Real Business

Both mother and daughter are keen to bring more women into what is traditionally a male-dominated industry. In the UK, nearly 9,500 of the 13,000 Specsavers workforce are women and, at the company’s head office in Guernsey, the workforce has an unprecedented 51 per cent women; including ten who report directly to the main board and two female board directors.

In the Netherlands, progress is slower: “While 60 per cent of my team is female, only 12 of our 135 stores are run by women,” says Julie. She is keen to redress the balance, encouraging female staff onto the company’s Career Ladder development programme, a day-release scheme where employees can train to become qualified opticians and audiologists.

“Over the years, Mary [Julie never refers to her as “mum” when discussing Specsavers] has really brought a woman’s touch to the business: she continues to write birthday cards to everyone in the company and never misses a special occasion.” Dame Mary received her title in the Queen’s 2007 birthday honours list for her services to commerce and the community – the first female optician in the UK to be made a dame.

It is likely that John will eventually take over the business but, typically of a family firm, Julie says the issue of succession has never been raised. “I don’t think Doug and Mary see themselves taking a back foot – they’ve demonstrated that by opening 250 stores in the Southern hemisphere in the past two years alone.”

Dame Mary tells us she’ll be focusing on Australia until at least 2012. “We don’t spread ourselves thinly,” she says. “It’s easy to open stores in different countries and just fiddle around with them but, when we go into a market, we go in to be number one. We want to offer the Specsavers service across the whole country rather than just dotting a few shops around the capital.”

And there’s still more to be done in the UK: “We’re market leaders in Britain but we’re still opening 20 to 25 new stores a year, relocating to bigger premises and adding new services such as the hearing tests [Specsavers has become the largest supplier of digital hearing in the UK outside the NHS, with 132 centres].”

How is she dealing with competition from online retailers such as Glasses Direct, run by James Murray Wells, which offer spectacles at a fraction of the price? Does she curse her expensive high-street property? “Oh no,” says Dame Mary. “Those businesses have such a small percentage of the market. And Specsavers isn’t just about selling glasses, we also offer eye tests and up-to-date prescriptions, which you can’t get online.”

Specsavers has defied the recession, with sales jumping by 15.1 per cent last year. To date, the company has sold a massive 12 million frames. But Dame Mary’s work is not done. “It never really finishes,” she says. “I want Specsavers to keep on growing and growing.”