Pop Specs Review

 Enter the Dragons... Den! - the disruptive duo of Lina Tejoprayitno and Daniel Barnes, founders of Pop-Specs that wowed three tough investors recently - and New Business.

Apart from a highly professional pitch that ticked all the boxes a canny investor needs, Lina and Daniel had a product that did also. Not dreamland with vague ideas of what their product will turn over once the Dragons have parted with their hard earned cash, but a very new and professional take on the production of a pair of glasses that you can walk away with in 20 minutes! I will repeat this major USP for Pop Specs - they will produce a standard pair of glasses at their kiosks in just 20 minutes, solving the problem when someone has lost or damaged their glasses and need spectacles urgently to carry on their normal life, driving, reading or checking what the family is up to on social media. Furthermore, they had the financials to back up their pitch and Pop Specs is already operational in 5 locations.

One of which was in the Lakeside shopping centre, a short drive from our Kent base and this is where New Business comes in.

We also had the perfect customer in my wife, whose spectacles were damaged by a curious two year old, needing a replacement urgently and armed with her prescription provided locally, visited the Pop Specs, Lakeside Kiosk.

A worry, given that the price for standard lens glasses and frames is a basic £75, no matter what style you choose, is that the choice might be limited and not necessarily of the highest quality but both of these concerns were unfounded and my wife loved the glasses she brought home.

The procedure to get your sight back to 20/20 is quite straight forward. My daughter drove my wife to Lakeside for reasons you might want to guess at and were met by James, a real character. Apart from showing them a great range of one-off frames, James was in charge of the magic machine that would translate the prescription into a really nice pair of spectacles while they went for a coffee, which a typical Pop Specs customer would do.

The timing was about right, James was a great people person and my daughter who was intrigued by their business model will be going back, she liked the frame selection, the price and the process and her pair will be more an inexpensive luxury, not an emergency purchase.

The domestic upside is that we no longer find frozen food in the washing machine. The downside is, Eastenders is back on the TV.