A successful family business strategy - go to Specsavers

A terrific interview in The Sunday Times today with the CEO of Specsavers, the hugely successful and family-controlled retail optician. I can see this business appearing in business exams in the next couple of years.

Here is the link to the article.

The interview would make a fantastic lesson case study - particularly for Year 13 students wanting to cut their teeth on an interesting real life strategy example. The Specsavers marketing campaigns have high awareness - and its easy to tie them into to some of the good points made in the article.

I jotted down these points reading it through a couple of times:

- Family-owned business run from Guernsey
- Rapid expansion overseas now - targeting markets with similar customers to the UK (New Zealand / Australia)
- £1.2bn turnover across the group
- Family controlled too - but few arguments about roles and succession
- UK Specsavers - £26.5m profit on £341.5m revenues from 700 shops
- International expansion has been achieved using a joint-venture approach (26,000 jv shops now around the world)
- JV approach has similarities to franchise approach?
- Independent opticians (30% of market) dislike Specsavers growth strategy - seen as the Starbucks of the trade, growing too fast and squeezing out small, local firms
- Facing increased competition from the merger of Boots with Dollond & Aitchison (No2 in market now) + Tesco is entering the market
- The family dont like to get too involved in strategic planning exercises - despite the rapid international growth of the business
- Growth has been funded from retained profits - no need for new equity (ruling out stock matket flotation) or bank debt