Every high street has one, we all know the tagline and, in spite of a difficult economic climate, Specsavers not only expands and prospers but remains privately owned by its founders. The winner of the Director of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award, Dame Mary Perkins, describes how her dream became a £1.5bn business
She's a Dame, she's extremely wealthy and she's the co-founder of a business that is ranked 27th in the Top Track 100 of Britain's private companies, sitting among other family-owned heavyweights including Laing O'Rourke, JCB and Wilkinson. But nearly 30 years after she started optical retailer Specsavers with her husband Doug, Dame Mary Perkins continues to distinguish herself merely as an optometrist.
When we meet in London two days before the IoD's Director of the Year 2011 awards ceremony to discuss the secrets of her success, she snorts at the suggestion that the triumph of Specsavers is down to charismatic leadership. In fact, she describes herself as "quite ordinary". Rather than putting herself in the same league as Sir Philip Green and Sir Richard Branson, she insists she's just an optometrist who knows "what it's like to examine someone's eyes day in, day out in a small room with dimmed lights".
If she shares one thing in common with Green, she concedes, it's that they both hold sway with showing their face on the shop floor. You can only know what customers want by being out there, Perkins explains. "You're sat at your desk, doing great work and you're making a difference but if you fancy a coffee you can go and have one," she says, referring to a conversation she had with some executives on her Specsavers leadership programme.
"The people in the stores can't. You get people like Philip Green; he goes in store. It's bloody hard work. You've got to know what it's like: people coming at you and having to smile all day and take care of people and be nice. What you might be asking a store to do might be the last straw that makes them cry."
In it together
Perkins is at her most animated when she's talking about people. Given that she started Specsavers in 1984 so that other optometrists could succeed – an optical business angel of sorts – this makes sense. As it turns out, this rather selfless ambition has helped her company amass a turnover of £1.5bn this financial year (total sales in the UK alone were £906.6m) with more than 1,500 optical and hearing aid stores around the world.
Why? Because by installing a joint venture partnership model she ensured that her partners would always be gunning for success. She explains: "Every store is a separate limited company, a 50/50 joint venture with myself and the people in that store. And every store has to succeed for that director to make a profit and a good living."
Clever thinking, but it's also the reason why Perkins is labelled a billionaire, which she describes as an unwelcome "false title". Asked why she takes exception she explains that the Sunday Times Rich List this year valued Specsavers without taking into account that the joint venture partners – more than 2,000 worldwide – also receive profits out of turnover after the management fee and other services are paid for. A large number of these have profit-sharing schemes, adds Perkins, and the support staff also have a profit-sharing scheme, "a bit like a John Lewis partnership, or as near as I could get. Most people who know me know that I'm not a billionaire."
What's clear is that Specsavers remains a private company run by the founding family in Guernsey but with two other large hubs in Southampton (for IT, supply chain, manufacturing and property management) and Nottingham (where the call centre is based). Given that the issue of foreign ownership of British companies is an emotive one after Kraft took over Cadbury, this is refreshing news indeed.
Private property
To not be beholden to money-chasing shareholders must be liberating, but what does private ownership mean to Perkins and why has she never considered going public? "It was always going to be a private company," she reflects. "What we wanted was to
have a company where all the stores were owned by optometrists, not a big corporate or a manufacturer. That's the dream we had, that's the way it's structured and it will stay like that.
"That the company remains private means we are not at the beck and call of outsiders, especially as we know the optical market inside out and they wouldn't. We have also been able to go at our own speed and have not had to look at short-term gains. We've had a much longer vision, and not worried about returns on our investment."
Perkins understands why so many entrepreneurs decide to sell, but those reasons have never applied to her business, she says. "It's usually because they want money to expand, or they're going to retire and want to cash in, or some other company has got a lot better than theirs and has become a threat so they sell out to them. Well, number one, we didn't need to sell out and retire because we've got good succession plans. And number two, we didn't need the money to expand because it's all been done through cashflow."
On the subject of cash, she's keen to stress that her business is not based in a low-tax Channel Island for any other reason than Guernsey is home and has been for many years, "before Specsavers started".
Island life
Perkins remains in thrall to Guernsey and its people. The board is based on the island and many of her employees live there. But because her role requires her to monitor the culture and direction of the company, what she describes as the "support stuff", she travels a lot and has grown to like that part of her job. Which is when she reveals that Specsavers has its own aviation department. "We commute a lot between Guernsey, Southampton and Nottingham daily. Staff are on that plane at 6.45am and then people are brought back. They're our own Specsavers planes… I might want a meeting in Dublin, Norway or the Netherlands and if you try and do scheduled flights it's a nightmare."
Perkins has been travelling even further afield of late, but for slightly more personal reasons. Her husband Doug, who is chairman and joint managing director of the business with son John, is now based overseas, tasked with expanding the market in Australasia. Specsavers is the fastest-growing retailer in Australia and New Zealand and in 2010 it reached the number one position in New Zealand's optical market. "Over the last three years I've spent about 40 per cent of my time going there because if I don't go, I don't see my husband," she says.
"When I'm in Guernsey we have a video-conferencing meeting with them once a week. They take the knowledge out of the UK but we learn a lot from them," she adds, describing the sharing of information between partners as a real boon for the company. "They're not in competition with one another, their jobs aren't dependent on whether they can stab someone in the back and crawl up the ladder. It's that complete equality; you can say what you want with no recriminations."
Expansion plans
It all sounds rosy now but growing the business globally hasn't been without its challenges. The new consumer has changed the goalposts, says Perkins, which means customer service has to be exceptional across the board. "They want a lot more, don't they? I'm one of those people who think: 'You're a retailer, you want my business, delight me'. I don't have a problem with that because that's how it should be, but it means you've got to be on the ball and go the extra mile. And that means you can't cut staff."
Because the business grew organically, everybody did a bit of everything at first, Perkins adds. But as she observes, when you grow rapidly you "don't always tie up the loose ends". The consequence was that global staff felt disjointed from the head office. "Until we hired a group HR director [Pauline Best] with global experience, we had been missing a trick," says Perkins. "It was probably a bit late; we should have done it before."
At least the impact was negligible. Although it took Best a year to "sort out" she was still able to put in place a team of HR specialists to help staffing in support offices in different countries. And she drew up robust people and succession plans, including a Specsavers Academy for training and a leadership training programme globally. "We needed to keep the company culture consistent across all territories and to keep the family values and vision there for everyone, not just in Guernsey," says Perkins. She learnt a lesson: "To think further ahead in our people plans, especially when going into new countries."
What's interesting is how the company relies on its partners for direction. It may employ more than 30,000 people but it still thinks like a small business. "A board member will go around the whole country every eight weeks to meet with the optometrist and sit down and have a real brainstorm about what works and what doesn't. So it's like one massive board. There's a lot of interaction: I wanted it like that," says Perkins. But strategy is not just "let loose", she points out. "The actual strategy comes from the Specsavers Optical board, of which I'm a member. But we listen. We go out and explain the strategy – what's the best way, how it can be executed, once it's executed how it's measured… It's a continuous circle of information."
Asked where she seeks guidance after 30 years in business, Perkins credits her family. But with a nod to challenging economic times she admits she's not sure whether she'd start a business again now, even though she thinks of Specsavers as pretty recession-proof. "There's an awful lot more for anyone in a business to do now. We've grown and have dealt with it and can do it but I'd think quite hard about doing it again. I certainly wouldn't want to become big."
Is that her major achievement then, size? "I wouldn't say that," replies Perkins. "Numbers don't mean that much to me. What I like to know is that I can go to any town, get in a taxi and say, 'Can you take me to a Specsavers please?' and he'll take me there. I like that."
And she still uses taxis, despite the private planes. If she has one extravagance it's flying first class to Australia to see her husband. "Because of that I don't suffer from jet lag. I'm very, very lucky. That's my one luxury. I don't have any others… I wish I had," she says thoughtfully. "I have ordinary friends and ordinary holidays. I live quite an ordinary life."
