Why should you start a business? While many are driven by profit or purpose, for Cubitts Founder and CEO, Tom Broughton, it was a profound and singular passion for an object that 60% of us wear every day: spectacles.
Join us in a riveting conversation with Tom, filled with laughter and a level of candour that we absolutely adored, as we explore the compelling origin story of what is now an emerging multinational success. Tom's journey, marked by dramatic lows and almost unbelievable highs, offers not just a narrative that every business leader can relate to, but also unique insights into turning a simple passion into a global enterprise.
This podcast is more than just an account of business trials and triumphs; it's an extraordinary tale of fervent ambition and inspiration, bringing to life a business that is as much about vision as it is about spectacles.
Why should you start a business? While many are driven by profit or purpose, for Cubitts Founder and CEO, Tom Broughton, it was a profound and singular passion for an object that 60% of us wear every day: spectacles.
Join us in a riveting conversation with Tom, filled with laughter and a level of candour that we absolutely adored, as we explore the compelling origin story of what is now an emerging multinational success. Tom's journey, marked by dramatic lows and almost unbelievable highs, offers not just a narrative that every business leader can relate to, but also unique insights into turning a simple passion into a global enterprise.
This podcast is more than just an account of business trials and triumphs; it's an extraordinary tale of fervent ambition and inspiration, bringing to life a business that is as much about vision as it is about spectacles.
honestly believe that the most interesting things are born out of some degree of tension between two opposing forces. The people are most interesting are always those that are brilliant at things, but then have a fatal flaw. there was this disconnect between these people I was seeing on TV, that had these incredible glasses. then you go into like an optician and it's just seemed that opticians were selling glasses designed for people who didn't want to wear glasses. We have all of the rules, 99 percent of the time, of the time we break it. It's this little rug pull that makes something interesting. the employee handbook is the single most important thing we've ever written it's a framework for trying to attract and retain the type of people that we want at Qubits. But, and that's not that we, we want the best people. We want the right people.
Jamie:Hello, I'm Jamie Mitchell and welcome to Altogether's Three Things, where I sit down with exceptional founders and CEOs and ask for their three things, three pieces of actionable advice you can implement in your business today. And today I am sitting in a workshop. It's best way of describing. how I feel and what I've seen today. I'm sitting in as in, in the workshop of a modern spectacle and I'm sitting with the lovely Tom Broughton, CEO and founder of Qubits, and I'm quite excited about our chat, so thanks for having me here.
Tom Broughton:It's a pleasure, Jamie. Lovely to have you.
Jamie:So, I want to talk right off the bat about my real oversimplification that you are a man. Of juxtapositions. An accountant turned spectacle maker, and not just any old spectacle maker as we'll come to, a real, a really creative, and design led business through and through. a modern spectacle maker. what's going on? Is this, is this in your DNA do you think? A sort of, devil and an angel? Two sides to your personality? Or is this just how things have ended
Tom Broughton:That is an excellent question. I mean, all the interesting stuff in life is about tension.
Jamie:Right.
Tom Broughton:Like anything, any single thing unfettered leads to bad results. And the most interesting, I honestly believe that the most interesting things are born out of some degree of tension between two opposing forces. I think it plays really nicely into spectacles because they're this, they're this weird thing, which do sit between a whole different. A bunch of categories, right? Like they are a medical device. They are a piece of design, materiality, functionality, they're a piece of style. They are this weird thing that occupy all of these different worlds. And they are most interesting when they sit in the middle of all those different things. Where if you design a pair of glasses purely for function, it would lead you one direction. If you design a pair of glasses purely for style, it would lead you in another direction. I would contend that the best pair of spectacles are one that straddle all of those different things. And, and it just makes it interesting. and I think, you know, you can expand that into culture more generally. The people are most interesting are always those that are brilliant at things, but then have a fatal flaw. All the best, all the best
Jamie:going to get to your fatal flaw this early?
Tom Broughton:I mean, the podcast will be too long if we just focused on my flaws. But, yeah, I think like, I love the idea of embracing. and that feeds into everything, you know, the way we think about our visual identity, the way we think about our product, the way we think about our brand. And so, yeah, I'm really pleased that you recognize the inherent tension that we try to build in all parts of our, I guess, communication and culture and
Jamie:come, we'll come to the brand. And I think, You know, my first, I remember the first time when you said you were an accountant before and I was, I was genuinely taken aback because having been a trainee accountant and having worked with a lot of accountants, you didn't really fit the bill.
Tom Broughton:Yeah, that's
Jamie:This version of you
Tom Broughton:Yeah, exactly.
Jamie:but let's, let's, let's tell people the story of Qubits.
Tom Broughton:Well, I guess like with I started wearing glasses when I was at school. When I was a teenager. At a point in my life where anyone that knows, if you just get out a pair of glasses in class and put them on everyone looks at you. You suddenly become the Specky Four Eyed Kid. but luckily for me, it was at the point of my life where I was kind of working out who I was, I was getting more confident in myself. And I just thought glasses were cool. Like the
Jamie:Sorry, you are younger than me. Let's just, for the record, state this before I go and tell you that I too started wearing glasses as a teenager. But in those days, it was, there were one style and three colors of NHS
Tom Broughton:Exactly. Well, the first pair of glasses that I fell in love with were the glasses that were worn by Morrissey. So, when I started getting into music and I thought the Smiths were amazing and then Morrissey wore these pair of glasses that were the NHS 524s. And so my, my, my, introduction into Spectacles came from a point of thinking, Wow, this, this cotidian product that's given out free by the NHS is really, really cool. And I realized in hindsight that most people didn't think that. And I'm guessing you probably
Jamie:either. No, but I'd love to wear a pair now.
Tom Broughton:Yeah, exactly. and so I, I started from a different, I guess, entry point into the world of glasses. And I just thought they were this incredible thing. And then, you know, when Britpop came around, this is the late 90s.
Jamie:So now, now we're aging
Tom Broughton:Yeah.
Jamie:Yeah. Okay, fine. A youth, A youthful man.
Tom Broughton:And, Jarvis Cocker, I thought, at the pool. And like, I was just like, wow, this person strutting around with so much confidence, making this, at this time, I thought was incredible music. Glasses are amazing. And then I couldn't, because I grew up in Leicester, and then going to, going to Leicester, and I went to an optician on Leicester High Street, and there was this disconnect between these people I was seeing on TV, that had these incredible glasses. And then you go into like an optician and it's just seemed that glasses were designed for opticians were selling glasses designed for people who didn't want to wear glasses. And, and I just held that disconnect with me that like,
Jamie:yeah. Yeah.
Tom Broughton:And then I started, then I started realizing you could go to a car boot sale and you could buy this amazing pair of glasses for like three quid and like start collecting frames. Just thinking this is really, this. Glasses are really interesting aren't they? Well, in my twenties when I could like afford it, I ended up buying a pair of Cutler Grose frames. And I think they're the most incredible, I just came across them as a like brand. I just thought they're the most intoxicating brand. They've got this incredible history in the frames. And that's what Jarvis Cocker wears. And I just thought like, wow, like glasses don't have to be the way that I've seen them. Like when I'm going to like the opticians in Leicester.
Jamie:but this is the point isn't there was the car boots, sales glasses. There were the luxury end of the market, which are gonna cost you a pretty penny. but you still become an accountant.
Tom Broughton:Yeah, exactly. So I've never really known what I want to be when I grow up. Right. Astronaut, professional footballer. I think those days probably gone, I'm thinking now.
Jamie:I'm going, well you, no, you can go to space if Elon, if Elon hurries up with his Mars, Mars,
Tom Broughton:But anyway, most of my decisions that I made to get to that point were all forms of career procrastination, because I never knew what I wanted to do. Why I chose my A levels, I did a degree, chose that because I didn't know what to do. Then I thought, well, I need to get a job and yeah, and then did, and then I joined an accounting company, but not to be an accountant. And when I was there, cause I thought accounting was really boring. They said, you get a bonus or whatever, if you do this qualification. So I was like, well, I might as well do that. So then I spent three years and qualified.
Jamie:actually, it's actually one of the most useful bits of training you can
Tom Broughton:I mean, it's mad how it, yeah, it's really, really handy. and then did that for a bit, left there and then did loads of like weird, odd jobs. Like. I worked for a long time in children's television, I've worked for the BBC World Service for a while, I worked for Spotify in the early days of Spotify. So that was actually the last bit of work I did before committing full time to Qubits. So that would have been, it overlapped with the start of Qubits,
Jamie:2014. So Qubits day one,
Tom Broughton:Yeah.
Jamie:it just turned 10, which I forgot to say, happy
Tom Broughton:Thank you very much.
Jamie:Um, you started a business. It was
Tom Broughton:Online.
Jamie:online originally, I think, right? You weren't thinking shops. Uh, so tell us because this has built up over years, right? What was really the insight that made you convinced to get off the career ladder and start this thing?
Tom Broughton:well, I didn't get off the career ladder. there wasn't a point where it was like, Ding, the Eureka moment, this is what I want to do. I loved glasses in my twenties. I just started buying lots of them, buying vintage ones. I just had like, it was a hobby. And I was like,
Jamie:were you, were you selling them as well? Were you trading them? No. They were just
Tom Broughton:you? Just me. Still got like boxes of them kicking around. And, I just thought they're really cool. I just thought glasses are cool. And then I just thought like, this could actually be. This could be like a self sustaining hobby that pays for itself. Like at the beginning, there was no plan. Like, and this is what, honestly, my aspiration at the
Jamie:Well, first of all, did you fund it yourself to begin with? Yes. Okay, so you didn't have to write a business plan? plan. You just had to start it? I
Tom Broughton:Just had to start it.
Jamie:you started what though?
Tom Broughton:Well, originally, so originally I started it with somebody that I used to work with at the county company and basically just, and it was always like, well, let's see where this thing goes, like we'll put some money towards it. Just when it was starting, he essentially said, I can't be part of this. I'm going to take a full time job at this other, other thing. So I was like, okay, I've got a decision to make here. Do I keep going or give up? And that was like, this is, is this folly? This is. This seems kind of ridiculous because I've got a good job that I should like be focusing on. I should have a
Jamie:and, and to be fair, a sole founder. I mean, you know, being CEO is lonely. A sole founder is really a lonely job, right?
Tom Broughton:were
Jamie:you selling? What were you sourcing? basically got a
Tom Broughton:a ragtag bunch of frames. That we'd like make like samples and
Jamie:and, and, and, how did it do? This online store of yours? Right,
Tom Broughton:well, we built a website. We'd registered a brand and we got like a tiny amount of product and like a few bits of machinery. And that was it. And then it was just like, Oh, fuck. What do we, like, what do
Jamie:we do? And this, again, this is a, you have to put your own prescription into the website, buy a pair of glasses and hope that this unknown e commerce business will send you something back.
Tom Broughton:but we launched a site and then like people did start buying, we like sold a frame on our first day.
Jamie:Did you know what was important to the brand, I'm going to use the word, from day one?
Tom Broughton:it didn't really have a purpose or a mission or like, but I think the very tiny number of customers that we had, like what they liked, I think was, I don't know, like the authenticity of it. Like, cause we get an order in like, from if it was somewhere in London. We'd often like cycle around to their house and like take, we couldn't take, there's a measurement called your pupillary distance that you need to take to glaze the frames and like, we didn't know how to take it.
Jamie:So, You hadn't invented the online way of doing this yet.
Tom Broughton:So we'd like literally cycle around to people's houses with a ruler and like knock on the door and just take, or like, we didn't have an office running out of my
Jamie:flat,
Tom Broughton:but I mean, I had all these weird things where I had to try and pretend the company was more, was bigger and more authentic than it was. cubit street. And when we changed the address on everything to like, I think it was unit five, four cubits. So, people, would say the post would still arrive.
Jamie:But, to be fair, right, if you've, if you've managed to. Get a decent collection of unusual and interesting glasses. You're pricing it, I assume, competitively because of this. Were you playing the whole week I'd had the middleman line? Good,
Tom Broughton:just think it's so over, people
Jamie:Well, it wasn't overused at the time, but it was, it was sort of, it was becoming overused. But you, you were, you were value, not value priced. Well, you were, you were saying a hundred quid cheaper than a Yeah. Luxury pair. You were coming around people's houses to measure it. Yeah. Because you're a cool online business that didn't need a shot. there's a story to it. An authenticity, that word that we, is now so overused and hard to find. I can get that, but it would have been slow.
Tom Broughton:Honestly, I can talk about it now, but like those, that first year was horrendous. It was the worst year of my life. Without like a shadow of a doubt, it's like, cause you've basically, it's not just that you've spent all your life savings on this thing. It's like your, your repute, your ego, your reputation, you've been telling all your friends about this and you're basically looking after a failing, dying business that's about to run out of cash, where one of your best friends is always also working in it. So you have a sort of, yeah, duty to that, maintain that relationship and you don't know what you're doing and it's like. I never set out to be CEO, it just sort of happens. Like,
Jamie:So what was the, what was the turning point?
Tom Broughton:It's sort of March, April 2014. We were, we were fucked, to be honest with you. Like, we're about to go out of business. Like, it was, yeah, it was horrendous. So, I was like to Joe, we need to start doing
Jamie:Orders trickling in, or?
Tom Broughton:But like he's what, one a day. So it just wasn't paying. And we couldn't do anything. We couldn't afford to buy anything. Like, and
Jamie:You couldn't buy stock? You couldn't do marketing? You couldn't, you know, you were stuck. I mean, it's, you know,
Tom Broughton:So it was
Jamie:you needed money.
Tom Broughton:need, to do something. So we came up with a list,
Jamie:But that's what
Tom Broughton:that was advising a bloke, Michael Hoville, who said, you just need to sell more stuff. And it's like, so obvious, but like, so I was like to Joe, like, okay, we need to sell more stuff. Why don't we try and get in a shop, people go to shops and buy stuff, let's get in a shop. So
Jamie:shop. Forget this ridiculous online thing. It's been done, it's been done this way for hundreds of
Tom Broughton:like we need to get in a shop, we wrote down a list of shops that we liked, and the first one on it was a brand called Aobao. And, a friend of ours worked at Albam, so we knew a way in,
Jamie:on
Tom Broughton:door, like rocked up and basically said, I'd love to, I met the founder, Alistair, and I was like, it'd be really cool if we can, if you could stock us and they were like, yeah, okay, we'll stop you. I was like, wow. Is it that easy? So we went in and the crazy thing, we hadn't even thought, like I say, the company comes from spectacle style of spectacles, and then suddenly this was like April, May, and then people were like, can we do these as sunglasses? And I was like, actually,
Jamie:don't have to cycle around people's houses.
Tom Broughton:do them as sunglasses. We just have to
Jamie:Oh my goodness me. I love the fact you are not sugarcoating this. Boy were you naive, eh? But you were passionate. Yeah. You had a love for this object. Yeah. Which, by the way, is so evident in everything about you today. and, and, in a way, you, I mean, if you hadn't survived, then that would have been the story, I guess. But, you went to, from one a day to
Tom Broughton:day to Five. Which
Jamie:was and you were not having to do anything on them'cause they were all sunglasses.
Tom Broughton:And so that in itself was good, but then it introduced us to, there were two customers in a week that completely turned the fortunes. One, who ended up investing. Well, the first customer was, we, we got an order through from album, it was a bloke called, this name came up, it was Nick Hornby.
Jamie:And, it's his local, actually, no, he's brother. Nevermind.
Tom Broughton:And I was like, that can't be, didn't it call me the author? Could it be? Surely not. Because I remember the first book I properly read was Fever Pitch when I was like 12, 13 years old. so, I went up and like, to just this frame, so I went up and met him, and he was really complimentary, and I was just like, when I was so close, what he didn't know, is I was like, probably a week before, I was about to jack it
Jamie:all in, Yep.
Tom Broughton:and he was like, I really love what you're doing, great brand, keep it up. And then by the album sales, I was like, okay, we can get through this summer. And by this point, I've been trying to raise money, trying to get investment. It just been like endless rejections. And it's very, an
Jamie:endless, You had a plan then, at this point.
Tom Broughton:I'd sort of put something together. I actually looked at it recently and it was kind of all, it was all over the shop. But like, anyone that's like raised like money and I'm sure you've been through the process. Like when you don't have any power or agency and you're desperate for it, it's so I've never been like so ghosted before it was just like, endlessly ghosting and like you speak to them and say I'll get back to get back to you. And it's just like, why am I doing any of this? And then out of the blue, we got this email from a chap called Gary Clark, who was like, I love what you're doing. I just tried to go to my local optician to get my pupillary distance and they refused to give it to me. I'm realizing that this model is fucked. I think what you're doing is great. if you, if you need investment, let me know. and Joe replied to his email. He was like, what's the save? Like, yeah, let's meet, met him that day on the Cali Road, and he chat about it and he was like, I'd like to invest. How much do you want? And I, I think at the time I didn't know. I, I hadn't even thought it, so I just. To get to that point, I burnt through 67 grand. So I think I just said that was a number that was in my head. So I was like, 67
Jamie:Grand As if, as if that's the most obvious amount of money.
Tom Broughton:and then he was like, I think you need
Jamie:more. Yes.
Tom Broughton:And I was like, okay. yeah, yeah.
Jamie:What, who is he by the way? What was he?
Tom Broughton:see, so he worked in the city for like 20, he was like a, a asset manager, equity trader type thing.
Jamie:not coming from this world, but he maybe had made. Other investments of the, of the Ilka at the time. That was a disturbing effort. Really? Yeah. Gosh. I mean, this is
Tom Broughton:Weird serendipity here again, but like he, he was like a hundred grand. And I was like, okay, a hundred grand. So we agreed the valuation and then we agreed the terms, then he invested. And so that hundred grand changed everything. Cause it also for that first year, I'd kind of made so many mistakes that I'd got a better sense of like who we were as a brand. and then I knew what we wanted to do. And by that time we'd had the album experience. So I was like, I need a physical site.
Jamie:You'd con you'd been convinced by that, that you needed to go Yeah. Full whack in. Yeah. and I just want to take a moment also on that and that first, that first anecdote that the, the. Reinforcement, the energy you would have got from that one Nick Hornby, keep it up. I mean, in terms of life funding or just air to breathe.
Tom Broughton:Yeah.
Jamie:So, so interesting.
Tom Broughton:And he doesn't know that, right? He doesn't know that what was probably just a nice casual comment has led to
Jamie:We'll be sure to get him, get him a copy of this and make sure he's aware of his impact. okay. We're going to have to fast forward this story because we've got things I want to talk about. you end up opening a shop in Soho with full, full optician shop. Or did you just, yeah, you went the full, this is the tradition model, but we're one, we're one brand. We don't sell this multiple brands. Who else, if anybody in London was set up that way? Mm. nobody. nobody. I mean, Specsavers
Tom Broughton:Well, I guess you had like, people like Cutler and Gross who were doing a brilliant thing and a lot of there were a few brands that had stores, but, there was nothing that, that was like doing what we're doing and then like offering like bespoke, which was a big thing for us, which,
Jamie:how did, I didn't really ask this earlier, but what was, is the pricing. What's the secret to the pricing here? Is it just that the luxury end has gorged the market and was making too big a margin or did you cut out some weird costs that we didn't know was
Tom Broughton:Well, essentially, what we're selling is a wholesale price. So the way most opticians work is they'll buy a product in and then apply 2. 8 times mark upon it. And that's the retail
Jamie:it's the own label, it's the own label model. So
Tom Broughton:you're buying in a frame for 100, you're then selling it for 280 and then you put the lenses
Jamie:But, but Moscow are doing that, they distribute through other stores. So they're predominantly a wholesaler who makes a full margin in their own retail stores. Yeah. Okay. I get it completely now. now look back in, back in these days, and I'm going to now talk about technology, DTC versus retail here and the journey you've been on. and, and I'm going to shortcut it by saying, I've heard you describe yourself as accidentally now a tech company. Uh, talk to me about, about that, because I think now I really think. Technology is quite an important part of defining you,
Tom Broughton:absolutely. But it's one of those things that we've sort of stumbled into and perhaps because of complete naivety and low budgets. We've sort of had to become like, all right at it. So I'll give you a practical example. When, I mean, when we first opened the store on the 4th, 5th of November, 2014, when we opened at 37 Marshall street, Soho, Joe and I were working in there. And I remember we opened the door and our plan was to sell like two frames a day or something. And, and the customer came in at like 11 in the morning And it was our first ever customer and Joe and I were looking at each other thinking, shit, what do we do? Like, should we speak to
Jamie:Yes, this is another bit of naivety, you are not a retailer. And he went
Tom Broughton:and he went over and picked up a frame, tried it on and said, I'd like to have these please. And we were like, what do we do? And we realized at that point, we didn't even have a card terminal. We hadn't thought about any of
Jamie:Come on. No, come on. I actually think this is a joke now. I really do. You are a, I'm sorry, I'm going to say this. This is a very successful business, everybody listening. If you don't know Qubits, this is an exceptional business. I'm a very loyal customer. Their retail experience is phenomenal. Their online presence and their technology is great. But what the
Tom Broughton:fuck! I know,
Jamie:You have
Tom Broughton:in the end we ended up bringing up the website, and then he ended up Buying it through the website. but what we realized then was, cause then we thought, okay, we need to look at these retail point of sale solutions and we looked at them and they're all shit and they're
Jamie:really expensive One size fits
Tom Broughton:they all just felt like it was like Windows 3. 1 and it was like, and we were just like, can't we just build our own? It can't be that difficult. And then, because we'd moved to this weird open source platform and we had a developer helping
Jamie:us. Okay, but hold on. Now you're talking the language of tech for a second. So were you techie?
Tom Broughton:I mean, like tech oriented rather than like tech. So that we understood how, you know, when I was a teenager, I used to build websites. Right. So like
Jamie:right? So, like, that kind of Yeah, it was just
Tom Broughton:Yeah. But it's just like, like
Jamie:yeah, And
Tom Broughton:I was always just cynical about going and buying an answer to something. And my approach to like everything continues to this day is. If you try and buy an answer, you never get a good one and you're best to muddle through and learn yourself so you can ask a better question. so that's what we did. And we built like a patient management system for all the eye tests. We built that and we started building these little bits of technology. That bolted onto the business like a thing for measuring the
Jamie:glazing Yeah, okay. So I've got to correct my understanding. You were actually quite tech led very early on in this regard. I'm really intrigued in this point, by the way, because I've got, I've got quite fixated on the idea that this AI revolution might be the moment where those of us who feel least tech savvy will be able to tech nify our businesses. Terrible words I've just used there, but you know what I mean, right? And I love stories of businesses that aren't tech businesses that build tech products. So I'm really interested in the story of, I'm not going to buy this product, I'm going to build it.
Tom Broughton:Yeah.
Jamie:Come on now, are you just a really
Tom Broughton:No
Jamie:obstinate sort of, I am not going to pay money for something that's going to do half the job, or, and where's the self confidence and the belief in it? I mean, you open a shop without knowing how you're going to sell it. You make glasses without realising sunglasses are probably going to be your easy money. But here, oh, I'll build my own technology platform.
Tom Broughton:Well, I think it's the Perspect combination of naivety and recklessness. But, The backs
Jamie:And we're back to the juxtaposition. Oh no, that's not a juxtaposition, that's an
Tom Broughton:is probably
Jamie:the tension that's
Tom Broughton:that, like, in, in, in hold. but, it, like, Technology is a means to an end, not an end in itself, right? And like, it was all about what is the, what is going to be the easiest way to do the stuff we want to do. Our whole approach to taking on the world of optics was to try and simplify everything as much as possible. The problem with technology that's sold to the entire industry, it's the opposite of that, it's overly complicated because it has to cover every, and so it was like, we're. We're, my problem was why are we buying something where we're not going to use 99 percent of it? If we spend five times more money than we do for giving that 1%, we'll still only, it will still, it'll still be cheaper.
Jamie:I'm not saying I disagree with you. I'm just, I'm, I'm intrigued where that confidence comes from for, for that You
Tom Broughton:I think it was, I honestly think there's naivety rather than confidence, A legitimate reason was I didn't know that Qubits was going to last another year. And a lot of
Jamie:the software that
Tom Broughton:that you sign up has minimum contract terms, like, and
Jamie:like, with
Tom Broughton:and with our developer, we were already paying him a retainer to do the development. So my view was the incremental cost of us doing that is actually zero. And if it all goes down, it all goes down, but what I don't want to be doing is me personally tied up to this, you know, on the hook for this. Four year bloody thing that we signed with some innovation system,
Jamie:right? I get that. It also seems, by the way, that it has given you a very potent approach to technology and how you build technology. Because I remember when we talked about AI couple of months ago, and you talked about your machine learning stuff that you've done. And you just, I think you said you just hired a couple of relatively recent graduates or something like that. But basically you are You're, you're handpicking individuals to help you, not going to a company that builds technology where the margins and the costs and everything get layered on top. You're, you're being scrappy to this day on
Tom Broughton:I want to hire developers, I don't want
Jamie:Again, that sounds like a tech company, not a spec, a modern spectacles company. But that's, you know.
Tom Broughton:but it's, I guess it's apology to everything, not technology, but the way we design stores or do fit outs, like.
Jamie:are who? Who designs. So first of all, for people who don't know you, you choose predominantly unique locations. But you do a bespoke and very beautiful design, I would say in every single one of them. Who, who's the designer?
Tom Broughton:Well, it's evolved. So at the beginning, it was me, which was why the first few stores were terrible,
Jamie:Well, you were also designing the
Tom Broughton:actually also
Jamie:exactly.
Tom Broughton:designer called Andy Sweet, who I should mention, who's based in Scotland, but like. we, when we, yeah, the first few stores were a bit of a car crash, but they're okay. They were authentic. They were rough around the edges. Over time, we've got better and we've worked with, we have slightly bigger budget, so we can work with really brilliant designers and interior architects. But
Jamie:you're not going to, you haven't got the sort of single
Tom Broughton:it's a different one. Perfect design No, no,
Jamie:firm that's, you know,
Tom Broughton:No, as you can imagine, we're very hands on. I'm very hands on with it. and Katie, our managing director is very hands on with it. but we've cut out all like, cause other people have a project manager and they have someone like who runs a whole process and goes to like retail fit out companies. The chap who does our retail fit out, I found him on rated people just, and he came around to my flat to do a little job bloke's good. Do you fancy doing a shop fit out and now off the back of it, he's built an entire business, but like you over, I just think people overcomplicate it sometimes because they underestimate their own ability to actually achieve a good outcome.
Jamie:a good outcome. Or they overestimate the complexing challenge of applying themselves to something new, which, you know, it could be insecurity that stops them doing it as much as overcomplication that gets them the other way. so let's talk about design because what shines through. Partly because of those stores, absolutely because of the glasses and entirely through the way you and the business talks is that love and passion for design. Again, is this an accident of the fact that this was your passion and your hobby, or did at some point you wake up and go, this is, this is what we're going to differentiate ourselves here with. Let's double down
Tom Broughton:It's not, like, don't want to get all idea rams about it, but, like, I, like, I'm a fervent believer that design changes people's lives. Like, it's, like, it's, it's Everything good. Humanity is created. Well, again, this is a false statement. There's a design element to but like, I just think it's so unbelievably like important and like somewhat so frequently butchered. And so, like, we talk about it all the time. We have a whole bunch of like little internal sayings that help us think about how the role of design plays. But like Yeah. It, it's just, it, it is the most integral part of the business. Everything, all the little touch points, So I'll give you like, we have a saying, which is Which I find really useful. We've not quite mastered it yet, but it's that tension thing again, which is precision with soul. So we use that to try and apply that to everything we do to varying degrees of success. And what I mean by that is we are, we are a brand design is really important and authenticity and trust. An authority is really important. We're a medical product, right? So precision, we are precise. We sell a precise medical product that is heavily regulated, where a millimeter makes a difference. We need to have really clear rules about how we do stuff, but the tension comes from the soul. It's breaking those. We have all of the rules, 99 percent of the time, of the time we break it. And that injects this sense of personality and, because we don't want to be po faced and austere. It's this little rug pull that makes something interesting. And what we want to do is, obviously you can, you know, create really, like that, the, the, magazine or the spectacle that, is, on the desk here. Like the whole idea to, to do that is we have lots of precision. Like you can see that the image of that frame shot, really clear, structured, direct on in a very considered way. And then we'll, then we'll break it and then we'll find a way to, whether it's a little bit of idiosyncratic, like. text or illustration or whimsy to try and create that contrast between the precision and the soul between the authoritative, authoritativeness and the gregariousness.
Jamie:this is interesting, of course, coming, I mean, I'd like to say, I've thought this whole thing through with my initial question about juxtaposition. It actually just came to me two minutes before we started, but actually you can be design led and not have the tension,
Tom Broughton:Yeah.
Jamie:not spend enough time on the soul.
Tom Broughton:Yeah. And there's some brilliant brands that do that well.
Jamie:There are, But this juxtaposition and the soul, it's, it's, it's, I, I find that fascinating. Brand, let's talk about this very quickly, marketing. you've not really gone heavy on, I mean, you've done it. That the traditional DTC spending on on Google and Facebook and all the rest of you hate. You've stated how much you dislike it,
Tom Broughton:Yeah, it's awful. It's corrosive.
Jamie:but you now seem to be almost. It's like an old fashioned FMCG business. Not quite spending all the money on 30 second TV ads, but it's, it's, I mean, it feels to me like you are massively overindexed on what we would call brand marketing.
Tom Broughton:Yeah.
Jamie:I don't think I ever have seen a bit of marketing that says 150 for a pair of beautiful spectacles. you know, and I don't think I actually seen that much marketing that's, here's a really nice pair of spectacles.
Tom Broughton:Yeah. Well, that, that newspaper, there'll be a few pictures of spectacles in there, but that's it. And I
Jamie:guess our
Tom Broughton:is that other people will like that and be
Jamie:drawn to us.
Tom Broughton:but it's like, it's attraction, not promotion. And like, that is a core, that's our, I guess our brand belief. And that's my problem with performance marketing or a lot of marketing. Like it's intrusive. It's based on a kind of arbitrage or algorithm or CPA to LTV
Jamie:Some blooming accountant, yes I say accountant, finance person, has wanted to see the short
Tom Broughton:term
Jamie:ROI. But
Tom Broughton:But the prob the problem with all of it is we, as human beings are, we always have a bias for stuff that is easy to measure. And we, but easiness to measure does not equate to importance. And this is my fundamental problem with it. And so all the brand stuff is really difficult to measure and like, to be honest, I'm not even gonna try
Jamie:and measure it. So how are you deciding how much to spend?
Tom Broughton:We want to make a newspaper. Let's work out how much it costs to make a newspaper. And that's the budget.
Jamie:And And, and, then How do you persuade those who have to sign off budgets? Because you have investors, you have a board, and these things. You've had to grow up into, into the sort of the world of governance. You know, it's simply I'm just going to convince people of the quality of the work and we'll, we'll all
Tom Broughton:happily
Jamie:in the output
Tom Broughton:look, it's a cha and look, it's a challenge, right? Because when, you know, we took on PE Inve investment in 2018, and obviously they were of the view of like, what's your marketing as a percentage of revenue? How much are you spending on performance marketing? How is that, and all of those. And we tried stuff, but it never felt us. It's never, and it never didn't work. with the brand stuff, I just know it's important and it's all entwined. The stores
Jamie:the power but well the stores are now, and this is where, you know, for me, again, we people get confused with this concept of brand and it gets hijacked by marketing departments who decide it's what they make up about. Something to tell consumers. No, it's the, it's, it's, it's the interactions with. it's how they want, how they end up talking about you and whether they love you a lot and the stores are big part of that but there's another problem there. I mean, there's a small stores, small staff teams, culture and, and, and engagement in teams is everything. And as you know, how do you. How have you learned? What kind of approach do you have to your, to your teams? I notice there's quite a lot of longevity in your, in your teams. Any unique?
Tom Broughton:like for us, again, I've made so many mistakes over the, the last decade when it comes to people. And I'm still rubbish at people. I'm not good with people, right?
Jamie:can believe that. but, like,
Tom Broughton:culture is everything. And like, what we have is a brilliant culture. Like, and we're still working on it. And it's not like, and
Jamie:the problem, and, and,
Tom Broughton:and
Jamie:How do you work on it?
Tom Broughton:Like, we're just constantly trying to, so you see, what I don't want to be is culture that something's written on a wall. So, saying that, we have our values written on the wall, but it's, it's stuff that helps you make decisions. Yes it is. And I think, I think the problem with all of the stuff around mission and values is everyone tries to be like Patagonia with some worthy purpose
Jamie:and they chase them out of town. Guess what you need in your values? Tension. Exactly. You need tension in the values. Then there can be
Tom Broughton:Bed. Because then you have to make the, and then it's about deciding what not to do as much as it is to do. And we have made a bunch of hard internal decisions that have created a much more coherent sense of culture. And I'll give you a really practical example. Work from home policy. We got rid of it. We don't have one. So, if you work at Qubits, the expectation is you go to your place of work 5 days a week. Now,
Jamie:a lot of people say Which 95
Tom Broughton:5
Jamie:have to because they're
Tom Broughton:a week staff empty. Well, exactly. And we took One of our values is for all. And that applies internally and externally. Internally When we make a decision about like the, the, I don't know, terms of engagement or employment, it applies to everybody. Not just, and so like, for example, we publish all of our salaries. Everyone
Jamie:knows paid. What? Sorry. Okay. I love these moments.
Tom Broughton:You do? Yeah. So everyone will know how much I, exactly how much I, earn. So, so we have grades and levels and then we, which has the salary again. And then people know what grade and level everyone is. So it's pretty easy for people to work out how much I earn.
Jamie:When did that
Tom Broughton:we, during COVID, so during COVID was the time where, cause we almost went out of business during COVID, right? That was the bit where we'd gone, we took on this private equity money and the culture had gone awry, to be honest. We started hiring expensive people. We started making bad decisions. We started hiring the wrong people. We didn't have the culture. When COVID kicked in, it was, well, here, we've got an opportunity here, which is to do a big reset. And so that's when we wrote down our values and our manifesto and our mission and like what, what we wanted to double down on and what we wanted to accept. We're not, we're not going to
Jamie:Is this the first time you'd really tried to document all that stuff? Again, astronomical, isn't it? Because you're already a pretty big business by this time. Yeah, exactly. With a lot of
Tom Broughton:and that
Jamie:of difference. That
Tom Broughton:process was hard, but one of the most important things we've ever done. And by creating that, it allowed us to make decisions. So when it came from work from home, It was quite easy to make the decision, even though it goes in the face of nearly what every other business was doing, it was the majority of our people have to be in the place of work. We, one of our values is for all, we want to have a policy that applies equally to everybody. So for the 10 or 15 percent or whatever that have flexibility, we're going to require them to come to the place of work because we believe that we should all be in it together. And we should, we don't want to create divides between people that work and go to the place of work and people that work from home. And some people have left as a result, but I think that's the right thing to do. And it means that it's much more harder. It's much more difficult to recruit people in certain, you know, e com or customer experience or those kinds of roles. But my
Jamie:belief, Well, yeah, lucky you don't want to do all that paid marketing, eh? Because they're really expensive folk anyway.
Tom Broughton:and so, yeah, I think that's an example where like culture, then we attract the sort of people that want to be in that kind of culture.
Jamie:The minute you started opening out of London, shops, I can't remember which your first one was, but Brighton, wasn't it? So suddenly we've got a two hour gap, what were the learnings? What, what has anything changed or
Tom Broughton:had to be adapted or? It goes to the same, same thing. If you have a strong culture, it looks after itself. give you a, like, when we had a poor culture, having a shop in, Spittlefields. Which is, you cycle there in 25 minutes from here. That became difficult managing special fields. Much more difficult managing a store that's a 25 minute cycle ride away, than when we had a strong culture opening a store that's two hours away by
Jamie:trade. How big is a team in a typical store?
Tom Broughton:Three, four, five.
Jamie:It's quite hard. So, so the, the, the, cheat notes on multi site retail and multi site hospitality actually points to one simple thing, which is, is there a group of friends working together or do they like and respect, is this a fun place for people to be in what is actually quite hard and relatively low paid, although your, your roles are probably more. better paid.'cause there's technical skills required, I guess. Yeah. But still that, that, that matters. Yeah. Your culture can help that. But frankly, it comes down to who those three or four people are and where whatever you've put three or four people together who want to hang out. Yeah. As to whether they're gonna wear a smile to work every
Tom Broughton:Yeah, yeah, definitely. But the way, one of the ways, obviously hiring the right people is really important, but you need to give them a framework for how they make decisions on a day to day basis without telling them. And that's, again, where the culture comes in. You don't want to be like, Here's the clipboard of stuff that you need to do in the exact same
Jamie:way. No, for
Tom Broughton:are people that with a mate, like individuality and personality that brings them, but if you can give them a set of cool culture, which is that Cuba's, this is the way we do things. Then it just helps them on a day to day basis of making the right decisions. And I can't control. We have 142 people in the company now, obviously I can't, God knows what like they're doing now, like, but I trust them.
Jamie:so, but, but how do you know, what's your measure of success in that store in Brighton? What, what is the
Tom Broughton:one of them?
Jamie:at?
Tom Broughton:net promoter score. You do, Yeah. So after someone buys a product, like a week after they get an email and it's like, come, we ask you a few questions about it. And then there's a whole thing about, yeah. How, how likely would you be recommended to your, this friend, to your friends? it's a question.
Jamie:question. What are you doing? 10 point scale? What are you getting
Tom Broughton:80 to What? Yeah, it's good. But like it should, yeah, but it should, I think it should be higher. Like it's like. What did we say?
Jamie:mean,
Tom Broughton:We count 100. Like, there is no reason why, and to me that is the most important metric in like the whole business. And like, what, what, we get, like, when the NPS comments come through every Monday morning, it's like, I read them first, like, I just read them, I
Jamie:them, straight, I guess every single one. So customer first thing, customer first, literally, and
Tom Broughton:yeah, I guess, but obviously I just ignore all the good ones, you've seen the value in them Yeah, what's the value in, like, a good, it's
Jamie:it's, well,
Tom Broughton:and
Jamie:needs to see them. They need to know the hard works paying off,
Tom Broughton:but the hard work is about what we do about the ones that have left a poor review. Okay. What's gone wrong? Like, yeah, that, that, I guess it is customer first, but it's still just like. Yeah.
Jamie:So you have to now turn all of this. Into three pieces of actual advice. And let's not make it start a business without a business plan. Although there will be a lot of reasons to do that. I think, you know, you wouldn't be where you are today if you'd try to write a business plan, cause it would put you off
Tom Broughton:Well, I mean, to me, it's a lot of the stuff that we've talked about, really, about, about, like, Writing down, creating rules that define your behavior, because you can't like, that book that we wrote, the employee handbook is the single most important thing we've ever written, which is part of all of the culture.
Jamie:Just before people get turned off, I'm guaranteeing you, everyone listening, that that employee handbook would be one of the most enjoyable reads of an employee handbook that you've ever come across, right? This is not an employee handbook as people know it, I assume,
Tom Broughton:Yeah. Yeah. Well, exactly. And it's like, it's a, it's a framework for, for, for trying to attract and retain the type of people that we want at Qubits. But, and that's not that we, we want the best people. We want the right people. And like, it also means that there's some very, very talented people who aren't right for Qubits. They may want to work from home and they're unbelievably talented, but that's just not for us. And it forced, writing that document forced. me to make difficult decisions, which has created the petri dish in which the culture has grown. And, like, if I would go back to the start, I would have written that right at the beginning. Because it wasn't that I had a new set of, like, theories. I
Jamie:still I think, I think there's a time. You may have written it late. I think there's a time, because I think you've got to let things germinate a little bit first. A bit like your business needed to germinate
Tom Broughton:I would have written it before I take took on private equity investment because I didn't have that the company and the culture skewed.
Jamie:As if I'd framework, You'd have understood that. Yeah, I, I am, I get that. It does feel like it was a personal manifesto. I know you were talking about like a company employee handbook, but it sounds like, I would love to read it by the way. It sounds like it was a bit of a personal manifesto. I kind of, what's the, what, if you had to suggest to someone that writing it down though, give them some insight into how they should best construct or write something like this.
Tom Broughton:I honestly think it's writing down what your personal. ethos is about people,
Jamie:but so, okay, this document does not therefore state state you know, the purpose of our business or the ambition or the vision. This is actually really just our community.
Tom Broughton:Yeah, exactly. Because That's what we are. We're people, We're
Jamie:people, we're a
Tom Broughton:of people who do a very people driven
Jamie:How do you measure whether it's worked as a piece of
Tom Broughton:Well, we Well, you know? We, we, we measure our employee
Jamie:net score. I didn't mean, well, maybe I did mean that's the measure.
Tom Broughton:it's, you get
Jamie:it.
Tom Broughton:when everyone gets together and you get the sense of it, you get the sense of going around the office, or going around the lab, or going around the workshop, or going around the stores, and it's like, are we right here? It's not
Jamie:like You hear it referenced in the store, for instance. Or you hear something that's a
Tom Broughton:theme and it gets referenced. it's it's not like My role is to create, like I said earlier, create the rules in which stuff, create the framework in which stuff happens, not to, and that's it. And like, you don't get explicit references to it, but it's when I'll give you like another practical example. And this actually is quite funny because it caused, when we're doing the due diligence for this investment, it caused an issue because I wrote, and this was way before I got the employee handbook. But one of the policies is, You get an extra day's holiday for every year worked, capped at 100 years. And And that
Jamie:was in the,
Tom Broughton:that's in, in the employment contracts. And where,
Jamie:Oh God. Don't tell me a lawyer somewhere
Tom Broughton:yeah. So I remember the, the, the lawyer do going, doing the due diligence said, oh, we need to, we need to remove this clause. And I was like, why? And they're like, because a hundred years is too many. If somebody, if somebody, what happens if somebody works there for like 70 years? And they've got like an extra seven days holiday. I was like, there'll be, there'll be, there'll be in their nineties or a hundred.
Jamie:They
Tom Broughton:loads of holiday.
Jamie:was like.
Tom Broughton:And so it's still in there and it's in the employee handbook. And to me, that's a really, and people like refer to it as like, and they're not, they just think, and it's the, the, the
Jamie:cues that
Tom Broughton:gives. Cause
Jamie:You haven't gone the full hog on, you know, take as much holiday as you like.
Tom Broughton:work. Our policy is for all. We can't do that with store staffs. So I have the same holiday policy. I've been at, I've got 10 extra days now because I've been here 10 years, but it's the exact same for everybody else. Nobody negotiates extra holiday. You can buy holiday or sell holiday if you want to, anyone can. And so, but that's becomes because we wrote down for all it's, but that's not for everybody. There's a whole bunch of cultures where it's much more individually driven. And that's. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's whatever's the right thing for the company and the brand that you're like trying, what you're trying
Jamie:to build. Okay.
Tom Broughton:Love
Jamie:Number two. Tell me a second piece of advice.
Tom Broughton:So, this is one, I guess, having gone through a journey on this.
Jamie:you just?
Tom Broughton:be really honest about why you're doing it, like, cause people, most people aren't like, and I wasn't, and I spent many started as a hobby, started growing a lot. We suddenly got fettered by all of these private equity companies. And then for that bit, I, they were like, what do you want out of it? And I didn't really know, but I was frankly flattered by the fact that all these companies wanted to invest in us. And then we ended up taking some investment and for like a year or two, I was like getting on the whole. What kind of growth do we,
Jamie:You were having a midlife crisis equivalent
Tom Broughton:exactly. Yeah, exactly. Which I should have probably done before I signed the contract, but there you go. But like, it really got me thinking about trying to understand what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. and if your incentive, what, if you want to do is build something and then sell it and then have a change of lifestyle, that's really great. But be clear to yourself that that is like what you want to do. I wasn't, so I, I struggled.
Jamie:how do you answer it now?
Tom Broughton:the intellectual challenge of taking a product that I really care about and making it exciting and relevant for a wide number of people.
Jamie:So what you're
Tom Broughton:saying is be
Jamie:absolutely honest. Don't
Tom Broughton:Because the aspiration reason yeah, completely. And like, I, there's so many brands, obviously it's out there and like you read their mission and honest, so many companies, the real mission statement is we've taken loads of PE VC money and we need to deliver a return of three to five times over a five year like cycle.
Jamie:so that personal journey that you're on doesn't feel like something that you are, selling to any employees in your employee home because their reason for hearing here. So if I was to survey the room, how would they describe their reasons for being excited to get up and come to work every day? What's their
Tom Broughton:I'd like to think that they would say that it's being part of something exciting that is genuinely changing an industry and, you know, bit by bit, hopefully improving people's lives a little bit.
Jamie:I genuinely
Tom Broughton:hope that that's what they would say. But
Jamie:maybe maybe serve an well No, but that's the point, right? So you are not actually, you know, you are not in the market to sell people on the idea of a company purpose. You are here saying, be honest about your own. Yeah, It's, a really, I love it actually. And it's a new way to challenge people on this, this, this thing called purpose. But, but your, your individual reasons, understanding them, being clear because. You can't lead a
Tom Broughton:happening
Jamie:existence at work if what
Tom Broughton:actually doing is chasing a
Jamie:rainbow, right? I call it, I call it that chasing a rainbow because you never get to the end of the rainbow anyway, right? But effectively that's your way of saying no, no why you come in every
Tom Broughton:Yeah.
Jamie:Okay. Love it. It's a nice take. Third and final.
Tom Broughton:Well, this will be linked to, I think, some of the things that I've referenced, but I've not been explicit about, which is don't hire people to solve problems, which, Every time in the last 10 years, I've had a problem. And I thought I could outsource the thinking of that by paying somebody to do it. It's been a disaster. All of the good decisions we've made have been from making lots of mistakes and almost chasing that spider into the corner. So it's not just like, help me solve how to run a retail business. It becomes, you distill it into. How do I install a point of sale machine? You break down a big, knotty problem into lots of different problems.
Jamie:problems. Oh, hold on Is that design thinking at work or is that engineering but they're similar Okay, don't outsource problem solving. I agree at some point the expertise of an outsider is needed but that's when you know what the answer.
Tom Broughton:answer. Exactly. When you when you know what the right question to answer is, and I think we're just really bad at, like, I, you know, it's all system one, system one, two, system two, thinking. We don't like doing the hard thinking, so we wanna park that onto somebody who's got like a CV and experience. But you need to do that thinking and you need to make mistakes so that you can better articulate the question you're asking.
Jamie:And give me your latest example of that. And we have had a couple of them, but you know, give me a latest example where you have contemplated perhaps rather than actually outsourced the
Tom Broughton:I mean, I can, I can like, like perfect example recently when we've, we've made the wrong answer this time that we've got this, you sort of got this big glazing machine downstairs. It's like, it's like a big bit of equipment, which is amazing, but it's run off a bit of software, that we were told that we needed to buy. And it's, it's terrible. It's the thing I was talking about earlier, Windows 3. 1. And we've ended up buying, and we shouldn't have done that. That was a mistake where what we should have done is worked out exactly what problem it was solving and built it ourselves, like, and it's the
Jamie:same with people,
Tom Broughton:like,
Jamie:that big machine down there?
Tom Broughton:well, we should have bought the machine, but built the software. That's a mistake we've made. In the past one, we've brought in, we've hired. In the past, HR people to solve our cultural problems, it's been a disaster. What we had to do was do it all ourselves, do all the hard thinking, and then when we have something, we can ask the right questions. And now we're, we're five years later hiring ahead of people, not ahead of hr, but so we can find the right person that
Jamie:How many people do you employ?
Tom Broughton:142.
Jamie:The question that comes to my mind is who's, who you, who are you outsourcing the problem to? Because it could become a, oh, I need to know, I need to grapple with this problem. And there are certain problems that only you Or that you should, sorry, not only you, that you, should grapple with, but do you have a difficulty with pushing down? Yes. But no, I know, no, no, I, I, I, I, I can, of course you do. I can, we can, I can see that, but it's, that is the same, the same question. Sort of outsourcing it the team.
Tom Broughton:Yeah, but I need to do it to feel confident that I've right, right, made the right delegation
Jamie:decision. And the only question is, does that become a problem in your, I have an obligation to grow in how you scale? we'll just leave that as a cliffhanger, rather than try and solve it. But I do like, it's a nice, I do like, I do like that you have framed a very important issue. And I agree with you, I don't think enough. People try and solve the problem, or do start with asking the right questions or figuring out what the right question is.
Tom Broughton:I do think like, and I've had no way to measure this, but my hunch is that the success of a business and a brand is positively correlated to the number of the questions that are asked within that company. Like I genuinely think that
Jamie:If only we could measure that somehow. I could carry on, but I can't because I've got Georgia waiting for me. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed the chat. I want to come back and do it again. We'll find a reason. Thank you
Tom Broughton:Thank you very much.
Jamie:Appreciate it.