Duo can see clearly now the founder's gone*
Serial entrepreneurs Luke Johnson and Ian Livingstone have had their £85.4m bid to buy the listed eyewear firm Inspecs accepted by its directors
Hello Rainmakers,
Serial entrepreneurs Luke Johnson and Ian Livingstone are promising a new focus for the once successful-but-now troubled Inspecs by taking it private.
Their £85.4m bid to buy the listed eyewear firm will give Inspecs new focus for the once successful-but-now troubled business.
Rob Buckland takes a look at what went wrong at Inspecs and Johnson and Livingstone’s vision for its future under their stewardship.
* Inspecs would like us to point out that founder Robin Totterman has resigned as CEO, but still retains an interest in the business and a board position.
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What do you do when you can’t find a pair of glasses that suit you? If you’re former City bond trader Robin Totterman, you solve the problem by starting your own spectacles business.
That was back in 1988 and Totterman appeared then to have 20-20 foresight.
Eyeing an opportunity in a sector that had barely changed for decades, he steadily built up a vertically integrated business that would design, manufacture, market and distribute a wide range of frames, lens, sunglasses and so on.
This was done by creating glasses for key brands – the first was with Jean Paul Gaultier - then manufacturing under licence, starting off with a deal with French Connection, then designing and making its own.
This was helped along by making two acquisitions, taking it into the UK luxury brand market and adding European design and Far East manufacturing capability.
Having achieved good growth and a solid reputation, Totterman’s turned his gaze towards a market listing on the London Stock Exchange and a chance to use the funds raised to hit the acquisition trail big time.
That was the vision – appropriately enough it floated in 2020. Using the £23.5m from its initial public offering (IPO), it proceeded to snap up in quick succession, Norville, the historic UK lens manufacturing business, Norwegian distributor A-Optikk AS and German eyewear firms Eschenbach Optik and BoDe.
This takeover spree created a global eyewear company with channel distribution across 70,000-plus retail outlets in more than 80 countries, 14 sales offices and manufacturing bases in Vietnam, China, Italy and the UK.
All was going well for the Bath-headquartered group. Having debuted on AIM at 195p – giving it a market value of £138m – Inspecs’ shares soared to reach 404p within 14 months.
