About Us
We
are a small company based in Oxfordshire which started up in June 2011 to meet
the needs of people who wear glasses whilst watching 3D films in cinemas and
who do not like wearing two pairs of glasses. We are a husband and husband
team, Colin and FM Pratt
and Colin has a Facebook page, but to summarise, he is
a polymer chemist by training. He left Fullbrook School in 1988 with 3 A-levels
in chemistry, maths and physics. He then studied chemistry at Leicester
University but unfortunately, he failed his second year exams and
re-sits and so he left. Six months later he landed a job at OMI-Imisa, now
called Cookson, in the customer service
laboratory. Whilst he worked there he did a part time degree at Kingston
University for 5 years achieving a second class (lower division) degree
in 1997. During this time Colin had been promoted to the quality control
laboratory and the company name had changed to Enthone-OMI. He left his job at
the end of October, 1998 to study a Ph.D. In Conducting
Polymers at Kingston University with Professor Peter
Foot. The Ph.D. was titled ‘The Effect of Metal Ions on the Synthesis
and Properties of Conducting Polymers’. He completed this in November 2003,
three days before his birthday. He did a postdoc on intraocular lenses
for five months in 2004. Otherwise, Colin worked as a temporary software tester
for Electronic Arts from May 2003 until 2008 when
he obtained a position at the University of Reading as
a Knowledge Transfer Associate. This
involved working with Johnstone Safety Products (JSP)
Ltd on a project to make the bases of traffic cones more cheaply using recycled
materials. During this time, he acquired a CMI diploma
in Management and Leadership. He successfully completed the project in 2010
which should save JSP about £100k per year. It was in 2011 that, with his wife
Frances-Mary, he started Optics 3D Ltd. He enjoys board and role playing games,
likes cycling and badminton and enjoys science and science fiction TV shows and
films.
FM
is a transman born, brought up and educated in Surrey, FM has had training in
business administration and has interests in Enid Blyton and Biggles books,
Thunderbirds, sailing and singing. He suffers from Asperger's Syndrome and he
is currently writing a book on his life with this condition. We plan to start a
publishing company at some point to be called Pratt’s Publishing, to publish
this book and others which he has written. FM also sings professionally and performs
under the name, FM Sings. Colin plays
badminton, swims and body surfs, which FM used to do, but cannot anymore due to
a leg problem. We first met at a Scrabble club and we still often play Scrabble
together.
We
came up with the idea of prescription 3D glasses back at Christmas 2009 after
watching A Christmas Carol, FM complained how uncomfortable it was wearing two
pairs of glasses and Colin agreed. We searched in vain for prescription 3D
glasses and found none. No-body had heard of them but many said that it was a
good idea. At the time Colin was too busy on a knowledge transfer partnership
project with the University
of Reading and JSP to do
anything about it. However, upon completion of the project we remembered our
idea and it was still clear that no one was producing prescription 3D glasses.
In March and April, research was conducted to determine the best method of producing
prescription 3D glasses. A prototype was made using Fimo, a type of clay,
tested and was found to work perfectly. Colin drew up some possible designs and
then contacted Agentdraw, a design house and manufacturing
company. They said that they could modify the design to make it easier to
manufacture and manufacture them for us. At the same time, a survey was drawn
up and put online on myfreesurveys.com. The
survey results so far suggest that there is indeed a market for prescription 3D
glasses. We did further research and we found that it would be much cheaper to
use existing designs of sunglasses as 3D glasses and to use an insert which
holds the prescription lenses. We also found a design of glasses with
interchangeable lenses made by the Italian fashion house, Nannini.
As there are a number of different 3D systems used in the various cinemas, we
felt this feature would be very useful and these frames are used for our
RxMulti3D glasses. We found a supplier of polarisers in China. Based in
Xiamen, Eyepol Polarizing Technology offered, in
addition to polarisers, to supply suitable frames for our RxMono3D product and on
more favourable terms than Agentdraw. Our prescription lenses will be
supplied by Norville, who are a supplier to opticians. As
we are neither optometrists nor ophthalmologists,Norville deal
with that side of the business. When a customer enters their prescription
details to our online order form, we will pass this on to Norville who
will make the lenses to order. Our website was developed by Websites by Mark, who used to be based
locally to us.
In
September 2014 integrated prescription 3D lenses, called P3D lenses first
became available, firstly from DJ Newsons and then, from November 2016 from
Norville. Norville have stopped manufacturing the blanks for P3D lenses and we
bought up their entire stock, making us, as far as we know, the worlds only
supplier of glasses with P3D lenses.
The company registration details are:
Company Registration No. 7680065
VAT Registration No. GB132 2934 35