Meet Sergio Weingarten, founder of Low Cost Glasses

Low Cost Glasses is an exciting new online prescription glasses retailer based in Manchester. They sell prescription glasses, including lenses, from £5 with stylish designer labels are also available. Their next-day glasses service means you can order and have your glasses delivered to your front door in just 24 hours.

As Low Cost Glasses approaches its one-year anniversary, we caught up with CEO, Sergio Weingarten.

Tell us about how the business was started? 

I launched Low Cost Glasses, which is the B2C arm of DD Frames (a two division business with a B2B side selling designer brands to large multiples), in July 2019. In that time, we have launched prescription glasses including lenses, from £5, have over 1,400 frames available to buy online, debuted a national TV advertising campaign, built an ‘Excellent’ rating on Trust Pilot and have turned into a seven-day operation with a 24 hour, Next Day Glasses service. We are also just about to launch a virtual try on tool….so we’ve been pretty busy!

What inspired you to set up the business?

I am originally from Glasgow and I trained as a corporate finance lawyer and worked in Edinburgh and London for nearly ten years before joining the optical industry. I’m from a family of entrepreneurs and business people and in 2010 decided to leave law behind to work for Galaxy Optical, the company behind Tesco Opticians. As Board Director and managing multiple international markets, I was part of the team that restructured Galaxy when Tesco sold to Vision Express in 2017. I wanted to continue to innovate in the sector and provide great value for quality prescription glasses compared to buying on the high street where the high mark ups are really high, so Low Cost Glasses was born.

What makes you different to other glasses retailers?

All of our prescription glasses are manufactured at our Manchester HQ in a purpose built laboratory using state-of-the-art optical equipment. My team are absolute experts with many years of combined optical, eyewear and lean manufacturing experience. They create, check and dispense every bespoke order individually on site – which is no mean feat when 34 million permutations of prescription glasses are available. On site production has allowed us to scale quickly and crucially keeps our costs low, which we can pass on to our customers – something the bricks and mortar opticians can’t. 

We strive for a simple, concise customer journey with no hidden costs or surprises - never compromising on quality. Our standards are extremely high, which is why our customer return rate continues to grow.

How has the Covid crisis impacted you?

When the Covid-19 crisis hit, we had to make quick changes to adapt to supply chain challenges and new customer behaviour. When our major UK lens suppliers closed at the beginning of the crisis, we on boarded two new lens suppliers to our supply chain in just 48 hours, which was key to ensuring no disruption for customers. 

We already have a highly sterile environment and are now running a manufacturing plant with social distancing the norm. We quickly flexed staffing to protect the wellbeing of our employees while also meeting increased demand for online glasses, with things like up weighting our customer online support.

With new customers trying online glasses for the first time and many watching spend, we increased the range of frames in our lowest price categories and reduced our free delivery charge threshold. We also set up a special discount code for NHS and key workers, which has had fantastic take up.

What are your thoughts on failure?

I don’t dwell on failure. As a team, we will find the learning and move on quickly to the next project. I want to create a culture of idea generation and team ownership and success is celebrated as a group.

The last ten months have been fast paced. I have a brilliant team of people on this journey who are reaching and exceeding every milestone that we set and have adapted to the Covid world we are living in with such professionalism and spirit. 

Our growth trajectory is steep and ambitious. Almost every week since launch we have fine-tuned the site and our 24-7 live chat has really allowed us to understand our customers’ needs so that we can improve the customer experience, end to end.”

What are your top tips for entrepreneurs wanting to get their business out there? 

Watch your cash flow really closely. Be willing to take gambles on new channels but make sure you can measure the impact and don’t be disheartened if it doesn’t work. This is a journey, it can be quite a bumpy road and often difficult to pin point what worked and what didn’t but if you keep a close eye on the cash flow and keep stretching your teams and your goals, you should get there in the end.

What's the most important question entrepreneurs should be asking themselves? 

Am I really going to put my life and soul into making this venture a success and roll with the punches? If yes, crack on. If your even slightly unsure and don’t believe in the proposition enough, walk away…