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 wife team, Colin
and Frances-Mary 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 part of the Vesuvius group, 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.
Born, brought up and educated in Surrey, Frances-Mary has had training in business
administration and has interests in Enid Blyton and Biggles books, Thunderbirds,
sailing and singing. She suffers from Asperger Syndrome and she is currently writing
a book on her life with this condition. We plan to start a publishing company next
year, probably to be called Pratt’s Publishing, to publish this book and others which
she has written. We both play badminton, swim and body surf. 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, Frances-Mary 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 (see first paragraph) 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 cinema, 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 Norvilles, who are a supplier to opticians.
As we are neither optometrists nor ophthalmologists, Norvilles will be dealing with
that side of the business. When a customer enters their prescription details to our
online order form, we will pass this on to Norvilles who will make the lenses to
order. Our website is being developed by Websites by Mark, who is based locally to
us. We also used to use the services of Shilton Accounting Services, who helped us
with our accounts.