Lisa Laurent and Julie Bridgewater co-owned an optical practice together but dreamt of launching their own eyewear brand. In April 2022, the duo finally made the leap and launched Good Karma Eyewear. Today, the business sells to around 150 independent optical practices across the UK.
Bridgewater says: ‘We couldn’t have done it without Covid as it gave us the time to concentrate on it because we’re busy, work full-time, and we’re wives, mothers, all that stuff, and so it was good to have the downtime to fit it in.’
Like many, the pandemic made Laurent and Bridgewater reevaluate their priorities and career paths, leading them to jumpstart their business idea. Laurent says: ‘It’s been a dream for 20 years to have my own eyewear brand, but I didn’t think it was possible before.’
Value in niche
The business’ unique selling point arose from a gap in the eyewear market that Laurent and Bridgewater identified from their personal and practice experience.
‘We’re quite big women, so we always struggled to get products that we liked that actually fit us because we’ve got quite a big eye size. In practice, we could see the same at the opposite end of the scale for the tiny, petite women,’ explains Laurent.
The brand focuses on easy shapes with colourful designs, so as not to overwhelm people’s faces.
Bridgewater adds: ‘It started off with women creating frames for women; a women knows what women want kind of thing. But essentially, it’s about creating something that was hard to get from any other brand, like petite styles in colour and bigger width frames in 53-55mm.
'As a bigger lady like myself, from temple to temple you need that frame size, otherwise you just look like you’re wearing children’s glasses.’
Good Karma started with 12 models in three colours for women and now has 52 models in three colours, including a men’s range too.
Leading by example
Laurent and Bridgewater emphasise that giving back was a key principle from the start: ‘For every frame sold, a pound is donated to the Prince’s Trust to get women back into work and underprivileged ladies back into education. Lisa and I are very passionate.
'We’ve always worked from the age of 16 and we’re business owners now and we’d like to give ladies the opportunity to do that, to be independent,’ Bridgewater says.
Keeping the brand’s individuality, a form of exclusivity and a happy team is most important for them going forward. On the horizon, Good Karma Eyewear is looking to expand with a sunglass range and more models into the existing collection. The most recent launch is a hand painted glasses range from New York, which will be distributed by the brand.
However, they want to avoid becoming so big that they’re in every optical practice in town and they then ‘haven’t got anything different from the practice around the corner,’ says Laurent.