COMPANY PROFILE
Stepping up
in lockdown In this special feature, we hear how Eyespace has been navigating the extraordinary challenges of lockdown A video call with a customer
Britain’s lockdown is generally being discussed as a time of intermittent tedium and anxiety; a nation trapped at home, whilst witnessing the countless tragedies and controversies unfold. For many in the optical industry, it was a time of initial confusion and urgent adaptation. Here, Jayne Abel, co-founder of Eyespace, discusses how the Midlands-based family business successfully evolved while navigating the toughest economic challenges known in modern history. “I think like all employers we felt an immediate concern for our staff with respect to the new government guidelines announced in late March,” says Jayne. “Almost overnight we closed our headquarters, furloughed our teams and redirected the telephone lines directly to our homes.” But, as a former practising optometrist, Jayne has an inherent insight into the pressures faced by eyecare providers during the height of the pandemic. Jayne continues: “For many people – particularly during a period of reduced NHS hospital services – High Street opticians represented the first port of call for emergency eyecare, whether to advise on serious and significant problems with vision or replace essential lost or broken glasses.
Jayne Abel
20
Vision Now AUGUST 2020
situation. Instead we adapted and evolved to support our customers and those who needed eyewear the most.”
NEW FRONTIER OF BUSINESS
Social distancing during a sales visit
It was quickly evident that there would be a demand for emergency eyewear, and it was so inspiring to see opticians proactively face these new and uniquely adverse conditions to support their patients, and in turn we wanted to support them.” Within three days of the office closing, Jayne and co-founder Julie Abel had set up a dispensing service from their homes and were completing daily dispatches for emergency orders from sample cases. Even during the strictest period of lockdown, they were able to operate by using their daily exercise allowance to visit the post box at the end of their roads.
The industry lockdown was simultaneous with a soaring demand for personal protective equipment (PPE), which left many essential key workers unprotected or wearing uncertified, substandard items. As soon as the lockdown was announced, Eyespace obtained what PPE supplies it could and donated them to local GP surgeries and care homes, making doorstep drops of visors, face masks and goggles in the first six weeks. “People forget how tough those first few weeks were,” Jayne says. “It was a dire situation and it made us realise that our team could do even more to help source supplies – particularly in anticipation of rising infection rates and practices reopening under extremely challenging circumstances.”
“We found that Royal Mail and courier companies worked through obstacles and, with just a couple of delays, all our deliveries got through successfully,” recalls Jayne. “We even dispensed directly to people’s homes when specifically requested by independent opticians, who were also adapting in every which way they could.”
And so began Eyespace’s most significant business innovation to date – and the exceptionally rapid diversification it demanded. The painstaking process of introducing potentially life-saving ‘fullycertified’ facial PPE to meet new government standards required procurement from audited, certified factories and rigorous quality control – both at the point of manufacture and upon arrival in the UK, where new customs procedures were proving an additional hurdle.
As demand continued, Jayne and Julie began to work from the company’s headquarters on alternate days to dispatch frames, eventually bringing back a skeleton crew at opposite ends of the building. “We fulfilled all frame orders throughout the lockdown and I think this is one of the things we are most proud of; we didn’t go to ground during what felt like an impossible
The in-house product development team rose to the challenge, quickly becoming expert in the stringent auditing procedures required for medical-grade PPE. Discovering within themselves a range of specialisms and transferable skills, they began sourcing new suppliers. Working through the night to match time zones in the Far East and meet tight deadlines, a month-long period of
