Interviews  >  Dame Mary Perkins: A Spectacular Success

Dame Mary Perkins is the most successful businesswoman the Channel Islands have ever seen. Nick Kirby finds out how the girl from Bristol turned the optical world upside down.

When dame Mary Perkins sold her first chain of opticians in 1980 and moved to Guernsey, even she couldn't have imagined that over 30 years later she would be at the head of the largest privately owned optical company in the world. But since she and her husband Doug launched Specsavers from their spare bedroom in 1984, the company has grown far beyond expectation: it now has more than 1,500 stores in the UK, Europe and Australasia and employs 26,000 staff – and it looks set to keep growing.

Despite being an incredibly successful businesswoman, Mary finds time to be involved with a number of charitable organisations as well as business programmes for women – she is Patron of the Spirit of Everywoman Award, and most recently has been involved in the Everywoman ‘Modern Muse' initiative, which aims to inspire and engage the next generation of female business leaders. She was made a Dame in 2007 for her services to business and to the community in Guernsey.

Although she is incredibly busy with the company's current expansion into Australia and New Zealand, she was kind enough to take time out to talk to businesslife.co about her business, her life and the community in Guernsey.

When you started Specsavers, did you ever dream it would become as big as it has?
Not at all! Initially I thought we would cover the south west of the UK and south Wales – this is where Doug and I had our previous business – but then you realise you need to cover the whole country, simply because of the advertising. You don't want to advertise on the TV and then not have a store nearby for a customer to visit. So it was planned that we would eventually cover the whole of the UK, but we still didn't anticipate having so many stores. Of course, what has happened is that Specsavers has become a more trusted, popular brand, but many people don't want to travel into big cities, so we are in a lot more smaller communities, and we do very well there.

And you branched out internationally.
Yes we did. We've actually got more stores outside the UK than we have in the UK now. We're in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Denmark and Spain and our latest venture has been in Australia and New Zealand. I get lots of air miles now, which is quite nice. I quite like the travelling – I have 24 hours where no one interrupts me, so I can catch up on reading!

Your company really is a family affair: tell us more about that.
My son is joint Managing Director with my husband Doug, who is also the Co-Founder, and one of my daughters is the General Manager in the Netherlands. Bizarrely, I'm actually nobody! I don't have an official title. I'm not a financial director, I'm not a marketing director – so when I sit on the board I sit there as Co-Founder and main shareholder. They really ought to find me a title. Up until a year or so ago it was PR Director, but even that didn't describe me properly.

Have you ever considered listing on the stock market?
No, we've never really considered it. I think that people who do so have a reason for it, such as needing more money to expand abroad or if there is a succession problem. We don't have a reason to do that, and it wouldn't be our way of working anyway. We prefer to stay as a private company and I hope that continues with the next generation as well.

You are the face of the company, or so it seems. Was that deliberate or did the media focus on you because you are a woman?
I think the media picked up on my being a woman. To be honest, none of us wanted to be in the public eye but someone had to do it. A few years ago, we realised that people were becoming interested in how the company is run and what it stands for, and you can't really say no to that kind of thing.

Of the companies in the FTSE 100, only five have female CEOs. Do you feel that women have a difficult job getting senior executive roles?
I'm in two minds about it to be honest. I think a lot of women choose not to go up to that high level simply because it's not what they want. Many look at it and think: ‘I could do that, but I really don't want to, I like what I'm doing. I have a good lifestyle, a job I enjoy, a family…' and so on. I don't think that women hanker after those roles as men do. You are obviously going to get those who do want it and they do get there. But I think that, generally speaking, many women don't have that mindset.

I do, however, think that women need to be treated equally in the job they are in – and I think there are a lot of inequalities between men and women doing the same job.

That said, you are probably still a role model, whether you want to be or not.
You're probably right. There are more and more women opening and growing their own companies now. A lot of women run small companies really successfully and profitably, and they're heading them up because it belongs to them and they can make the rules rather than having to play by the rules in big publicly quoted companies. I can see this being the way things go.

When you sold your original company in 1980 and moved to Guernsey, had you intended to retire?
My parents lived here and part of the agreement when I sold the business was that I was not allowed to go back into optics for three years. So when I came to Guernsey it wasn't to retire – I was always intending to go back into work – but I thought I might have had a change of career. Obviously it didn't happen that way!

Is it possible to calculate the impact Specsavers has had on the economy in Guernsey?
I guess it must have an impact – after all when there are 60,000 or so people living on the island and you are employing 500... We contribute a fair amount of tax to the economy, that is for certain.

You quite clearly consider Guernsey your home now.
Well, I've been here since 1980, although I'll never be a ‘local', of course! It is my only home – in fact I'm still in the same house I had when I moved here. As far as I'm concerned it's home. My children are all here, except the one who is in Holland, although she has a home here. All my grandchildren are here, and after 31 years, all my friends are here too.

You became a Dame in 2007: is that the stuff dreams are made of?
It was all rather surreal. All of a sudden you get a letter in the post and the first reaction is that someone is pulling your leg! It was totally unexpected – particularly living in the Channel Islands, you read the honours list each year but you don't think anyone from the islands will be featured because you don't think of yourself as being in the UK.

You are heavily involved in charity and community work. Do you think successful, wealthy people have a duty to do this?
I don't think it has anything to do with wealth really – I think everyone should muck in and get involved with something in their community, whether on a big or a small scale. Stuart Falla has set up the Guernsey Community Foundation and I am getting involved with that – they are going to be encouraging a lot more giving from big companies and are looking to support different projects in the community. It's early days yet, though. But I do think that everyone should be aware of where they live. Not everyone is as lucky as me – I've had a lot of luck on the way to be honest – and it's nice to be able to give back to the people who haven't had that advantage.

From a business point of view, can you name one good thing and one bad thing about Guernsey?
On the good side, I think the people are fantastic. We are a ‘people' business and I just love coming to work because of the people. I think that would have been more difficult on the mainland because people are spread around more. Here it is like having a big family – they all are related to someone or went to school with them. Then the bad thing is that you run out of people because you only have so many to choose from, so there are pluses and minuses of being on an island.

Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions?
Not really. I've had a very fulfilled life. If I could live my life again I might have done something more creative, in music or in painting perhaps. But I've got no regrets, lets put it that way!

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