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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Business
Lucy Tobin

How amateur glasses maker behind Cubitts went from near collapse to making specs for Madonna

Broughton drew the first glasses designs on a piece of square graph paper, with a ruler and pencil.

(Picture: Tom Broughton)

Of all the sectors ripe for online disruption, glasses weren’t an obvious contender. It’s nice to try them on — harder to do that with internet shopping — and London’s couriers aren’t known for treating parcels gently. 

But an online glasses business is what Tom Broughton started in 2013, and the success of his Cubitts business — which he’s branded as a “modern spectacle maker” — is clear: its website has now been joined by 12 busy stores and turnover is set to hit £10 million this year.

Yet the 40-year-old didn’t have a background in glasses when he decided to launch a business making them. 

“I’d spent a decade working in corporate jobs for TfL, Spotify, BBC World Service and children’s television,” he explains. “I think I was searching for my real calling, which came with understanding the art of spectacle-making.” 

Cubitts

Founded: 2013

Staff: 107

Turnover: £4.6m for 2021, £10m forecast this year

Headquarters: King’s Cross

Broughton learned about the traditional way glasses were once made as a profession: “The craftsmanship has eroded over the past half-century but I wanted to bring it back.”

The entrepreneur was elated when he was told as a kid that he’d need glasses — “partly because my heroes like Morrissey, Michael Caine and James Dean had done the same. But I knew others didn’t feel the same, and felt certain there was a gap in the market for a spectacle-making and fitting process that was more creative and tailored.”

Broughton launched Cubitts from his King’s Cross kitchen in 2013.

Cubitts glasses are worn by Madonna, Emma Thompson and Idris Elba (Cubitts)

“I didn’t have any real idea how to run a business. Or make glasses. I drew the first designs on a piece of square graph paper, with a ruler and pencil.” 

Later, he laser-cut and 3D-printed them to check they would work. The entrepreneur worked on his idea — and saved up — for a decade, then spent 18 months preparing to launch. But then he and his first business partner, a former boss, fell out. 

“I ended up spending around £100,000 buying him out, which was extremely painful – financially and emotionally. My savings were completely cleared out.”

Broughton managed to produce a tiny batch of stock — about 50 frames of four styles. The business was entirely online to begin with, and Broughton would cycle his orders to customers with a frame heater in his backpack to adjust frames in people’s homes and offices. 

“Sometimes customers would travel directly [to Cubitts’ HQ] with their prescription, or for a fitting. They were rather surprised when they rocked up at an ex-council flat in King’s Cross.”

Initially, Broughton ran Cubitts as a side-hustle, staying in his full-time consulting job for the first two years. In 2015, he opened a first shop in Soho. The rent was £28,000 a year: “It seemed insanely expensive, but I calmed myself down by working out that I could rent out my flat, live there on the shop floor, and would only have to sell two frames a day to make it happen — thankfully we never got to that point.”

But it did get “really bad,” Broughton admits, sounding tearful as recalls 2014 “when I phoned my parents in tears thinking the dream was over.” They agreed to lend him £20,000. Serendipitously, that week Cubitts secured its first external stockist — clothing brand Albam — and had an encouraging order from novelist Nick Hornby (“who now has about 20 pairs of Cubitts”). 

Cubitts glasses (Cubitts)

Then a customer offered to invest: “We met him for coffee on Caledonian Road and he agreed to put in £100,000 seed money for equity.” Soon word of mouth kicked in, “or perhaps that should be ‘word of face’ — our products are handily placed,” Broughton points out. Today Cubitts sells about 60,000 glasses a year; celebrity wearers include Madonna, Emma Thompson, Idris Elba and Cynthia Erivo. 

Still Broughton — who lives in Belsize Park and commutes to Cubitts’ King’s Cross headquarters – admits the company only just made it through the pandemic: “We only had a few weeks of cash left. It was horrendous — making members of the team redundant for the first time will always stay with me.” 

Customers returned online. In coronavirus-hit 2021, turnover came in at £4.6 million; it’s set to more than double this year. Not that Broughton wants to take on the likes of Specsavers.

“Our market share is 0.3% at the moment —  the aim is to get to 1%. We’d like to get our rivals to behave differently — to do repairs as standard, as well as reglazing, as we do. But we don’t want to get too big! The thought of having 1,000 stores is my idea of hell.”

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