Optical industry disruptor Specscart is bringing machine learning and spectacle-making robots to its UK manufacturing hub – in the heart of the world’s first industrial city.
The 300 pairs of glasses that the Specscart lab produces every day are proudly made in Britain – and very proudly made in Manchester – by craftsmen with 100 years of spectacle making skills between them.
Specscart boss Sid Sethi has ripped up the UK optical sector rule book and written a new one – the result is a British manufacturing success story.
Sid said: “Having a thriving, and expanding, UK manufacturing hub is one of the ingredients in the Specscart secret sauce.
“Making every single pair of single vision glasses, varifocal spectacles and prescription ski goggles right here in Manchester means we can guarantee quality, oversight and craftsmanship.”
There are very few labs making glasses in the UK nowadays.
And the handful that remain don’t make glasses seven days a week like Specscart do.
Most of Specscart’s competitors have their glasses made overseas and then they land back on a pallet at a London airport using the drop shipping model. This explains their dismal order-to-delivery time of up to 21 days.
In stark contrast Specscart offers 24 hr turnaround on delivery.
It delivers worldwide – for free – to over 120 countries from Finland and the Falkland Islands to Malawi and the Maldives.
Sid built a bespoke system from scratch that runs the groundbreaking optical lab with the precision of a Swiss watch.
It brings together the efficiency of Deliveroo, trackability of Uber, scanning technology of Amazon and speed of McDonalds.
By applying the principles of Kanban lean manufacturing, he brought together end-to-end scanning and supply chain technology to seamlessly live track every order to the second (and then shares that intel with customers).
This means glasses are made in a record-breaking time of just three hours – reducing customer queries by 60%.
Sid said: “We live in the age of Amazon Prime and Uber Eats where people expect their purchases to be delivered almost instantly.
“With so much business shifting to e-commerce the goal of all retailers is to remove friction and this includes delivering within 24 hours.
“The only way Specscart has been able to meet that expectation from customers is to make our glasses right here in the UK.”
Specscart embodies the spirit of the Fourth Industrial Revolution with machine learning already shaving off valuable time in the glasses making process, and spectacle-making robots joining the lab later this year.
But Specscart is growing thanks to old fashioned values like employing and developing home-grown talent, always having a human available for customers to talk to (instead of just an AI-spewing bot), and keeping spectacle-making in house instead of outsourcing it overseas like everyone else.
Every order has five quality checks made on it with Specscart glasses meeting the uncompromising quality of the British Standards Kitemark.
Each pair of specs is hand finished but the ultimate quality benchmark is head technician Brian Harris. If he isn’t 100% happy with a pair of glasses, they go in the recycling bin and he starts the order from scratch.
Bucking the industry trend for manufacturing overseas is paying off big time.
The modern British spectacle designer-maker achieved average 97% year-on-year growth, with 2024 sales reaching £3m-plus.
The Specscart staff of 18 has grown to 21 during 2024 with another two hirings in the pipeline for 2025.
The eyewear firm is a proud Manchester firm but also a multinational company with 20-plus employees in production units in China and IT operations in India.
It has three bricks and mortar shops across Greater Manchester and e-commerce monthly sales of £200,000 plus.
The next 12 months will see Specscart 2.0 at full throttle with a new website launched, the optical lab running until midnight and expansion to the US.
Sid said: “British manufacturing may still suffer from an outdated stereotypical image of drafty warehouses with the whirr of tools and the smell of engine oil.
“But British manufacturing is so exciting when you introduce all the emerging digital technologies on to the bedrock of quality, consistency and a good reputation.
“I love seeing good things happen for our business when the cutting edge meets old school business principles – it makes me very proud. “It’s manufacturing on steroids.”
To find out more visit www.specscart.co.uk.
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