UK Retailer Cuts Prescription Glasses Wait to 24 Hours

Why glasses got so expensive, and how direct-to-consumer British eyewear brands are making pricing clearer and manufacturing more transparent?

MANCHESTER, GREATER MANCHESTER, UNITED KINGDOM, August 6, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- A Greater Manchester eyewear retailer has cut the standard wait time for prescription glasses from more than two weeks to 24 hours. Specscart, based in Manchester, holds lens powers ranging from -12 to +6 at its own facility. Most single-vision prescriptions are glazed and dispatched within a day. Customers who order and collect at the Bury location can receive finished glasses in 30 minutes.

Two-week turnaround times are standard for prescription glasses across the UK optical industry. Most opticians order lenses to a customer's exact prescription only after a sale is made, then send the frame to a third-party lab for glazing. This process commonly takes one to two weeks or longer, particularly for online retailers with no in-house lab.

UK eyewear manufacturing has declined for decades, and most of the supply chain, from raw lens material to finished frames, is now sourced outside Britain. Sid Sethi, founder of Specscart, said the company began examining where delays occurred in the supply chain.

"Most major eyewear retailers have outsourced glazing to Asia. That supply chain left decades ago, and pretending otherwise doesn't hold up," Sethi said. "What we could change to achieve faster turnaround time and better control over quality: the stocking, the glazing, the fitting. That's not glamorous, but it's the only part that was ever going to get someone their glasses in a day instead of two weeks."

Sethi said the company identified turnaround time as the point where delays reached customers, then worked backwards through the supply chain to identify the cause. Moving lens stocking and glazing in-house was the resulting decision.

The shift comes as the broader UK optical sector faces a separate but related challenge: a shortage of qualified glazing and dispensing labour. The formal apprenticeship pathway for dispensing opticians in the UK received approval to recruit apprentices from the General Optical Council in July 2024, making it one of the newer standardised training routes in UK healthcare-adjacent retail. The average full-time dispensing optician in the UK earns £33,056 a year, according to the Association of British Dispensing Opticians' 2026 Pay and Reward Survey.

Specscart is a Manchester-based optical retailer selling prescription glasses, sunglasses and contact lenses online and through its stores in Manchester. The company is fully bootstrapped, with no external investment and is named among the fastest growing eyewear brands in Europe.

Akash Raj
Specscart.
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