James Murray Wells

James Murray Wells

James Murray Wells OBE is an English entrepreneur and was founder, owner and executive chairman of Prescription Eyewear Limited (trading as Glasses Direct), London, which he started whilst at university in 2004 and sold to Cipio Partners in 2013. At the time of the sale, the business had grown to employ more than 150 people, with sales of £29.9m in the year ending April 2013 and was selling to 50 overseas markets. He is currently Industry Head of Retail at Google UK.

Murray Wells attended Harrow School before attending the University of the West of England to read English, with the intention of studying Law subsequently.

His father is an investment analyst and his maternal grandfather, Wendell Clough, helped bring Ford and Chrysler to the UK.

While studying for his final university examinations, Murray Wells discovered that he needed to start wearing spectacles. Surprised by the high price quoted by an optician, he contacted first manufacturers and then individual workers until a technician told him that a pair of glasses selling for £150 costs only £7 to make. Inspired by this, he created a website selling spectacles directly to the public, initially funding his business using the remains of his student loan, he joined the small existing group of online spectacles retailers in the UK's traditionally highly controlled, arguably oligopolist spectacles market. (See the article UK Opticians (retailers) for a discussion of industry structure.)

In its first year of business, Murray Wells' new company Glasses Direct sold 22,000 pairs of glasses, and had an annual turnover of £1m. In 2009 Glasses Direct had 70 employees and sold a pair of glasses every three minutes. When the business was sold, revenue was expected to break £35m in sales in 2014.

Several established chains of conventional bricks and mortar opticians attempted to close down Glasses Direct with legal and regulatory threats, leading to a particularly bitter feud between Murray Wells and the offshore based chain Specsavers. These attempts have to date failed, with Specsavers itself now attempting to sell spectacles online.

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