About Us
We are a long-established optical eyewear boutique and lens laboratory with a large curated selection of unbranded, prestige and designer prescription glasses. With years of expertise from 1991, we are committed to delivering exceptional quality
and service to meet your eyewear needs.
Welcome to Ilkeston Factory Specs, your go-to destination for beautiful and affordable eyewear! As a family-owned business Boutique and Laboratory with decades of experience, we pride ourselves on offering high street glasses buyers
a unique range of Unbranded and Branded Designer & Prestige complete eyewear, along with top-notch prescription lenses, at a more affordable price than most high street opticians. Our state of the art Laboratory and Optical Boutique offers many optical services including complete Branded and Unbranded glasses, as well as a "reframe own lenses" into our new frames service and a "reglaze my glasses frames" service, including our convenient while you wait service*. Visit us in Ilkeston at our safe and secure Boutique and Laboratory on the Nottingham and Derby border, and discover the perfect pair of glasses that fit your style and lifestyle needs! If you would like free parking for your visit, just ring in advance !
Our Story Goes Back Over 34 Years
Since opening our first glasses outlet in Dudley in 1991, one of the first of its type in the country, we've proudly grown to become one of the largest authorised and affordable Unbranded and Prestige Designer glasses stockists in the Nottingham, Derby, and Leicester areas. Our Ilkeston Boutique, established in 2003, is our privately owned head quarters location facilitating our Glasses Boutique and on premises Optical Laboratory, which is renowned for its bespoke services, including a convenient one-hour service for single vision glasses*, bespoke lens tinting in-store, broken frame replacements in-store while customers wait, and prescription lens reglazes. Whether you're looking for new frames, reglazing your own glasses, need just new frames for broken specs, or custom lens tinting, we're here to help, answer questions, and meet all your eyewear needs with expertise and care.
More about our story and Ilkeston factory Specs
Our owner and proprietor, Shaun, was one of the first to operate a glasses dispensary in the UK back in 1991. He founded, opened and established our first location in Dudley, West Midlands. Trading from a rented space in a shopping centre near the Merry Hill centre, he offered prescription eyewear at discounted prices directly to the public who took their prescriptions to him. Customers needed to have their eyes tested by their optician, then provide their prescription to Shaun, who would manufacture new glasses and lenses for them giving them a saving.
Offerings started off as Unbranded glasses at low prices in-store, with extremely competitive prices for all types of prescription lenses. Providing a personal, un-rushed and friendly relaxed atmosphere, the business thrived over the next decade, but so did rents/rates and operating costs. In 2003, Shaun opened our second business, managing both businesses for a while. He finally returned to live near his home town Ilkeston in Derbyshire, purchasing his current premises for achieving more stability and further reducing trading costs making the business more profitable. This second business became increasingly busy taking all our time and focus, with our onsite laboratory offering faster 1 hour service on some products for our customers convenience, which proved to be a big hit in Ilkeston and the surrounding areas.
In 2015 with a solid customer base and a reputation for quality products at affordable prices, we were vetted and proved our financial stability and ethical customer service focus, and were accepted as partners with all the authorised Designer Eyewear license holders, allowing us to venture into the Designer Eyewear market and hold the latest branded products in-store with guarantees. Having spent tens of thousands of pounds on the latest Designer Eyewear brands (purchased directly through our authorised accounts) We soon led the way in the area with a huge choice of Prestige and Designer Eyewear. Companies such as Luxottica, owners of Oakley, Ray-Ban, Michael Kors, D&G, Armani, Prada, Swarovski, and Tiffany, as well as DeRigo, who supply Porsche Design, Police, Lewis Hamilton, and Furla, allowed their brands in-store. We also established accounts with Safilo, providing Hugo Boss, and Sightique, a large South African company supplying its brand Cube eyewear and Jeep ranges. More brands, including Aspinal, Rip Curl, Schott, Synergy, and Ferucci titanium glasses were made available by their brand owners and Optical Service UK.
Private and free Designer Eyewear consultations and online services were introduced in 2016. Ilkeston Factory Specs has continued to trade successfully offering a wide array of products and services and also some products from our privately run online website. The business has established itself as a popular and reliable mainstay on the high street in Ilkeston, (being one of the longest standing businesses on Ilkeston's high street) focusing primarily on a face-to-face in-store experience and service while expanding its online offerings with unbranded eyewear and other services reaching a wider audience across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
As for the Future - Moving Forward !
At Ilkeston Factory Specs we are looking forward to the future. We face different challenges now compared to where it all began. The high street appears to be suffering in general, and we believe we are all a little to blame. The habit of trying in-store for fit, then leaving simply to buy online is the bane of all high street stores and is deteriorating the high street, a habit that must be stopped. Yet, we all want to keep the high street for it's convenience, diversity, the fact we can meet real people and converse, ask questions and get good expert advice, or just to have a day out with human interaction. We believe we all need to ask ourselves what we can do to keep and improve it.
We at Ilkeston Factory Specs, as with many high street businesses, believe there is still a place for, and a need for high street businesses. We know there is a desire to simply experience, touch, feel and try out what you want to buy before purchasing.
Perhaps the fit, the look, or the quality is better assessed in person rather than online. Pictures can be deceptive leading to disappointment.
There is no doubt that a purchaser may always be able to make a purchase a little cheaper online, but, with less service, less after care etc, which often becomes very difficult once a simple online purchase has been made. We know this because we are asked to repair, fit or check glasses bought online because the online supplier doesn't offer aftercare, or it's very inconvenient to post expensive items back that are no longer under guarantee not to mention time consuming.
High street businesses will often provide aftercare for their own products, as well as initial measurements, fitting and showrooms to try on their products, for the lifetime of the glasses, but these services are expensive to the retailer and they need to sell their products to be financially viable.
Ilkeston Factory Specs intends on continuing with it's high levels of service to, consultations, repairs etc to customers who purchase products from us and have supported our business and the high street. Whilst we don't encourage or allow our products to be photographed etc for documentation purposes (for online purchases) we have applied new strategies in-store to combat expensive and unproductive enquiries, whilst still focusing and spending time with buying customers. Our focus will remain on choice, price, enjoyable and informative frame and lens consultations. We intend on continuing to further focus our efforts on affordable pricing compared to like for like products, Choice, expert advice and ongoing after care.
We intend on bringing in more of the latest Unique Niche Style Eyewear, as well as offering all the big brand names and affordable glasses.