashion houses and making the spectacles ourselves with Optometrist expertise.
We sell our specs directly to consumers and through ASDA Opticians (formerly part of Walmart) whom we did a deal less than a year after we first had the idea for our company.
Since going live on ASDA shelves, we initially thought we had enough stock cover for seven months, it turned out that we were going to sell out of some models in six weeks! We are now fortifying our supply chain to meet the demand.
What's your backstory, and how did you come up with the idea?
I qualified as an Optometrist and remember working around the UK and doing eye exams. In between patients, I would come out and look at the high-priced designer glasses and try to figure out why they were so expensive.
I had heard about a brand in the United States called Warby Parker, which was taking off at the time and was producing great products at fairer prices, and I knew there was room for a startup in the UK to do the same.
I took a break from Optometry for a while and ran for parliament in the UK. I narrowly missed winning the seat, but that’s when I met Andy Street CBE. He was the former CEO of John Lewis Group in the UK - a much-loved retailer.
I began discussing my idea with Andy, who inspired me to build what we thought could become the first-ever significant global British eyewear brand.
I decided to quit working for a high street Optician and began drawing out designs the next day. My brother had recently completed an MBA from the University of Cambridge, and we loved the city.
We decided that the designs would take inspiration from the City of Cambridge. I began working from the living room, and we never looked back.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
We drew out designs on the floor and called over suppliers to the house. There wasn’t much space in the living room, so we moved the coffee table to make more space.
At first, we just had 12 products. We visited Cambridge and began drawing up ideas for a design influenced by a particular building or road.
We launched the website after the designs were ready and then began selling them via Google Ads. To our amazement, we were getting calls from customers who were having eye tests at big-name Opticians and then leaving and sending their prescriptions to us.
They would call and give feedback on how much they loved their new specs. We knew we had a great brand and pressed ahead with complete confidence.
Being new meant we needed to get the style of the products we were going for just right. It would be the most significant aspect of our marketing, our design.
A brand with spectacles designed by Optometrists, not just fashionistas. That expertise and quality are needed to show through along with the style element. We spoke to a former editor at GQ and used their advice to help build the brand.
We then looked for charitable partners. This brand needed to be about more than just selling spectacles. We decided that we were going to commit profits from spectacles sales to eye research.
We found a fantastic partner in St Pauls's Eye Research Foundation based at the NHS University of Liverpool Hospitals Foundation. They were putting funds towards researching the impacts on the mental health of blindness. We wanted to help that research alongside helping to end eye disease, so it was and has become a big driver for our brand.
As we got going, we used Fiverr to build the brand. We made cool ads to show off the company and our products for a fraction of the cost big agencies would have charged us. It worked well, we designed magazine and Youtube ads that caught the attention of industry retailers and consumers.
Describe the process of launching the business.
When we launched, we released ads across various forms of media. Magazines, social media, Youtube, and via word of mouth.
A great ad we did use a voiceover from Fiverr is here:
We wanted to show more about our brand and values than our products. It was a huge hit.
We marketed via Instagram and grew to over 15k followers quite quickly. LinkedIn was also significant for us as we grew and our name became more well-known within our industry. We then took out a front-page ad in Optician Magazine. An old and trusted mag.
They loved what we did, so let us take the cover at a discount. It was a big hit and a natural way to splash the brand out there. So we didn't just focus on digital but also began to supplement it with offline ads right from the outset. Brand awareness is super important, and sometimes it's not about measurable clicks and ROAS (return on ad spend) metrics.
We then got some more money. We applied to join the Crowdcube community, a leading European crowd equity platform. In exchange for shares, we received funding. Our fundraising campaign was a huge success, and we were overfunded in days receiving over £200k from over 100 backers.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
The biggest thing that turned out to attract and retain our customers was our mission to help end preventable eye disease. We decided that each pair of spectacles purchased would contribute profits to an amazing eye research charity, and whilst this was just part of our DNA as we were founded by myself as an Optometrist, it turned out to separate us from the competitors.
As far as we knew, no one else was doing this in our space.
Be friendly, and do what you have some knowledge about and some passion. Do it better than anyone else.
You have to be able to tell a story well too. I’ve appeared on podcasts like Jimmy Jobs of the Future and Entrepreneurs on Fire, which help get our brand story out there. We also decided to do a significant sponsorship of one of the most popular UK podcasts, Parenting Hell, when we launched ASDA Opticians.
The ad was creative and relaxed, and Spotify UK was very helpful. The hosts read out the ad, which helped and served as a brand endorsement from celebs. This was a massive success for us.
I’ve also managed to somehow get myself on the front cover of Optician Magazine!
The magazine followed our story for a while. I think they waited until we were big enough for them to feature us in this way, but we always kept a good relationship with the editors as we knew one day this could happen where we were splashed on the front page.
The podcast ad came about when I reached out to Spotify, who put us in touch with the production team to work together. They are one of the UKS biggest podcasts, so I was already listening to them and heard ads from people like Chase Bank UK and startups such as HelloFresh. So we got in touch to create something cool with them.
People want relatable leaders who want to know they didn’t stab someone in the back or drown anyone else to get there.
How are you doing today, and what does the future look like?
We are super proud of how we are doing today. We are nationwide with a giant retailer across 157 locations in the UK. However, moving forward, we want to do more to support our brand across our retail partners.
That means we will soon begin to open our flagship retail locations. Having our Opticians across the country is a step we are already starting to take. I’m super excited about this and having a ‘Warby Parker’ style direct-to-consumer Optician brand in the UK.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
You have to be friendly in everything you do and how you deal with people. Super friendly. I’ve said it before a few times in podcasts, but I believe the old-style Larry Ellison or Donald Trump-style ruthless business leaders can’t survive in today’s world. People want relatable leaders who want to know they didn’t stab someone in the back or drown anyone else to get there.
We made significant decisions by spending our marketing budget well and using podcasts and social media to expand that reach. Fiverr was a massive help to our brand, and we continue to use their freelancer’s expertise to this day.
Hiring the right people who are committed to our growth and hence, their growth is all too important. You can tell when someone is invested in your company, as before the interview, they will research you and come in excited about your startup.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We use Monday.com for brand and team management. It’s just so simple that we can all communicate with each other as if we’re using Facebook. I like keeping things simple.
We’re also with Google Workspace for collaboration, and they make video calls and sheets/ docs/stores easy to manage.
As simple as it sounds, Whatsapp is also a big part of our team management. Quick, easy, familiar. Why complicate things?
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Shoedog is a big inspiration for me. I think the way Phil Knight built his great business, Nike, is inspiring. It all seems so simple; maybe that is the trick to making something extraordinary. I took a lot of lessons from that book.
I love listening to any podcast that has business guests. ‘How I built this’ is a fantastic place to start. Through that podcast, I also heard an ad for and now regularly listen to ‘Business Wars’, which tells the story of how amazing companies went head to head. You can learn a lot just by listening, so keep doing it!
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Be friendly, and do what you have some knowledge about and some passion. Sometimes people have a lot of knowledge about something but no passion, and vice versa. Fund your combination, and you’ll build a great business for sure! Do it better than anyone else.
The worst mistake you can make is thinking, ‘I want to become a billionaire’. Even if you do, you won't enjoy the journey. Find a better ‘why’ than that, guys, and I promise you’ll get to where you want.
Where can we go to learn more?
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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