James Murray Wells founded Glasses Direct in 2004 at the age of 22.

Glasses Direct is an online glasses and contact lenses retailer with specialises in discount prices.

In 2004, when James found he needed glasses he found that prices for glasses were sky high. After doing some research he realised that this was due to high mark ups, so after finding a laboratory that was tuned into his vision of more affordable glasses he started Glasses Direct.

James, who was at university at the time, decided to start up his company with the last £1000 of his student loan and to further stretch his limited capital, he convinced suppliers to dropship orders straight to customer’s doors.

James Wells received a lot of opposition from high street retailers as he was offering basic lenses and frames from £15 whereas the cheapest range in many retailers where at £149. One retailer even threatened their supplier, that they would cease the contract they had, if they continued supplying Glasses Direct.

James was determined and temporarily ceased trading for two weeks while new suppliers where found. The young entrepreneur felt that he must be doing something right if high street retailers where this desperate to get rid of him.

In 2007, 3 years on Glasses Direct were taking 200 – 250 orders per day and had secured £750,000 in angel funding and a further £3million after that.

The goal for Glasses Direct in the eyes of James is to be a billion dollar company. At the end of last year, 2009, Glasses Direct had a turnover of £4million, 70 staff and three offices and they are still growing.

In early 2010 James established Hearing Direct, which follows the same model as Glasses Direct, but for hearing aids.

James Murray Wells has also been a keen promoter of entrepreneurship and has been a keynote speaker at the Federation of Small Businesses. James has also taken part in other entrepreneurship schemes for TV and those aimed toward school children.

In 2009, his enthusiasm and effort in promoting entrepreneurship, led to James being the youngest person ever to receive ‘The Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion.’

In the future James is looking to market glasses as a fashion accessory and he is also looking into software that will allow users to upload their own picture so they can try out pairs of glasses online.

We wish James good luck in his journey to create a billion dollar company!

Did you like it? For more posts like this, please subscribe to our RSS feed, Become a fan or follow us on Twitter.

Harjeet Taggar is a young English entrepreneur and cousin of Kulveer Taggar another young entrepreneur, both Oxford graduates.

Harjeet together with Kulveer are famed for Auctomatic.com, an online tool that allows businesses to sell their products online with greater ease.

The idea came about after the development of Harjeet’s first venture boso.com which was an online marketplace aimed towards students. Once businesses started enquiring about them selling on boso.com, which was started while Harjeet studied at the prestigious Oxford University, the idea came for Auctomatic.

To let Auctomatic flourish they decided to re locate to Silicon Valley as the support they received from the community could help take Auctomatic to the next level.

This turned out to be a good decision as in May 2008, the free online service they provided, was sold to Live Current Media for $5million and overnight they became millionaires. The deal was that Auctomatic would still be 75% owned by Harjeet and the other founders, while they received $2million in cash and $3million in stocks for the newly established company.

Harjeet had quit his job to fully devote himself to Auctomatic and had racked up substantial debts so selling part of the business made sense.

In 2007 they received Y-Combinator funding and currently Harjeet is a part of the Y-Combinator team investing in start ups.

Harjeet actually studied Law at Oxford and graduated in 2006. He still manages to make time for an active life outside of business and lists some of his favourite things as football, poker, reading and martial arts.

In 2006 Harjeet was the subject of the Channel 4 documentary ‘Tricky Business’. He also appeared on CNN as a guest and was named as FreshMinds ‘Ones to Watch: Future Business Leaders’ in 2005.

Does Harjeet have any advice for budding entrepreneurs?
Yes, ‘Get a good tax adviser. The savings we made were about ten times the cost of hiring a specialist.’

Did you like it? For more posts like this, please subscribe to our RSS feed, Become a fan or follow us on Twitter.