Company Performance Metrics
Mitesh Patel: Founder and MDPast Role: Docphin, Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer
Lenstore is an e-commerce retailer of contact lenses, officially founded on the 3rd January 2008 by Mitesh Patel.
From friends, Mitesh learned that online ordering of contact lenses was very popular in other countries. It allowed customers to buy contact lenses at a lower price than offered by Opticians, and have them conveniently delivered to
their door.
The website was launched on 11th June 2008. Trading began from a small 60sq foot office, but the company saw fast growth right from the start, and orders were up to over 10 per day by 2nd July 2008. Lenstore’s first order milestone – the 1000th order was taken on 5th October 2008.
Over the next few years the there was a continual push for growth.
Lenstore’s business model has a customer-centric focus. Anticipating customer’s needs for Optical advice between visits to the Optician, it has launched an Online Optical Clinic service in which customers are able to speak to in-house Opticians directly by email, telephone or video conference calling. July 2012 saw the launch of a Same Day Delivery service to all central London addresses. Lenstore is the only business in the industry to offer this service.
Lenstore quickly outpaced existing competition and is amongst the largest e-commerce contact lens retailers in the UK today, stocking over 1 million lenses in over 200 products from popular brands.
Lenstore has been ranked 10th in the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 for 2012, results issued 2nd December 2012.
